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WINFRED
OVERHOLSER: PSYCHIATRIST
1892-1964
By Edric Lescouflair,
Harvard College '03
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Until
modern times mental illness had long been associated
with ideas of immorality and inferiority. Analogies
to demon possession were common; indeed, some invoked
the biblical account—Jesus casting demons out of
the madman at Gadarene—to allude to the spiritual
aspect of such maladies. Recently, however, the work
of psychiatrists in particular has aided in removing
the veil around these previously mystifying diseases.
Much of this work was done in the twentieth century,
and no one did more to dispel erroneous myths about
psychiatric disorders than Winfred Overholser.
Dr. Overholser was born
on April 21, 1892, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to
Edwin Moses and Mary Jane Overholser. After graduating
from nearby Wellesley High School, he enrolled in
Harvard College, pursuing a degree in economics. Overholser
received his A. B. cum laude in 1912. Subsequently
he studied law and medicine at Boston University and
was awarded an M.B. in 1915 and an M.D. degree in
1916.
In 1917 Overholser began
the type of work that would occupy most of his life
when he accepted a position at the Westboro State
Hospital in Massachusetts. The advent of the First
World War created a need for the study of psychiatric
ailments affecting soldiers, and he received military
leave to go to France to work in the neuropsychiatric
section of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. The work in
France qualified him to become the assistant superintendent
of Gardner State Hospital in Massachusetts in the
early 1920s.
Overholser then became
an assistant to the commissioner of the Massachusetts
Department of Mental Diseases. This affiliation allowed
him to help enact the Briggs Law which provided for
the mental evaluation of any person convicted of a
serious crime. Of this piece of legislation, he wrote,
"The significance of the Briggs Law is that it has
provided for the prompt recognition of defendants
who should be in hospitals, thus preventing trial
of mentally ill persons."
In addition to working
for the rights of mentally ill criminals, Dr. Overholser
taught at Boston University, specifically at the medical
school from 1925-1934, and at the law school from
1929-1937. He also taught psychiatry at George Washington
School of Medicine in Washington D.C., becoming a
professor in 1938.
In 1937 Overholser received
the appointment that defined his life of medical service.
He was nominated by the American Psychiatric Association
to be the superintendent of St. Elizabeth's Hospital,
a government run institution in Washington, D.C. He
held that post until 1962.
Once
in Washington, Overholser continued in his tradition
of caring for the mentally ill and treating patients
with compassion, realizing that a mental illness should
not be ideologically differentiated from a physical
ailment. He was an active Unitarian who was a trustee
of All Souls Church in Washington, D.C. Religion played
a major part in his life, and he often examined the
relationship between religion and mental disorders.
On this topic, he wrote, "Religious conflicts are
not, of course, necessarily related to mental disorder;
they are, in fact, a part of everyday life. There
are certain conflicts, however, that are the outgrowth
of mental disorder and a manifestation of it." He
was an active member of the Unitarian Service Committee,
and he served as the moderator of the American Unitarian
Association from 1946-1948. Overholser achieved some
renown as a proponent of liberal religion.
Much of Overholser's
work at St. Elizabeth's consisted of helping mentally
ill criminals to be absolved of responsibility for
their crimes. He was a supporter of the Durham Rule,
which would cause such consideration to become law.
During the period that Overholser was at St. Elizabeth's,
the hospital grew to be an internationally acclaimed
institution of mental health. His leadership was widely
seen as the cause since he exhibited an unusual ability
to integrate esoteric concepts and common reasoning.
He came to be known as "the dean of forensic psychiatry."
From 1945 to 1958, St.
Elizabeth's was charged with the care of a high profile
patient, Ezra Pound. The poet had been accused of
treason after the Second World War because of radio
broadcasts he had made from Italy. According to Overholser,
he suffered from a paranoid state which rendered him
unfit. Overholser's evaluation helped Pound eventually
to achieve independence. Another famous case in 1954
involved former Marine Col.Frank Schwable, who had
signed a germ warfare confession under coercion from
his Chinese captors. Overholser's insistence that
Schwable was without "a will" led to the Army's adaption
of a Code of Conduct for its personnel.
Dr. Overholser served
as the president of the American Psychiatric Association
(1947-1948). The organizations with which he was affiliated
included the New England Society of Psychiatry, the
Pan American Medical Society of Washington, and the
Academy of Medicine in Washington. He a gave a simple
prescription for mental health: "Don't take yourself
too seriously. Be tolerant of the peculiarities of
others. Try to do something worthwhile in your life
and observe the Golden Rule."
Winfred Overholser died
in Washington, D.C. on October 6, 1964. He left behind
his wife, Dorothy Stebbins, whom he married in 1919,
and three children: Dorothy, Jane, and Winfred, Jr.
His work includes two books, The Handbook of Psychiatry
(1947), and Psychiatry and the Law (1953).
Organizations
from which he received honors included the Department
of Health, Education and Welfare, George Washington
University (D.Sc.), St. Bonaventure University (Doctor
of Humane Letters), and the French Legion of Honor.
A
PSYCHIATRIST SPEAKS [TO THE CLERGY]
By
Winfred Overholser
What
rudimentary care was first provided for the victims
of mental disease was supplied by the religious
orders, not by physicians; it is probably historically
accurate to say that disease of the mind was not
reclaimed by medicine as a subject for its attention
until the time of the French Revolution, under that
hardy pioneer, Philippe Pinel, the physician who
first struck the shackles off the unfortunate wretches
housed in the Bicêtre at Paris. It was Pinel
who started the stream of humane care of the mentally
ill, care given under medical auspices. Shortly
before his time, in 1773, the first public mental
hospital in the United States was founded at Williamsburg,
Virginia, but the development of public care was
feeble and halting until the magnificent work of
Dorothea Lynde Dix.
The work of this remarkable woman is one in which
every American, and especially every Unitarian,
may well take pride. She is, to my mind, the greatest
American woman of the nineteenth century; she should
long ere now have been honored by election to the
Hall of Fame, but despite her lack of public recognition
her memory is ever green in the hearts of those
who are interested in the welfare of the mentally
ill. Her native devotion to the downtrodden was
much developed by several years spent as a member
of the household of William Ellery Channing; in
1841, although frail in body and no longer young,
she started a campaign for the development and establishment
of mental hospitals throughout this country, Canada
and England. During the ensuing forty years she
brought about the establishment or enlargement of
at least thirty-two hospitals, an achievement unparalleled
in the history of humanitarian effect.
From a commencement Address at
the Meadville Theological School published in The
Christian Register, September 1944.
The Psychiatrist and the Law
by Winfred Overholser (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1953).
Handbook
of Psychiatry by Winfred Overholser and Winifred
V. Richmond (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1947)
UNITARIAN
NOTE
Why I Believe in Advancing Unitarianism
by Winfred Overholser
If
there ever was a time that cried aloud for freedom
of the spirit and the mind, recognition of the rights
of man, a practical putting into effect of the basic
principles of the Golden Rule—in short, a true
religious liberalism—that time is now.
We have won a long and costly war that was forced
upon us by totalitarian despots. It is not enough,
however, to sit back and assume that automatically
the forces of democracy will now reassert themselves
and that all will be well. There never was anything
automatic about the rise or maintenance of freedom;
it must always be fought for vigilantly and vigorously.
Hitler and Mussolini are fortunately dead, but the
evil forces of autocracy, the negation of the rights
of the individual, greed and oppression still live.
What has this to do with Unitarianism? Just this:
Beyond all creedal churches, it emphasizes the fundamental
worth of man, and the truth that he can best show
his devotion to god by trust and faith in his fellow
man and by the spirit of Christian brotherhood.
Unbound by formal creeds, it seeks improved human
relatioms as the most realistic approach to the
Kingdom of God on earth.
From The Christian Register,
May 1946
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