George Saslow, Ph.D, M.D., was Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oregon Medical School from 1957-1973. Saslow was invited to the University of Oregon Medical School in 1957 and collaborated with Dean David Baird to redesign a more contemporary psychiatric department. The introduction of Thorazine allowed the department to move away from the practice of isolating patients who were experiencing psychosis. In 1973, Dr. Saslow organized the Community Psychology Training Program in response to the lack of programs available to support psychiatric patients who had previously been hospitalized and had since been released after President Kennedy's deinstitutionalization efforts.
In this interview, Saslow discusses his early education, as well as his time at Washington Square College, University of Rochester, New York University, and Harvard Medical School; he shares thoughts on his training and work in psychiatry at Boston City Hospital, Wooster State Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Washington University School of Medicine; and he describes working as the psychiatrist for Los Alamos National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project. Saslow discusses the Cocoanut Grove Fire in Boston in 1942 and how his work on responding to community grief from a mass casualty event (with Dr. Erich Lindemann) impacted his work and teaching. Throughout the interview, Dr. Saslow shares his views on the evolution of psychiatry, medicine, and the way both subjects overlap and his opinions on how they should be taught in medical school and hospitals.