Background
Overholser, Winfred was born on April 21, 1892 in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Edwin M. and Mary J. (Walker) Overholser.
Overholser, Winfred was born on April 21, 1892 in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Edwin M. and Mary J. (Walker) Overholser.
Bachelor of Arts cum laude, Harvard, 1912. Doctor of Medicine Boston University, 1916, honorary Doctor of Science, 1940. Doctor of Humane Letters, Saint Bonaventure University, 1955.
Honorary Doctor of Laws, George Washington University, 1960.
He was Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Diseases and worked with the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in New New York He campaigned for recognition of alcoholism as a mental disease, calling it in 1940 "the greatest public health problem which is not being scientifically attacked. As early as 1941 he warned of the need to consider the mental health of an aging population and said that old age pensions could prove to be "one of the most important developments in the prevention of mental breakdowns in later life."
He served as superintendent of Saint Elizabeths Hospital, a federal institution for the mentally ill in Washington, District of Columbia, from 1937 to 1962.
His most famous patient there was Ezra Pound.
In 1947, he agreed to move Pound to the more pleasant surroundings of Chestnut Ward, close to his private quarters, which is where he spent the next twelve years. He was instrumental in Pound"s release in 1958, after reporting that there was a "strong probability" that criminal insanity explained his crime and that "further confinement can serve no therapeutic purpose." He also testified on behalf of Frank H. Schwable, a Marine who, while held prisoner by North of Korea, confessed to participating in germ warfare.
He served in 1948 as president of the American Psychiatric Association. He was for a time the editor in chief of the Quarterly Review of Psychiatry and Neurology.
In 1949, he provided a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for Saint Elizabeth"s patients who had been subject to lobotomies.
He told a professional conference: "I am sorry to say that even when they are improved, they are still nothing to brag about. We are not enthusiastic."
Overholser retired in 1962 after 25 years as superintendent of Saint Elizabeths Hospital where under his administration the hospital pioneered the use of "group therapy, tranquillizing drugs and psychodrama."
He was also Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry of George Washington University School of Medicine. As Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association, Overholser concluded that United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal "came to his death by suicide while in a state of mental depression".
Boston University award him its alumni medal in 1962.
France awarded him its Legion of Honor and Medal of Liberation. He died on October 6, 1964.
(The psychiatrist and the law)
Served as Lieutenant neuropsychiatry section Medical Corps, United States Army, 1918-1919. Member National Board Medical Examiners, 1948-1954. Diplomate American Board Psychiatry and Neurology.
Member American Law Institute (advising committee on criminal law), American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association (president 1947-1948), National Association Mental Health, American Legion, Academy Medicine Washington (past president), Pan-American Medical Association, American League to Abolish Capital Punishment (member Executive Board directors), Washington Institute Mental Hygiene, Alpha Sigma Phi, Sigma Xi.
Mason (33°).; Club: Cosmos.
Married Dorothy Stebbins, June 4, 1919. Children: Dorothy (Mistress Doctorate. Richard O’Meara), Jane (Mistress Charles R. Elliott), Winfred.