Biography - James Kimmel

I was born and grew up in New York City. I received a Ph.D. in Psychology from New York University and worked for twenty years as a clinical psychologist and a psychotherapist. My significant teachers, supervisors, mentors and personal analyst were primarily associated with The William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute and followers of the interpersonal theories of Harry Stack Sullivan.

As a psychologist, I worked in various settings, including the pediatrics ward of a chronic disease hospital, a mental hospital, out-patient therapy centers, a residential center for children, and private practice. In addition, I supervised the work of child psychotherapists and teachers of emotionally disturbed children. I was the clinical director of a school for autistic and psychotic children and a co-founder and director of For Children - A Child Therapy Center.

I have three children, all adults now. I learned a great deal from my children -about myself, child development, and what it means to be human before parents and culture impose upon you. I also enjoyed them immensely. None of my children were ever spanked, punished, or even disciplined. They were all breast-fed. I feel fortunate that I was a father two times around. My first two children were born in my early twenties and my third, by a different wife, when I was forty-five. Birthing, infant and child care, mothering, fathering, society and I all changed greatly during that twenty-year span. I lived the difference. I was also a grandfather at the age of forty-eight, and my third child was an aunt at the age of three, when my son had twin daughters. And we all lived right near each other. What fun it was! My involvement with all three of my babies and my participation in their development and growth to adulthood has easily been the most profound experience of my life.

In 1971, my wife and I moved to a small town in the mountains of New York and in 1978 to Nevada. Both of these moves greatly changed my life. I began to write, and to develop skills in my long time interest in sculpture; I became a sculptor, a toy-maker, a poet, an author, and a student of anthropology, animal behavior, and the history of parenting. During this time my wife and I worked together, earning our living at home.

I now live in Tucson, Arizona. I am no longer involved in the clinical practice of psychotherapy. I have for many years believed that our conventional ways of caring for infants and children promote emotional disturbance, anti-social behavior and general misery in our population. At this time, my efforts in the mental health field are devoted to the prevention of emotional disturbance in our society rather than to the amelioration of an individual's problems in living.

I now write books and articles, chiefly about children's need for nurturing. I am the author of:

• Balloons - A book of poetry
• Nurturance and Alienation (unpublished book, completed 1982)
• Whatever Happened To Mother? - A Primer For Those Who Care About Children
• So They May Walk The Good Road - Caring for Children in the Human Way (publication date set for November, 1997)
• Psychopathic Parenting (Publication date set for Spring, 1998)