Winfred Overholser (1892 – October 6, 1964) was an American psychiatrist, president of the American Psychiatric Association, and for 25 years the superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital, a federal institution for the mentally ill in Washington, D.C. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1892, Winfred Overholser graduated from Harvard College in 1912 and received a medical degree from Boston University in 1916.
[2] He campaigned for recognition of alcoholism as a mental disease, calling it in 1940 "the greatest public health problem which is not being scientifically attacked.
In 1947, he agreed to move Pound to the more pleasant surroundings of Chestnut Ward, close to his private quarters, which is where he spent the next twelve years.
[3] He was instrumental in Pound's release in 1958, after reporting that there was a "strong probability" that criminal insanity explained his crime and that "further confinement can serve no therapeutic purpose.
"[1] He also testified on behalf of Frank H. Schwable, a Marine who, while held prisoner by North Korea, confessed to participating in germ warfare.