Joseph Matarazzo, PhD, emeritus professor, Behavioral Neuroscience, retired in June 2007, after 50 years of full time service – the first School of Medicine faculty member to achieve that milestone.  He recently spent some time answering questions about the history of psychology and his time in the School of Medicine.

Q:  What brought you and your wife, Ruth Matarazzo, PhD, to Oregon?

A:  We were offered joint appointments in the School of Medicine by then-Dean David Baird in 1957. Ruth received her offer first, as Assistant Professor of the newly-created Department of Medical Psychology.  Forty-eight hours later Dean Baird offered me the position of Professor and Chairman – a post I occupied until 1996.

Q: What were your impressions of the campus when you first arrived from Harvard?

A. When we first joined the School, I think there were 56 full time faculty and approximately 600 volunteer faculty.  The School was far less widely known outside the northwest than it is today.  However, I believe that Dean Baird’s investment in the faculty, ongoing since his appointment in 1943, was even then creating the foundation for the significant progress and advances we have seen over the past fifty years.

Q:  Why was the Department of Medical Psychology created?

A:  Dean Baird practiced in Internal Medicine, and he came to believe that many of his patients’ problems stemmed from psychological issues, with physical problems often secondary. This convinced him that medical students needed expertise in this area.

Q:  What was the involvement of the government in institutionalizing the department and the discipline?

A:  Many of the 13 million men and women returning from service during World War II required psychological counseling services. The Veterans Administration and the National Institute of Mental Health together began to fund training programs in graduate schools and medical schools to deliver the needed expertise to meet these demands.  This funding enabled us , in 1959, to establish a residency program in medical psychology.

Q:  How did this post-World War II influence change psychology?

A:  In 1950, psychologists in the United States were primarily teaching in the colleges of arts and science. Mostly animals, rather than humans, were the focus of behavioral study, with the hope of extrapolating this to humans. The post-war VA/NIMH funding directed at providing services for returning military personnel shifted the university psychologists’ focus from animal-based research back to clinical interactions with human subjects.  During the next five decades, psychologists offered a variety of psychological services to patients suffering from a wide list of psychological and medical diagnoses, including cancer and heart disease.  This progressive expansion into other areas of medicine led in 1978 to the development of a new specialty called Health Psychology.-   the study of the psychological factors in healthy people that are associated with disease and illness, and their prevention. 

Q:  What has been your most meaningful contribution to psychology?

A:  From the early Greeks the role of physician, psychologist and priest were intertwined.  With the spectacular advances in science in both disciplines beginning a century ago, modern medicine and psychology followed different paths.  I think I played a very small role in helping to re-join psychology to medicine.   I also feel that we have done a good job of educating patients and their physicians to recognize patients’ psychological issues in health and illness..

Q:  What do you see as the future direction of psychology?

A:  The recent advances in genetics and molecular science have enabled us to investigate the genetics of behavior more closely.  Are certain behaviors associated with or linked to specific genetic markers?  This is certainly an exciting field, and I feel it is important that we not lose sight of the patient as we embrace these exciting new technologies.

Dr. Ruth Matarazzo and Dr. Joseph Matarazzo were each honored with the Presidential Citation of the American Psychological Association at the Association's 2007 Annual Convention, held in San Francisco.  Click here for further details onthis award.