Leon Salzman, M.D., has what one might call a culinary talent. He started working at age 9 as a short-order cook to support himself and his nine siblings. And now, 76 years later, he’s still cooking up a storm. "I’m known as a Chinese chef!," he announces proudly. His brown eyes twinkle under bushy white eyebrows.

Indeed, since 1924, when he worked as a short-order cook, the 85-year-old psychiatrist has packed in a lot of living and adventures. He went to medical school in Scotland, was stuck in England in 1939 when World War II broke out, and got his psychiatric and psychoanalysis training while working at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. He opened a private psychiatric practice and joined the Georgetown University Medical School faculty.

In 1953 he married a divorcee with two daughters, and they had two daughters together as well. His wife died five years ago, which was tough, he admits, but he has managed since then to carry on as a bachelor. Besides cooking and maintaining a minimal psychiatric practice, he is also doing a lot of traveling. In July he and one of his daughters took a barge trip down the Rhone River in France. "Wonderful!" he recalls from his light and friendly office at Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.

And the best may be still to come, he contends. He has just booked a trip to the Seychelles, a group of islands off the east coast of Africa. He’ll be doing this trip with another daughter.

Salzman doesn’t seem all that different from other older psychiatrists around the United States these days. Even with the loss, in certain cases, of beloved mentors, colleagues, or spouses, or with the loss, in other cases, of personal health, they seem, on the whole, to be a doughty band, doing all sorts of fascinating things.

Many are still working—part time or even full time. Said Arnold Pfeffer, M.D., an 85-year-old New York City psychiatrist: "I could retire, I’ve thought of retiring, my wife is a psychologist, she practices, but we’ve decided we’re not going to retire, we’re having too good a time!"

"You know, this is very common stuff for guys in my field," said Marvin Margolis, M.D., of Franklin, Mich., who, at 73, is still working full time. "A lot of people continue to work, maybe a half, and I am part of that half."

Added 70-year-old Captane Thomson, M.D., of Davis, Calif., and president of the APA Lifers (Life Members and Fellows), "You know, the surprising thing to me is the number of us who are active professionally, still practicing psychiatry at a great rate. I tell people I have retired twice, I only see the occasional patient. Yet it turns out I saw 14 patients yesterday." And the reasons psychiatrists contiune to practice after the traditional retirement age are diverse—Americans are living longer, laws no longer discourage older Americans from working, and the nature of psychiatry is such that one can practice it into one’s old age. As one senior psychiatrist put it: "Psychiatry doesn’t require any heavy lifting."

Psychiatry, however, does require a flexing of those brain muscles, and senior psychiatrists are flexing theirs for a variety of purposes. For instance, the aging of the American population and the fear of many middle-aged persons that they are getting Alzheimer’s prompted Maurice Rappaport, M.D., a 74-year-old psychiatrist in San Jose, Calif., and member of APA’s Board of Trustees, to make a novel investment for his private practice—a computer software program developed at Harvard. It is called "MicroCOG," and it allows patients to learn whether they are moving toward Alzheimer’s disease or not. It has some 18 different psychological tests that a patient can take by himself. The doctor then looks at the results and advises the patient whether he or she is indeed advancing toward Alzheimer’s.

As Rappaport explained it, the program is good for patients "who come in and are worried about losing their memory."

Thomson, on the other hand, is "now seeing everybody’s mother and father." The reason, he explained, "is that I’m in the older age group myself, and I’m getting referrals for lots of geriatric patients. I go into nursing homes to see them, and I have seen people who are at the cusp where families are trying to decide what to do about them. So in addition to regular psychiatric practice, I’m doing a lot of geriatrics."

Pfeffer, in contrast, is busy bringing a sometimes odd couple—psychoanalysis and neuroscience—together. It all started a decade ago when Pfeffer invited some neuroscientists to visit him and fellow analysts at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Pfeffer found what the neuroscientists had to say interesting, but thought that the analysts could also make some valuable observations about the data presented.

Pfeffer and his colleagues at the institute then started inviting neuroscientists once a month to exchange ideas with them. As the regular interchange caught on, young turks from each specialty became interested in it. And as the idea got even hotter, Pfeffer and his team started training neuroscientists in analysis and even launched a journal called Neuropsychoanalysis.

The appeal of neuropsychoanalysis has even leapfrogged from New York City to Philadelphia and Chicago and over the Atlantic Ocean to Frankfurt, Berlin, and Vienna. "What we hope to do," Pfeffer explained, "is combine the two disciplines in one, because they belong together. Frankly and quietly I’ll tell you what’s happening—it has given a lift to psychoanalysis, which has not been as popular as it was years ago."

Still other senior psychiatrists are using their brain power for research. Although Irvin Cohen, M.D., of Houston retired professionally in 1996 at age 73, he has since become involved in researching the emotional reactions of physicians to retirement.

In addition to treating a broad spectrum of patients and holding a medical position at Weill Cornell Medical College/New York Presbyterian Hospital, 74-year-old Barbara O’Connell, M.D., of Rye, N.Y., collaborated with her physician husband George Halpern, M.D., on a neurophysiological theory. It was published this year in the International Journal of Neuroscience.

Still other senior psychiatry practices are even more unique. Seventy-year-old Fred Hilkert, M.D., has lived and worked out of the same pleasant Washington, D.C., home half his life. When a prospective patient approaches the lower level of the home, where Hilkert has his practice, he or she is in for several surprises.

First, Hilkert is something of a gentle giant—six-foot plus, relaxed, gracious, and soft-spoken. Second, his office is truly an original, lovingly created by Hilkert himself. There is a shrine to Sigmund Freud in one corner, a Buddhist urn in another, an Eskimo witch-doctor mask on one wall, and a 19th century "swooning" couch for a patient to recline on while being analyzed. As the patient reclines he or she can also look through a window and watch birds feeding at a feeder. "I consider birdseed a business expense!" says Hilkert with a smile.

But do senior psychiatrists have hobbies? Absolutely! During the summer, O’Connell and her husband sail. Both swim and have a YMCA membership. O’Connell also enjoys gardening, photography, bridge, chess, needlepoint, and horseshoe pitching.

Do their lives resonate with trying new things? You bet. Seventy-three-year-old Frederic Flach, M.D., spends part of his life in Manhattan, where he has a limited practice, and part of it on Cape Cod, Mass., where he and his wife own a house built back in 1815. "We sort of bum around up there," Flach said, "and do different things, and I’ve become very handy. I was never handy before, but now I saw off limbs of trees and repair broken railings."

More surprising, however, in view of the antipathy that the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, expressed toward religion, is the role that religion plays in the lives of some senior psychiatrists. Hilkert has long been interested in the interface between psychoanalysis and religion, he said. For a few years Salzman was a psychiatric consultant to the Catholic Church on the subject of marriage annulment. Said Salzman: "I was what they called their ‘Second Coming’—the Jew boy who came and helped solve some problems." In fact, Salzman was at several important conferences at the Vatican. Flach writes books for the public about themes having to do with religion and psychiatry. His latest, Faith, Healing, and Miracles, has just been published by Hatherleigh Press.

No, when American psychiatrists reach "a certain age," as the French would say, they aren’t about to hang up their shingles and retire to a rocking chair. Or as Raphael Good, M.D., of Miami, who retired from private practice three years ago, at age 76, put it: "I don’t know how the days disappear! It’s interesting, if you talk with people who are about to retire or who are thinking of retiring, they wonder what you do all day. Well, what you do all day is, you get up a little later, you read the paper more leisurely, and you find before you know it that it’s time for dinner. That is the truly amazing part of the story."

O’Connell seconded that: "Life is never dull, but full of wonderful challenges!"