Carr's University of Chicago career ended quickly and badly, with an episode that concluded with the young man putting his head into a gas oven. He explained away this act as a "work of art," but the apparent suicide attempt, which Carr's family believed was catalyzed by Kammerer, led to a two-week stay in the psychiatric ward at Cook County hospital. Carr's mother, who had by this time moved to New York City, brought her son there and enrolled him at Columbia University, close to her own home.