Donald Brown

I consider myself a lucky guy to be this happy at this stage of my life. I lucked out with my choices of both a profession and a life partner that continue to be a source of continuing growth and deep gratification. But both have involved what has to be called hard work. I have been with Susan (a psychologist) for 36 years (30 of them married). We have two wonderful daughters, 26 and 29. We look back on our time together as having been several different marriages as each of us has developed and improved our capacities for companionship and love. Medical school was an intense and stressful time, although I did quite well. My “military” service from 1966 to ’68 was as a Peace Corps physician in Central America (as an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service). There I discovered that 80% of the medicine I liked to practice was more about people’s anxieties. This led me to psychiatry. My career has been a mix of academics and teaching (I’m an associate professor in theabout people’s anxieties. This led me to psychiatry. My career has been a mix of academics and teaching (I’m an associate professor in the Columbia Medical School), a devotion to community services and practicing psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. I founded and directed a community mental health program in the South Bronx for many years…a familiar environment after enjoying my time in Latin America so much. My psychotherapy specialization is working with couples and families. Over the years, my therapy practice has impacted my marriage in positive ways, while being in a successful marriage improves what I have to offer my patients. Another factor in my becoming a family-oriented psychiatrist is that, in retrospect, growing up in my family in Mount Vernon was not so easy. Unlike the life paths on which my daughters have started out, my mother was unhappily confined to having to be a good housewife in the suburbs. The women’s movement came too late to support an alternative path for her and my father. Since my dad at almost age 99 has just begun to fail, I have this uncanny sense that I easily have another 30 years to enjoy. 75th reunion anyone?