George Lane Taneyhill, Jr. M.D.

With the death of Dr. George Lane Taneyhill, Jr. on August 29, 1954, the American Psychoanalytic Association lost one of its founding fathers. His interest in psychoanalysis having been aroused as early as 1909, Dr. Taneyhill was a charter member of the Association. Thereafter, throughout his long and distinguished career as neurologist and psychiatrist, he not only practiced psychoanalysis privately but used every opportunity to present its theory to medical students and colleagues.

The son of George Lane Taneyhill, a beloved physician in Baltimore, George Lane Jr. was born in 1880, received the A.B. degree in 1900 and the M.D. in 1904 at Johns Hopkins University. He was Assistant in Medicine and Pediatrics 1905 to 1909, Instructor in Neurology 1909 to 1914, Instructor in Clinical Neurology 1914 to 1918, Associate in Clinical Neurology 1918 to 1932, Associate in Neurology 1932 to 1935 at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School. During World War II he was Director of the Neuro-Psychiatric Division of the Army Induction Board.

In addition to being a charter member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, of which he was President from 1920 to 1922, he was a charter member of the first Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Society, founded in 1914, and of the two societies that succeeded this one, after its dissolution during the first World War. His influence on all those in the Washington-Baltimore area who came in contact with him could hardly be guessed from the bare outline of his activities, for he never sought office. For many years the sole representative of analytic theory at Johns Hopkins, he awakened interest in the new subject in many who now practice it. In 1925-26 he gave an elective course in Psychoanalysis which resulted in bringing students who had not thought of psychiatry as their field to devote their lives to the study and practice of analysis. It is said that he was the first in America to use the couch in giving treatment.