Academic Psychiatry 22:213-222, December 1998
© 1998 Academic Psychiatry
Nature, Niche, and Nurture
The Role of Social Experience in Transforming Genotype Into Phenotype
Leon Eisenberg, M.D.
Dr. Eisenberg is the Presley Professor of Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Address reprint requests to Dr. Eisenberg, Harvard Medical School, 641 Huntington Avenue, 2nd Floor, Boston, MA 02115–6019.
Nature and nurture stand in reciprocity, not opposition. Offspring inherit, along with their parents' genes, their parents, their peers, and the places they inhabit. The ontogenetic niche is a crucial link between parents and offspring, an envelope of life chances. Development is at one and the same time a social and a psychological and a biological process. If we psychiatrists allow ourselves to become mere pill pushers—or psychotherapists who fit all patients into one Procrustean bed—each as the exclusive road to mental health, we will have abandoned the duty we owe our patients and our integrity as physicians.
Key Words: Nature vs. Nuture • Psychiatry • Biology vs. Psychology
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