Dr. Menninger was born in Topeka, Kansas, the son of a physician. He entered Washburn College in Topeka, enlisting briefly in the Army during WWI and later graduating. He obtained a M.A. (1922) from Columbia University and a M.D. (1924) from Cornell Medical School. After interning for a year at Bellevue Hospital (N.Y.), he joined his father and brother Karl, who had started a psychiatric clinic in Topeka, but interrupted his work in 1927 to take a four-month residency at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During this period, he researched the field of juvenile paresis, publishing a book on the subject in 1936. On his return to the Topeka Clinic, his interest was in “physical psychiatrical” relationships. Dr. Menninger received psychoanalytic training in Chicago, and when he became Director of the Menninger Clinic Inpatient Unit, he instituted a psychoanalytically informed milieu therapy program.
In 1942, Dr. Menninger was called to Army service and became a Brigadier General (1944) and Chief Psychiatrist for the Army. After the war, he returned to Topeka and, with his brother Karl, developed the Menninger School of Psychiatry, utilizing the facilities of the Topeka State Hospital and the Topeka Veterans Administration Hospital. By 1950, the school was training 15% of all American psychiatrists. He was Chief of Staff at the Menninger Clinics and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Kansas.
He was a member of many organizations, and in 1946, he was a founding member of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He became an advocate for improved services for the mentally ill, appearing before legislatures, public and private organizations and writing popular books on psychiatry.
Dr. Menninger served as President of the American Psychiatric Association (1948–49). The annual lecture at the American Psychiatric Association Convocation is named in his honor.