George Joseph Mohr—1896-1965

Dr. George Joseph Mohr died of a heart attack in New York City, March 6, 1965, at the age of sixty-nine. He started his professional career as a pediatrician, but becoming chiefly concerned with the emotional welfare of children he changed to psychiatry. He received his psychoanalytic training in Berlin, then settled in Chicago, becoming Clinical Director of the Institute for Juvenile Research. Between 1928 and 1931 he was Director of the Child Guidance Center of Pittsburgh, teaching there at the University; he published books on premature children, goiters in children, and many other papers relating to physical and emotional illnesses in children. In 1934 Dr. Mohr returned to Chicago and then, after a year in Israel, moved to Los Angeles in 1937.

He was invited by Dr. Franz Alexander and by the Board of Mount Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills to become Director of Child Psychiatry and to develop a program of research in psychosomatic disturbances in children. A modern therapeutic nursery school was established at his incentive. With Marion Dupres he published Stormy Decade, and collaborated with others in papers on psychogenic factors of asthma in children. He was a gifted therapist. He stressed the importance of transactions within the families of these young patients. In this sense, his teaching was advanced; and always he emphasized psychoanalytic, psychodynamic concepts.

Among George Mohr's appealing qualities were his empathy and his tenderness toward people and his dedication to responsibility,—to his family, his patients, and his students. When he became ill several years ago, his concern was greater for the welfare of others than for his own health. He was a man of rather small physical stature, yet he carried himself with an air of nobility and dignity. He appreciated the arts, especially music, and was an accomplished violinist. He enjoyed good literature and the theater. Although members of our specialty are not always kind and laudatory of eac