Sanford Gifford

Sanford Gifford

Dr. Sanford Gifford was born in 1918 in Omaha, Nebraska, and grew up in Chicago, attended Harvard College and graduated from Northwestern Medical School in 1942. He interned and became an acting psychiatric resident at University of California Hospital, San Francisco. This enabled him to qualify as a psychiatrist during his three years of military service in the southwest Pacific and the Philippines. He and his wife Ingrid settled in Boston after the war and they both graduated from the BPSI in 1954. After a VA Traineeship in psychiatry, he joined the psychiatric unit at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he was engaged in psychosomatic research, teaching and general hospital psychiatry until 1994. He continues to teach at Harvard Medical School and work part-time at the West Roxbury VA Hospital. He has published widely, taught seminars at BPSI and served as librarian for several years. Dr. Gifford is currently BPSI's Director of Archives, and Chair the History and Archives Committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association.