Paul R. Mc Hugh - Education

Education

McHugh was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of a Lowell High School teacher and a homemaker, He graduated from Harvard College in 1952 and from Harvard Medical School in 1956. While at Harvard he was "introduced to and ultimately directed away from the Freudian school of psychiatry."

Following medical school, McHugh's education was influenced by George Thorn, the Physician-in-Chief at the Harvard-affiliated Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women's Hospital). Thorn was disillusioned with Freudian psychiatry and felt that those who devoted themselves to it became single-minded, failing to grow as doctors. Thorn encouraged McHugh to develop a different career path, suggesting that he enter the field of psychiatry by first studying neurology. At Thorn's recommendation, McHugh was accepted into the neurology and neuropathology residency program at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he studied for three years under Dr. Raymond Adams, the chief of the Neurology Department.

From Massachusetts General, McHugh went to the Institute of Psychiatry in London (where he studied under Sir Aubrey Lewis and was supervised by James Gibbons and Gerald Russell). Following his year in London, McHugh went to the Division of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.