Education

After winning the E.J. Pratt Prize for Poetry at age 19, Doidge won early recognition from the literary critic Northrop Frye, who wrote that his work was “really remarkable… haunting and memorable.” At the University of Toronto, he studied classics and philosophy, and graduated with high distinction, then earned his medical degree. In New York, he simultaneously completed psychiatric and psychoanalytic training at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, followed by two years as a Columbia-National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellow, studying research techniques, and another year as a Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry at Columbia.

Early writing accomplishments

In 1994, Doidge won The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Saturday Night Literary Award, the most important award for an unpublished work in Canada, for his personal memoir, “The Suit.” He became editor-in-chief of Books in Canada—The Canadian Review of Books from 1995 to 1998 and, from 1998 to 2001, a  columnist, writing “On Human Nature” in the National Post. His series of literary portraits of exceptional people at moments of transformation appeared in Saturday Night magazine and won four Canadian National Magazine Gold Awards, including the National Magazine Award President’s Medal, for the best article published in Canada in the year 2000. That account of his intimate conversation with the Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, called “Love, Friendship and the Art of Dying,” was “brilliantly sustained from beginning to end,” said the judges, who continued, “This multi-leveled piece about writing, friendship, life and death opens a door into the complex lives of two extraordinary literary figures.”

It was out of these kinds of portraits—and Doidge’s conviction that neuroplasticity represents the single most important change in our understanding of the human brain in hundreds of years, with immense consequences for our understanding of human nature, human and therapeutic possibilities, and human culture— that The Brain That Changes Itself emerged.

Clinical, teaching and research experience

Dr. Doidge  served as Head of the Psychotherapy Centre and the Assessment Clinic at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, and also taught in the departments of Philosophy, Political Science, Law and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Along with his work on neuroplasticity and the brain he  has published and taught on trauma, problems in love, eating disorders, learning disorders, psychiatric diagnoses and the efficacy of intensive psychotherapies, and is the author of chapters on research based standards and guidelines for the practice of intensive psychotherapy that have been used in Canada. He was on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and a peer reviewer for The Harvard Review of Psychiatry,

In 1993 he presented his early research at the White House in Washington, D.C., and is credited with helping preserve these treatments as part of the Canadian and Australian health care systems.

He has done volunteer work in Ethiopia, teaching psychiatry and lecturing  at Addis Ababa, University, Department of Psychiatry.

Clinical and scientific awards and science book awards

1988,  U.S. National Psychiatric Endowment Award in Psychiatry

1998, election to Membership of the American College of Psychoanalysts  for he “many outstanding achievements in psychiatry and psychoanalysis.”

1998, American Psychoanalytic Association’s CORST Prize in Psychoanalysis and Culture

1999, Canadian Psychoanalytic Association’s M. Prados Prize.

2007, The Brain that Changes Itself won best book of the year awards from The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, National Post,  Slate, Amazon.com (Top Ten Science Category) Amazon.ca (Best Books of the Year Category) among others. It was a Scientific American Main selection.

2008,  Mary S. Sigourney Prize, the highest award in international psychoanalysis

2008, The Brain that Changes Itself wins The National Association of Mental Illness Ken Book Award, “for an “outstanding literary work contributing to better understanding of mental illness as a neurobiological disease.”

2010, U.S. Dana Brain Foundation’s journal Cerebrum editors and readers chose The Brain that Changes Itself from among 30,000 books written on the brain, as “the best general book on the brain.”

2015, The Brain’s Way of Healing won the Gold Nautilus Award in Science

2015  Recipient of the Special Recognition Award from Brain Injury Canada for his “extraordinary, heroic contribution to advance the cause of acquired brain injury in Canada.”

2015, Chosen by Business Insider one of 50 Groundbreaking Scientists Changing the Way We See the World

2016, The Brain That Changes Itself chosen as one of the 25 most influential books in Canada in the last 25 years, by the Literary Review of Canada.

2017, Sudbury Medal for Leadership in Mental Health, and the Dan Andrea Distinguished Presidential Lecturer, Laurentian University

Scientific and popular writing

Norman Doidge has been described by The Globe and Mail, as “a master at explaining science to the rest of us.” He has written over 170 articles, both scientific and popular. His writing has appeared in scientific journals such as the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, International Journal of Eating Disorders, Comprehensive Psychiatry. His almost thirty years of science and literary journalism has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Arts & Letters Daily, U.S. News and World Report,  the back-page essay for Time Magazine, Reader’s Digest, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, L’Unita, Hungarian Review, UPI, Saturday Night, National Post, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Books in Canada, Gravitas, The Medical Post, The Melbourne Age, The Australian, Australian Financial Review and Tablet Magazine (where he is a contributing writer. His work has frequently been anthologized in college texts as examples of how to write well.

Writing about Dr. Doidge

He and his work have been profiled and cited in, among others, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, Scientific American Mind, Melbourne Age, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Der Spiegel,  Psychology Today, O The Oprah Magazine,  Association for Advancement of Retired People, Rotman School of Management: The Magazine, Vogue, Ability Magazine,  Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and the National Post among others.

Television radio and film

The PBS special, The Brain Fitness Program, which featured him, and his book, became the most successful TV fundraising drive in PBS’s history, and was aired over 10,000 times. He has been a guest to discuss the brain and human nature on BBC World News TV, BBC TV, PBS, CBS, CNN, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, SBS, CBC, CTV, Global, and TVO, which has devoted four television shows to his  work: The Agenda with Steve Paiken, Allen Gregg in Conversation, and Big Ideas, and another Agenda on The Brain’s Way of Healing.  He has appeared on hundreds of radio programs including NPR, BBC Radio, CBC, ABC, and Public Radio International. A film of The Brain That Changes Itself, co-written by Norman Doidge and Mike Sheerin, appeared on Canada’s most watched science program, The Nature of Things With David Suzuki, and in Europe and Australia. The former film won the 2009 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival Jury Award, the second highest award for a film at the festival, and was nominated for the the Best Science/Medical Documentary at the Yorktown Sheaf Film Festival. It was followed by a second film, “Changing Your Mind.” He has twice hosted “Mysteries of the Mind” 25 hours of television on the brain, for TVO Ontario.
(link: http://about.tvo.org/blog/news-releases-and-announcements/mysteries-mind-week-returns-tvo-january-20-25)

The documentary film of The Brain’s Way of Healing the third film on his work premiered in Canada on the CBC’s Nature of Things, October 27, at 8:00 pm: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/the-brains-way-of-healing

Public Speaking

Dr. Doidge is a frequent keynote lecturer in North America, Europe and Australia. He has lectured at major universities including conferences sponsored by Harvard, MIT, Yale, and in Princeton, New Jersey. He has presented his research at the United Nations, the White House, Washington D.C., London School of Economics, Royal Society of Arts London, Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Dublin, The East West Pain Conference Neuroscience Research Institute, Peking University, Beijing, Goethe University, Frankfurt Germany, the Genoa Science Festival, McLuhan Galaxy Celebration, Universita La Splenza, Roma, Italy, among others. He has lectured throughout Europe, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Canada.