George L. Engel
| George Libman Engel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 10, 1913 New York City, New York |
| Died | November 26, 1999 (aged 85) Rochester, New York |
| Residence | Rochester, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Psychiatry and Medicine |
| Institutions | University of Rochester Medical Center |
| Alma mater |
Dartmouth College Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine |
| Known for | Biopsychosocial model |
George Libman Engel (December 10, 1913 – November 26, 1999) was an American psychiatrist. He spent most of his career at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York. He is best known for his formulation of the biopsychosocial model, a general theory of illness and healing.
Engel was born in New York City in 1913. He completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College in 1934. In the same year, he entered Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland to study medicine. He received his medical degree in 1938.
After completing his medical degree, Engel began an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. There physicians such as Eli Moschowitz and Lawrence Kubie were incorporating psychosomatics into the clinical service. At the time, Engel was skeptical of psychoanalysis and psychosomatic medicine. He was committed to purely physical explanations of disease processes.
Engel began a Research Fellowship in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and also Graduate Assistant in Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women's Hospital) in 1941. He came under the supervision of physician Soma Weiss, who at this time was becoming interested in psychosomatics. At this time, he first met with psychiatrist John Romano. Romano had arrived in Boston several years before Engel. With the encouragement from Weiss, Engel and Romano collaborated on a study of delusional patients. In 1942, Romano became chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Cincinnati. Romano invited Engel to join the faculty at Cincinnati and Engel accepted the invitation. At this point Engel "converted" to the psychosomatic school.
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