Alan Gregg and the rise of general hospital psychiatry

The authors review the forces that encouraged the entry of psychiatry into the general hospital in the 1930s. Those forces, which included concern about increasing health care costs, pressure to reform medical and psychiatric education, and the growth of dynamic psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, are described. The activities of Alan Gregg, Director of the Medical Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation during that era are highlighted. Gregg encouraged research in neurobiologic correlates of psychiatric illness and funded psychiatric units in eight general hospitals in the United States. The authors suggest that the development of general hospital psychiatry was strongly influenced by Alan Gregg and his support for a medical model of psychiatric illness. In addition to other forces that spurred the growth of general hospital psychiatry, the authors suggest that Gregg's influence significantly aided psychiatry's entrance into the general hospital.