In this article, I interviewed three women who completed their medical and psychiatric training in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, women were a very small minority in any given medical school class. Some of the female psychiatrists and other physicians were supervisors and mentors to those of us who came along in the next generation. As the percentage of women in medical school moves toward 50%, we should not forget those who came before us.

Barbara Young, M.D. feels that her determination to become a physician was related to her early childhood experiences, and to her family’s attitudes about women and education. From an early age, Dr. Young had a sense that she might not get married. She observed her mother, a highly educated woman, scrubbing floors and spending her life serving the needs of the family at the expense of her mother’s own personal needs. Dr. Young’s family encouraged her talents, and supported her in her effort to obtain a higher education. “Once when I was young, a visitor asked my brother what he wanted to be when he grew up. He answered promptly, ‘a butcher!’ The visitor turned to me and I replied, ‘I want to me a nurse.’ My grandmother spoke up, ‘But why don’t you become a doctor?’”

After the internship, she returned to Baltimore. She has lived and worked here ever since. The Washington and the Baltimore-Washington Psychoanalytic Institutes separated while she was in analytic training. She finished in the Baltimore-Washington Institute. She has seen herself as an artist-therapist rather than as a theoretician. She would adapt analytic technique to meet the needs of sicker patients. She sees her individualization of treatment as an extension of her artistic way of looking at the world. Today she continues to pursue successful careers both as a photographer and a psychoanalyst. She does both in her own home, surrounded by her flower gardens.

Riva Novey, M.D. did not set out to be a physician. She started her mental health career as a clinical social worker and rose to become Chief Social Worker at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Maryland. She married Dr. Sam Novey, a well-known Baltimore psychiatrist. She had planned to have children, but learned, to her grief, that a congenital abnormality made it impossible for her to have children. Subsequently, she decided to apply to medical school and was accepted.

It was just after the end of World War II when Dr. Novey matriculated at the University of Maryland School of Medicine as one of only two women in the class. Many of her classmates were military veterans. From them, she learned about military-style discipline and how they had been taught to act in institutional settings. This helped her later when she became a psychiatrist.

After medical school, Dr. Novey began her rotating internship at Union Memorial Hospital. She found that she was particularly useful in the Emergency Room and enjoyed doing medical procedures. She found her medical training a valuable preparation for her later psychiatric work. She was treated well by the faculty and staff, but says that occasionally female patients showed disappointment when they expected to be examined by a male physician!

Dr. Novey spent two years as a resident at Sheppard Pratt Hospital, followed by two years as a half-time resident at Springfield Hospital. She chose Springfield because she wanted to experience public psychiatry. During that time, she began her training at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, where she later became a teaching, supervising and training analyst. She went into the private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. She also did part-time work in clinic and academic settings.

Dr. Novey says that she regrets not being a parent, for which she believes there is no substitute. However, her work in psychiatry and psychoanalysis has provided rich experience in relatedness to people of all ages and an opportunity to learn or begin to learn about them. On the whole, she is satisfied with the way things turned out. She would like to pass on to junior colleagues something important she has learned. It is, “You can’t always have everything you want.”

Pearl Huffman Scholz, M.D. graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1941. While working in pediatrics, she realized she did not know enough about the behavioral problems she often saw in her practice. She began to train in psychiatry with Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins Hospital, then moved to the child guidance clinic affiliated with University of Maryland. Later, while working on the inpatient wards at Sheppard Pratt Hospital, she was aware that her part time status was not the norm, but felt that she was treated well and received excellent supervision. While there, she enjoyed doing intensive psychotherapy with long-term inpatients.

She married in 1944 and had four children. Once she had children, she always worked part-time. She said that University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins clinics were supportive of her when she took time off to have her children. She said, “I will always be grateful to those at Hopkins, University of Maryland and Sheppard Pratt who were supportive and flexible enough to allow me to work part-time.”

She tried five or six childcare providers. None seemed to work out well. She was about to give up and retire from psychiatry, when her husband urged her to try one more nanny. That time, she found an excellent, caring woman who stayed with the family for 12 years. Having a consistent, nurturing nanny gave her much more peace of mind. She does not believe that her children suffered any adverse effects from her career. Dr. Scholz and her husband were active socially and had friends with a variety of occupations and interests. Her husband, an ophthalmologist, while generally supportive of her career, sometimes showed some ambivalence.

In 1961, Dr. Scholz went into private practice. Over time, she noted some trends. Earlier in her practice, she saw children who had too many inhibitions, while in later years, she saw more disruptive children who might have benefited from more inhibitions. In her role as a supervisor, she noted that in recent years, psychiatric residents showed less interest in learning about long-term, intensive psychotherapy.

Today, she is retired from her practice. However, she keeps active enjoying golf and babysitting her 5 grandchildren. She continues to maintain an interest in psychiatric topics and attends Sheppard Pratt Grand Rounds on Wednesdays.

Each of the three women interviewed in this article had different thoughts and experiences related to the combining of family and psychiatric practice. Dr. Young did not marry, but experienced great fulfillment through art, friendships and career. Dr. Scholz had four children while working half time as a child psychiatrist. Supportive colleagues and nurturing, consistent childcare were important factors.

All of these psychiatrists trained when psychopharmacology was limited, and long term psychotherapy and other psychosocial treatments were the norm. Hospitals used insulin coma therapy. Dr. Young talked about treating the same patients before and after the appropriate medications became available. All three of these psychiatrists maintained practices that emphasized psychotherapy.

The women I interviewed, and others I have known, seemed to have a strong sense of their identities as individuals. They focused on their own goals, and did not see themselves as victims of discrimination. They were aware of the existence of gender discrimination, but none of them listed it as a major obstacle in their own medical careers. Although, they were aware that what they were doing set them apart from most women of their era, this was not necessarily a negative thing. Dr. Young experienced a sense of commonality with the female medical students she met at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Novey felt that she grew from learning about discipline from returning veterans in her class.