George Saslow Reprint collection

Organized in 1887, the University of Oregon Medical School encouraged lectures and seminars devoted to “diseases of the mind.” The Department of Psychiatry appointed its first full-time chair in 1957 and since then has grown to include over 60 full-time academic faculty members who are concerned with the quality and availability of patient care, psychiatric education, and mental health research throughout OHSU.

George Saslow, Ph.D, M.D., was Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry from 1957-1973.

Academic Contributions

Born in Brooklyn in 1906, George Saslow attended the University of Rochester School of Medicine from 1926-1928. He earned a Ph.D. in physiology from the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1931, and completed his medical degree cum laude at Harvard Medical School in 1940. He trained as a resident in Neurology-Neurosurgery at Boston City Hospital, 1940-41, and as a psychiatry resident at Worcester State Hospital and at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1941-1943. He was Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis from 1943-1955 and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School from 1955-1957.

Dr. Saslow was a research assistant at Harvard University in 1942 at the time of the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston, a disaster that killed 492 and injured hundreds. His interviews of fire survivors contributed to the early development of grief theory and advanced our understanding of post traumatic stress. From 1946 to 1967, he learned more about the consequences of work-related stress as a psychiatric consultant to the Manhattan Project for the Los Alamos Medical Center and Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1957, Dr. Saslow moved to Portland, Oregon to become the first full-time chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at OHSU. He established the Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic and discontinued the practice of immersing schizophrenic inpatients in cold baths. He retired as chairman in 1973. However, like Mark Twain's death, Dr. Saslow's retirement turned out to be an exaggeration. He soon returned to work in California as the Chief of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences for the Veteran's Administration Hospital at Sepulveda and as professor of psychiatry for the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. In 1978, he returned to Oregon and OHSU, seeing patients and teaching medical students and psychiatry residents until his death.

His diverse academic and research interests have included the study of psychosomatic illness and the biological basis of mental illness, refining the technique of the psychiatric interview (the basic tool of psychiatry), developing brief psychotherapeutic interventions, establishing competence criteria for resident evaluations, determining the mental competency of inmates found “guilty except for insanity,” and treating depression in geriatric patients.

Dr. Saslow had an outstanding national reputation for his work in medical education, clinical interviewing and behavioral assessment. He was an influential and charismatic teacher and trained many of the psychiatrists presently practicing in the Pacific Northwest. In 1982, the University of Oregon gave Dr. Saslow an honorary degree and a Distinguished Service Award. In 1987, OHSU established the George Saslow Fund in recognition of his personal and professional achievements, and the Saslow Luncheon and Lectureship has become an annual event each fall.

Dr. Saslow was married in 1928 to Julia Ipcar, an artist and sculptor, and they reared four children (two sons and two daughters). In her 60's, Julia earned a Ph.D. in psychology and joined the OHSU clinical faculty as an assistant professor of psychiatry. She was a popular psychotherapist in her own right, and together the Saslows conducted group therapy and offered marriage counseling for residents until Julia passed away at the age of 94 in 2001.

George Saslow died on September 16, 2006, at the age of 99.