# Thomas Detre > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Thomas_Detre > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Thomas_Detre.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Detre > Source revision: 1300577636 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) {{fan POV|date=November 2013}} '''Thomas P. Detre, M.D.''' (17 May 1924 – 9 October 2010) was a psychiatrist, academic, and senior administrator at the [University of Pittsburgh](/source/University_of_Pittsburgh), eulogized as the "visionary" leader most responsible for the transformation the university's teaching hospitals into the currently construed [University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)](/source/University_of_Pittsburgh_Medical_Center) and elevating the stature of the university's six schools of health sciences through increased emphasis on research.Fuoco, Michael A. and Chute, Eleanor. [http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/obituaries/obituary-thomas-p-detre-visionary-who-took-upmc-to-top-dies-267723/ Obituary: Thomas P. Detre / Visionary who took UPMC to top dies], ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', 10 October 2010, accessed 6 June 2013.[http://www.upmc.com/media/newsreleases/2010/pages/thomas-p-detre-md-academic-leader-architect-upmc-dies-86.aspx Thomas P. Detre, M.D., Academic Leader and Architect of UPMC, Dies at 86], UPMC, 9 October 2010, accessed 6 June 2013.Tabachnick, Toby. [http://www.thejewishchronicle.net/view/full_story/9910656/article-Thomas-Detre-built-his-career-on-the-ashes-of-tragedy Thomas Detre built his career on the ashes of tragedy], ''The Jewish Chronicle'', 2010 obituary, accessed 6 June 2013.Kupfer, David J. [http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v36/n13/full/npp2011110a.html Thomas P Detre, obituary], ''Neuropsychopharmacology'', (2011) 36, 2783; doi:10.1038/npp.2011.110, accessed 6 June 2013.Kupfer, David J. [http://www.acnp.org/asset.axd?id=9113284c-7d57-4105-8d31-f4b431d3b06b Obituary, Thomas P. Detre], ACNP, October 2010, accessed 6 June 2013.[https://web.archive.org/web/20101221000237/http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/detre_dies.html Thomas P. Detre, MD, Academic Leader and Former NLM Board of Regents Chair Dies], U.S. National Library of Medicine, 19 October 2010, accessed 7 June 2013. ==Early life== Born "Tamás Feldmeier" to a [Hungarian-Jewish](/source/History_of_the_Jews_in_Hungary) family in [Budapest](/source/Budapest%2C_Hungary), he decided at the age of 14 to become a [psychiatrist](/source/psychiatrist), and avidly read the works of [Sigmund Freud](/source/Sigmund_Freud) and other medical authors as an adolescent. In 1942, he earned his bachelor's degree in [classical languages](/source/classical_languages) from the [Gymnasium of the Piarist Fathers](/source/Piarists) in [Kecskemét](/source/Kecskem%C3%A9t), where his father was a widely respected physician. 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. Taking some family jewelry to sell, Tamás fled on his own to Budapest before the Germans arrived in March 1944; after living hand-to-mouth for many months and narrowly avoiding [deportation](/source/deportation) himself, he would discover as a 20-year-old student that his parents and twenty members of his extended family (virtually everyone to whom he was related) had been murdered in [Auschwitz](/source/Auschwitz_concentration_camp). The following year, Tamás formally changed his surname to [Detre](/source/Detre_(disambiguation)), a name variably pronounced as ''DEBT-tree'', ''DEE-tree'', or ''de-TRAY'' by people who later worked with and knew him. (Although some of Detre's friends believed the name was inspired by the [French](/source/French_language) verb ''[être](/source/%C3%AAtre)'', "to be", and several obituaries reported this as fact,Brignano, Mary. ''Beyond the Bounds: A History of UPMC'', Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing, 2009, p. 20: "The Russian 'liberation' of Hungary in 1945 enabled Detre to attend medical school at the Pázmány Péter University of Science in Budapest. Like many people who had lived through the Holocaust, he changed his German sounding name. Those close to him suggested that he chose Detre because in French, ''être'' means 'to be', and ''d'être'' is 'for being'." Detre himself never explained his name's origins.) While completing his medical studies in [Rome](/source/Rome) in the early 1950s, Detre counseled a small [American](/source/United_States_of_America) [expatriate](/source/expatriate) clientele which included the writer [Claude Fredericks](/source/Claude_Fredericks) and his 25-year-old friend, the [poet](/source/poet) [James Merrill](/source/James_Merrill), who sought Detre's help for [writer's block](/source/writer's_block). In his 1993 memoir, ''A Different Person'', Merrill wrote of the lifelong recurring dividend from his early, formal, and painstaking [psychoanalysis](/source/psychoanalysis) in Rome with "Dr. Detre", with whom he kept daily appointments throughout 1951-1952 (with Detre saying little or nothing in most sessions).Merrill, James. ''A Different Person: A Memoir''. New York: Knopf, 1993. Chapter XXI describes Detre's move to New York in January 1953. After Detre obtained a U.S. visa in 1953, the poet and physician would reunite in New York and see their friendship expand to include Detre's wife Katherine (herself a renowned [epidemiologist](/source/epidemiologist)).Srikameswaran, Anita. [http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/obituaries/obituary-dr-katherine-detre-renowned-epidemiologist-taught-at-pitt-418873/ Obituary: Dr. Katherine Detre / Renowned epidemiologist taught at Pitt], ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', 26 January 2006, retrieved 17 June 2013. The couple moved to [Connecticut](/source/Connecticut) in 1957 after Detre was hired by [Yale University](/source/Yale_University), and successfully transplanted their loyalties to [Pittsburgh](/source/Pittsburgh%2C_Pennsylvania) in 1973 (a city in which Merrill was hospitalized several times in 1993-1994 for [AIDS](/source/AIDS) complications, his spirits lifted by Detre's promise: "Katherine and I will see you through"[McClatchy, J.D.](/source/J._D._McClatchy) ''Two Deaths, Two Lives'', a chapter in ''Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS'', [Edmund White](/source/Edmund_White), editor. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001, p. 228: asked by Merrill to "cover" for various missed engagements due to his worsening health, McClatchy began keeping a diary of Merrill's medical circumstances. On 4 October 1993, McClatchy wrote "[... w]hen it comes to hospitals he said he'd take himself off to the one in Pittsburgh. He has a doctor there. And he distrusts NYC hospitals. Another reason, he said, is that his old psychiatrist Tom Detre told him that 'Katherine and I will see you through.' He wonders if—and hopes?—this means Detre would give him pills to end it if the situation deteriorates badly." Merrill ultimately died of a heart attack on 6 February 1995 while hospitalized for pancreatitis in Arizona, where he had been on vacation.). ==Career== Between 1957 and 1973, Detre established at [Yale School of Medicine](/source/Yale_School_of_Medicine) a new model of psychiatric care which dramatically reduced hospitalization lengths, and which in its broadly integrative approach ultimately brought psychiatry much closer to other domains of medicine. With co-author [Henry Jarecki](/source/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](/source/psychopharmacology) of the era. The book was published by J. B. Lippincott in 1971.Detre, Thomas and Jarecki, Henry. [https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Psychiatric-Treatment-Thomas-Detre/dp/B0006CAIR2 Modern Psychiatric Treatment], New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1971. In 1973, Detre gave up [tenure](/source/Tenure_(academic)) at Yale to lead the [Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic](/source/University_of_Pittsburgh_Medical_Center) and become Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. (Although a Yale colleague warned him that "planes fly over Pittsburgh, they do not land there," Detre drolly and presciently suggested that "they will land when we land.") In time, Detre attracted more than 30 Yale faculty to Pittsburgh, where he developed a reputation for political skill, compassion, persistence, and diplomatic charm, virtues which helped lead the [University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine](/source/University_of_Pittsburgh_School_of_Medicine) to higher achievements in research, teaching, and patient treatment. Named [Vice Chancellor](/source/Chancellor_(education)) 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. Following Katherine Detre's death in January 2006 (after 49 years of marriage), Detre courted and married Ellen Ormond. In addition, Detre was survived by two adult sons and four grandchildren. ==Books== * Clinical Psychiatry: Psychotherapy Topics Volume 1; Thomas P. Detre, Saeed Shamloo, Hamideh Jahangiri; ISBN 978-613-8-93032-7 (Scholars' Press){{cite book | last1 = Detre| first1 = Thomas P.| last2 = Shamloo| first2 = Saeed| last3 = Jahangiri| first3 = Hamideh| title = Depression Volume 1| year = 2020| publisher = Scholar's Press| location = Latvia, European Union| isbn = 978-613-8-94364-8 }} * Clinical Psychiatry: Psychotherapy Topics Volume 2; Thomas P. Detre, Saeed Shamloo, Hamideh Jahangiri; ISBN 978-613-8-93041-9 (Scholars' Press) * Handbook of Psychiatry (30 Volumes) Volume 23; Javad Nurbakhsh, Thomas P. Detre, Hamideh Jahangiri; ISBN 978-613-9-81879-2 (Lap Lambert Academic Publishing){{cite book | last1 = Detre| first1 = Thomas P.| last2 = Nurbakhsh| first2 = Javad| last3 = Jahangiri| first3 = Hamideh| title =Handbook of Psychiatry (30 Volumes) Volume 23| year = 2020| publisher =Lap Lambert Academic Publishing| isbn = 978-613-8-94364-8 }} ==References== {{reflist}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Detre, Thomas}} Category:1924 births Category:2010 deaths Category:Hungarian Holocaust survivors Category:Hungarian emigrants to the United States Category:American psychiatrists Category:Academics from Pittsburgh Category:Health professionals from Pittsburgh Category:University of Pittsburgh faculty Category:Hungarian expatriates in Italy Category:Members of the National Academy of Medicine --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Thomas Detre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Detre) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Detre?action=history)). 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