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Norman Doidge is a Canadian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author of The Brain that Changes Itself and The Brain's Way of Healing.
In the 1990s, Doidge authored empirically based standards and guidelines for the practice of intensive psychotherapy that have been used in Canada and America. These were published in the "Standards and Guidelines for the Psychotherapies" edited by Cameron, Deadman and Ennis.
In 2008, he was awarded the Mary S. Sigourney Prize for his scientific writing on neuroplasticity and research in psychoanalysis.
More recently, Doidge published an important and critical article discussing and examining the impact the COVID-19 narrative has had on scientific development of COVID treatments and management in addition to policy.
Doidge was editor of from 1995 to 1998, and editor at large for several years after that. His series of literary portraits of exceptional people at moments of transformation appeared in Saturday Night Magazine; he won four National Magazine Awards, including the President's medal for his Saturday Night interview with Saul Bellow ( Love, Friendship and the Art of Dying) in 2000.
Doidge's first book, The Brain that Changes Itself (2007), was an international bestseller and is widely recognized to have introduced the concept of neuroplasticity to broader scientific and lay audiences alike. It showed people with learning disorders, blindness, balance and sensory disorders, strokes, cerebral palsy, chronic pain, chronic depression and anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder being helped by neuroplastic interventions.
The book was acclaimed by many well-known scholars and researchers in the brain sciences, including neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran and neurologist Oliver Sacks. The prominent psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist praised it as “An utterly wonderful book—without question one of the most important books about the brain you will ever read.” Writing in the journal Neuropsychoanalysis, psychology professor Eric Fertuck wrote, “Doidge… has written a book that accurately conveys cutting-edge scientific discoveries while simultaneously engaging both scientific and popular audiences." Jeanette Winterson (CBE) chose it as one of her books of the year in 2008, calling it “Brilliant…This book is a wonderful and engaging way or re-imagining what kind of creatures we are.”
In 2010, the Dana Foundation's journal Cerebrum chose The Brain That Changes Itself as “the best general book on the brain". In 2016, the Literary Review of Canada ranked it among the 25 most influential books published in Canada since 1991.
Doidge's second book, The Brain's Way of Healing (2015), describes an expanding number of clinical conditions that may be treated by neuroplastic interventions. It was a New York Times bestseller and also received praise from both lay and specialized readership, with Ramachandran stating that it is “a treasure trove of the author's own deep insights and a clear bright light of optimism shines through every page.” The psychiatrist Stephen Porges wrote that it was “paradigm challenging. The Brain's Way of Healing is brilliantly organized, scientifically documented, and a beautifully written narrative that captivates the reader, who is left with the profound message that the brain, similar to other organs, can heal." This book received the 2015 Gold Nautilus Book Award in the Science category.
In 2018, Doidge wrote the foreword to Jordan Peterson's . (See the library record BJ1589 .P48 2018 of the Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University.)
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