Nature and nurture stand in reciprocity, not opposition. Offspring inherit, along with their parents' genes, their parents, their peers, and the places they inhabit. The ontogenetic niche is a crucial link between parents and offspring, an envelope of life chances. Development is at one and the same time a social and a psychological and a biological process. If we psychiatrists allow ourselves to become mere pill pushers — or psychotherapists who fit all patients into one Procrustean bed — each as the exclusive road to mental health, we will have abandoned the duty we owe our patients and our integrity as physicians.
