Joining the Family Business: Bringing it all Back Home.
From an abbreviated version to be posted in 'Our Family Business at Odds.'
by Jenny Davidow, M.A.
Some people might say I had it rough growing up - my dad was a psychologist. When I cried as a baby he didn't say, "Jenny's crying. She's probably hungry." He said, "Why is Jenny crying?" When I stayed out past my curfew in High School, my father used it as an opportunity to explore my "repressed" feelings, rather than interpret my actions as typical teenage behavior. I would rather have been grounded.
While managing to survive my father's constant scrutiny, I ironically inherited his "psychologist" genes. I was always fascinated by human behavior - why people act the way they do. That is why I majored in Psychology in college and went to graduate school to earn an M.A. in Psychology.
However, until recently, what I wanted to focus on within the field of psychology was never exactly clear. For a short period, I wanted to go to medical school to become psychiatrist. For six months, I wanted to live the life of an academic, become a professor of Social Psychology and study interpersonal relationships. For a while I became fascinated with Freud and wanted to be a psychoanalyst. And for five years I conducted clinical research for children and adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) at Mt. Sinai Medical School, during which time I thought I wanted to become a neuropsychologist, testing and evaluating children for learning disabilities.
Although I always thought my dad's business was interesting, it never occurred to me to apply my passion and interest in psychology in it. (My dad would probably say I needed to assert my independence from him.) Nor were there any expectations from him that I eventually would. However, while vacillating among career paths, I often found myself asking him about his business, what he did, what his clients were like. As he explained how family dynamics played out and affected a family business, I became drawn to the idea of applying psychology to the business world. This time my interest was not fleeting. One day, I finally asked, "So when can I start working for you?"
In working for my dad, not only do I enjoy combining my interest in human behavior with my experience in research, but I have also realized that sometimes what we are searching for lies closer to home than we think.
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