Scope and Content Note
The papers of Winfred Overholser (1892-1964) span the years 1911-1965, with the bulk from 1950 to 1965. The collection is organized in eight series: Selected Correspondence , General Correspondence , Subject File , Writings File , Manuscript Index Cards , Collected Reprints , Printed Matter , and Scrapbooks .
Scrapbooks in the collection include announcements, invitations, newspaper clippings, photographs, and printed matter reflecting Overholser’s career as a psychiatrist from 1925 to 1962. The scrapbooks treat his appointment as director of the Division for the Examination of Prisoners of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Diseases in 1925, his term as commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Diseases, 1934-1936, including his removal from the latter position by Governor James M. Curley, and his appointment and tenure as superintendent of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., 1937-1962. The Subject File is dated largely after Overholser’s retirement from Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1962. A series of writings includes typed, printed, and photocopied works that Overholser contributed to the literature of psychiatry. Also in the collection are a few drafts and typescripts of articles, lectures, and book reviews, and a card file of a bibliography compiled by Overholser on forensic psychiatry.
Prominent correspondents include Harold H. Burton, C. G. Jung, Evalyn Walsh McLean, Karl Menninger, Richard M. Nixon, Ezra Pound, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Santayana, and Gregory Zilboorg.