[1][2][3][4][5][6] Born "Tamás Feldmeier" to a Hungarian-Jewish family in Budapest, he decided at the age of 14 to become a psychiatrist,[3] and avidly read the works of Sigmund Freud and other medical authors as an adolescent.
Having heard eyewitness accounts in Budapest of Nazi atrocities in the East, Tamás warned his parents they would not be safe in Kecskemét after the arrival of the Germans; his father was convinced the community itself, where he had delivered more than 4,000 babies, would permit him no harm.
[1][2][3] The following year, Tamás formally changed his surname to Detre, a name variably pronounced as DEBT-tree, DEE-tree, or de-TRAY by people who later worked with and knew him.
[4][5] With co-author Henry Jarecki, Detre would write a 733-page overview of Modern Psychiatric Treatment, an extended meditation on the value (and perceived deficiencies) in the state-of-the-art psychopharmacology of the era.
[1][2][3] Named Vice Chancellor of Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984, Detre oversaw an institution consistently ranked among the nation's top ten in research funding.