Dr. Russell Monroe, 82; Authority on Brain Mechanisms

Dr. Russell R. Monroe, 82, a psychiatrist and authority on brain mechanisms, genius and criminal behavior, died Friday from complications of pneumonia at his San Francisco home.

The author of “Creative Brainstorms: The Relationship Between Madness and Genius,” Monroe examined the episodic madness of such artists and writers as Vincent Van Gogh, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf.

Monroe, who chaired the department of psychiatry at the University of Maryland from 1976 to 1985, is also the author of “Episodic Behavioral Disorders: A Psychodynamic and Neurophysiological Analysis” and “Brain Dysfunction in Aggressive Criminals.”

Monroe, a native of Des Moines, earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees from Yale, and received psychiatric and psychoanalytic training at Columbia University.

From 1945 to 1947, he served as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.

As a professor of psychiatry at Tulane University from 1950 to 1960, he helped establish a branch of the American Psychiatric Assn.