Dr. Myron Stocking, a Minneapolis pediatric psychiatrist who believed that talk therapy had been wrongly shunted aside in recent years, trained many medical residents at the University of Minnesota.

Stocking, who opened a private practice in Minneapolis in 1977, died of a stroke at his Minneapolis home on Oct. 3. He was 77.

After graduating from Harvard University in 1951, and in 1955 from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, he served in the Navy as a psychiatrist in Oakland, Calif.

He headed the Child Psychiatry Department at Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston and at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

Family members say he was drawn to the Twin Cities in 1977 to start a private practice because he also was hired to serve as a clinical professor for the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

"He had a wonderful capacity to sense complexities and deal with them," said Dr. Tom Mackenzie, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota and the training director for the medical school's residents in psychiatry.

And he was outspoken, if practitioners "were not living up to their professional obligations, or practiced what didn't make sense," said Mackenzie.

He recalled a patient 20 years ago who others believed should have electroconvulsive therapy, also known as electroshock therapy. Stocking made it clear to others that he believed it was wrong in this case, said Mackenzie.

"He had a sense that you needed to have strong principles," he said. "Things needed to be said, and that took a great amount of professional integrity."

Stocking was critical about what he believed to be the overuse of medications in psychiatric treatment, said his son Nick of Minneapolis.

"He was very concerned about the current trend of using drug therapy exclusively for individuals suffering from mental-health issues," said his son.

His family and friends depended upon him for his counsel, said his former wife, Ingrid, of Minneapolis.

His son said he was always available to help family, and was naturally "empathetic and thoughtful."

"He was never judgmental and gave us unconditional, positive reinforcement," he said.

Stocking was the author of many medical-journal articles on early childhood development, and was a training analyst for the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Society.

He retired in 1995. He was an avid tennis player and jogger. Active in DFL politics, he was a volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign.

In addition to Ingrid and Nick, he is survived by two other sons, Ben of Hanoi, Vietnam, and Tim, who is serving in the Minnesota Army National Guard in Iraq; a brother, George of Chicago; two sisters, Sybil Winterburn and Cindi Peck, both of Aurora, Colo., and two grandchildren.

Services will be held at 1 p.m. today at the Cremation Society of Minnesota, 4343 Nicollet Av. S., Minneapolis.