Dr. Van Nortwick - Academia and Self-Acceptance

“One of the things that is … a standard part of Greek civilization, Greek literature, and Greek Philosophy is that the key to all knowledge is self-knowledge” (30:33)

In his oral history interview, Emeritus Professor at Oberlin College Tom Van Nortwick talked about two ways that academia has helped him cope in his life. From high school through grad school and the start of his career as a professor, academics were a refuge from his other problems, a means to escape serious stressors in his life. He narrates that he used to focus his efforts in “burying [him]self in [his] work and taking what satisfaction [he] could from [his] professional successes (25:27). Meanwhile, his personal life and happiness was falling by the wayside. However, during a difficult personal time within his career as a professor, he found a way to use academics to address these same problems. Dr. Van Nortwick was a Classics professor, and he wrote a series of “autobiographical essays about classical literature” (24:15). He wrote about subjects such as “Iliad the Odyssey and Oedipus rex” (24:55) to investigate his own happiness and address long-buried problems from his childhood. During this time he also began to see a therapist. A particularly striking and explicit tie between self acceptance and academics for Dr. Van Nortwick is a tenant of Greek civilization and literature, that “the key to all knowledge is self-knowledge” (30:45). Dr. Van Nortwick expresses that he was only “able to think about self fulfillment after [achieving] some level of self knowledge and self awareness” (30:22). His struggle with self acceptance centered around accepting the problems that he faced within himself so he was able to address them. Dr.Van Nortwick has used academics to navigate his personal problems in two ways: first as a crutch, then as a tool of self discovery — a mirror. 

Carol Ryff’s (2018) definition of a high scorer for the self acceptance dimension of well-being includes a positive attitude about the self, acknowledgement of multiple good and bad aspects of the self, and a positive life outlook. In his interview, Dr. Van Nortwick focuses mainly on the second aspect of self acceptance as it is defined, self reflection to acknowledge multiple facets of the self. Ryff (2016) describes numerous physiological benefits of psychological well-being, including better regulation of stress hormones, inflammatory markers, and glucose processing, among other things. Thus, well-being can have measurable effects on health in ways that we might not associate with mental state. In this oral history interview, Dr. Van Nortwick provides an example of a very clear relationship between his academic work and self acceptance, a dimension of well-being. He was able to analyze his own problems, addressing multiple facets of himself, through the lense of academia, ultimately contributing to well-being.