L. Eisenberg, NATURE, NICHE, AND NURTURE - THE ROLE OF SOCIAL EXPERIENCE IN TRANSFORMING GENOTYPE INTO PHENOTYPE, Academic psychiatry, 22(4), 1998, pp. 213-222
Nature and nurture stand in reciprocity, not opposition. Offspring inh
erit, along with their parents' genes, their parents, their peers, and
the places they inhabit. The ontogenetic niche is a crucial link betw
een parents and offspring, an envelope of life chances. Development is
at one and the same time a social and a psychological and a biologica
l process. If we psychiatrists allow ourselves to become mere pill pus
hers-or psychotherapists who fit all patients into one Procrustean bed
-each as the exclusive road to mental health, we will have abandoned t
he duty we owe our patients and our integrity as physicians.