Before we can intelligently approach the problem ... it will be necessary to correct an almost universal misapprehension as to the meaning of the word insane.
Dr. White was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Cornell University on scholarship (1888–1899), and his interest in psychiatry began there. He received his M.D. (1891) from the Long Island Hospital Medical School where he also interned.
Dr. White served at the Binghamton State Hospital (NY) for 11 years and, in 1903, was appointed Superintendent of the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. (now St. Elizabeths Hospital), a position he held until his death. Dr. White transformed the hospital into a leading center for psychiatric treatment, training, and research and advocated analytic methods of treatment. He became interested in psychoanalysis in 1907 and, in 1914, organized a psychoanalytic society at the hospital. He advocated analytic methods of treatment, including group psychotherapy. He instituted hospital reforms in the care of patients, reduced the use of restraint, promoted hydrotherapy, expanded occupational and recreational therapies for patients, and is credited with “reviving what was the old moral therapy of the 19th century.”
Dr. White was a Professor of Psychiatry at both Georgetown and George Washington University Medical Schools. In 1924, he started a three year nursing school at the hospital, and published nearly 20 books and more than 200 articles. His textbook, Outlines of Psychiatry, had 14 editions between 1907 and 1935. He was President of the American Psychopathological Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the First International Congress on Mental Hygiene (1930). He is credited with forging the elements of a distinctive American psychiatry and shaping its relations with medicine, social science, law, and American culture.
Dr. White was President of the American Psychiatric Association (1924–25).