Today's Stanford Report has a lengthy profile of well-known psychiatrist David Spiegel, MD. The piece chronicles Spiegel's path from a young Harvard doctor who came to the West Coast for the intellectual climate ("Back then, psychiatry was a lot more progressive in California," he said of the mid-70s) and wound up becoming a renowned researcher and clinician in the field of mind-body medicine. (He now directs the Stanford Center on Stress and Health).
I especially enjoyed reading about the role Spiegel's parents - both doctors who "were trained by some of the greats in mid-20th century American psychiatry" - played in his life:
Asked what influence his parents had exerted on his career choice, Spiegel joked: "They told me I was free to become any kind of psychiatrist I wanted to be."
