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, inventor of both
television and 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 50 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 more than 150 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. The Tomkins Institute operates an international network of study groups offering continuing education credit for a wide range of psychotherapists, including psychologists and psychiatrists. A National Meeting is held under his direction in October of each year in Philadelphia. In 1994, Dr. Nathanson founded the quarterly Bulletin of the Tomkins Institute, of which he is Editor-in-Chief. In addition to his duties for the Tomkins Institute and a full-time private practice, he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College and Senior Attending Psychiatrist at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital. His honors include election to Fellowship in numerous professional societies, including the American Psychiatric Association, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, The American Orthopsychiatric Association, The Royal Society of Medicine in London, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. With his wife, Roz, he operates Mica Ridge Vineyard in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where he is now building a small astronomical observatory. His hobbies include the restoration of Renaissance and 17th Century clocks.
Those interested in learning more about the work of the Tomkins Institute may request information from:
The Silvan S. Tomkins Institute
255 South 17th Street (Suite 2403)
Philadelphia, PA 19103-6224.
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