Donald L. Nathanson, MD

Donald L. Nathanson, M.D. is a Philadelphia-based psychiatrist with a lifetime interest in the nature of human emotion. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that considered grand opera a good model for the normal range of emotion, he attended Amherst College, where he studied experimental embryology (publishing his first paper in this field while an undergraduate) and the electron microscopy of the viruses that infected Salmonella bacteria, graduating with honors in 1956. A winner of the New York State Professional Scholarship competition, he attended the Medical School of the State University of New York at the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. While in medical school he did research at the Medical Electronics Laboratory of the Rockefeller Institute in New York City, working with Vladimir Zworykin, developer of television and inventor of the electron microscope, and in London, working with Professor Dame Sheila Sherlock on the hepatic metabolism of synthetic steroids and Professor Paul Wood in clinical cardiology.

A Residency in Internal Medicine at Hahnemann University Hospital with specialty training in Endocrinology drew him to Philadelphia after graduation from medical school, and he has remained in that city since. During his 1964-66 tour of duty as Staff Endocrinologist at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, he began to investigate the emotionality of the patients referred to him for endocrinologic evaluation and to act as medical consultant to that hospital's Department of Psychiatry. This fascination with the world of emotion forced him to cancel plans for an academic and clinical career in Endocrinology and take a Residency in Psychiatry at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital and Hahnemann---two programs steeped in classical psychoanalytic teaching. He was then, and remains now, astonished to find that most theories for emotion are based on an artificial split between biology and psychology. On completion of this program in 1969, he established a private practice in adult psychiatry, concentrating on the psychotherapy and training of psychotherapists.

In 1981, he began to study the way each of us is influenced by the emotions of others, work that drew him to the pioneering writing of psychologist Silvan Tomkins. Although this phenomonology is usually discussed as part of the lore and literature of empathy, and taken as the province of the most mature and sensitive among us, Dr. Nathanson demonstrated that the broadcast, reception, and interpersonal interplay of affect are normal concomitants of the physiological affect mechanisms described by Tomkins. Only as children develop an "empathic wall" that allows them to remain variably immune to the affects of the others in their milieu can people learn both to maintain their personal boundaries when among others and to open themselves to the experience of another's feelings. It was during this phase of his enquiry that he began to study the biology and psychology of the shame family of emotions, work for which he is perhaps best known. Among his more than 100 publications in the realm of emotion are the books The Many Faces of Shame (New York: Guilford; 1987) and Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self (New York: Norton; 1992, paperback 1994). He has given several hundred public presentations of this material throughout North America and Europe, teaching a new way of understanding the biology and psychology of normal emotion as well as the connections inherent among normal emotion, psychopathology, psychopharmacology, and the full range of known psychotherapeutic techniques.

Dr. Nathanson worked with Silvan Tomkins from 1981 until his death in 1991, and at the request of his son became Executive Director of the Silvan S. Tomkins Institute, which was opened officially at a memorial held September, 1991 in Philadelphia. This international organization is peopled by several hundred psychotherapists, clergy, lawyers, and scientists who share his interest in the nature of human emotion. Dr. Nathanson's work is central to several systems for the healing of communities and has led to the establishment of From Insult to Injury: A Plan to End School Violence, a program that by teaching children to identify and modulate their own emotions reduces the likelihood of violent behavior. It was in recognition of this work that President Clinton appointed him to the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence. Assisted by $530,000 in Foundation grants, he assembled a research team that worked throughout 2002 to produce the hour-long DVD Managing Shame, Preventing Violence: A Call to Our Clergy. The theoretical work underlying this video is central to the growing field of Restorative Justice and has proved useful to a broad range of psychotherapists as well as working clergy.

Currently Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College, he has been honored by election as Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Fellow of such organizations as the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, The American Orthopsychiatric Association, The Royal Society of Medicine in London, and The Folger Shakespeare Library. Together with his wife, Roz, he operates Mica Ridge Vineyard in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where they hope to build a small astronomical observatory and continue his work as a restorer of Renaissance and 17th Century Clocks. Roz has achieved distinction as a Realtor and in her work for civic organizations. Sharing many of their interests is Don's daughter, Julie, who is currently working on a master's in psychology on the way to a career as a Marriage and Family Therapist.

Additional Reading: A Conversation With Donald Nathanson.

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