An honors graduate of one of the country's most prestigious doctoral programs in English, Janice M. Cauwels has been a visiting assistant professor at Emory University and the University of Minnesota. As a scholar and teacher of Victorian literature, textual criticism, Gothic fiction, Shakespeare, and writing, Dr. Cauwels has been praised by colleagues “with enthusiasm and without qualification.”

Since leaving academia, Dr. Cauwels has written professionally on subjects as diverse as marketing (in Madison Avenue), insurance (as a licensed agent), management consulting, politics, sociology, technology, finance, ecology, travel, entertainment, and ghosts. Her work has included instructional design in various genres for executives, physicians, sales representatives, and end users.

Having learned about bulimia nervosa from an article in a university newspaper, Dr. Cauwels later wrote Bulimia: The Binge-Purge Compulsion (Doubleday, 1983), which was welcomed by the mental health profession as the best trade book on the disorder. She was the eating disorders consultant for Jane Fonda: Cooking for Healthy Living (1996), the second book in which Ms. Fonda quoted her research. While working on another project for Ms. Fonda several years later, Dr. Cauwels was a guest in her Atlanta home for four months.

The relationship of bulimia nervosa to another psychiatric illness inspired Dr. Cauwels to write Imbroglio: Rising to the Challenges of Borderline Personality Disorder (Norton, 1992). Enthusiastically endorsed by most of the leading experts on the illness, the 400-page work has been recommended to both mental health professionals and patients by psychiatrists reviewing in Hospital and Community Psychiatry, the British Journal of Psychiatry, and elsewhere. Described as an “informative, wise, and compassionate book,” Imbroglio is praised particularly for the insight and empathy with which it presents a group of difficult patients who are despised by many therapists.

The Body Shop: Bionic Revolutions in Medicine (Mosby, 1986), is Dr. Cauwels' comprehensive study of bioengineering and its financial, legal, and ethical implications. In his Preface, Pierre M. Galletti, M.D., Ph.D., of Brown University states that “Dr. Cauwels writes in terms a candidate for an unorthodox form of treatment can understand and relate to, yet the up-do-date accuracy of her account recommends it to medical professionals as well."

Due to a third-party violation of source confidentiality, in 1991 Dr. Cauwels canceled Norton's production of her edition Errors of the Heart , described by Ann Appelbaum, M.D., of Columbia University as "gripping, moving, terribly sobering and humbling ."

Several years ago, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center awarded Dr. Cauwels a staff ID in psychiatry; late in 1994, the Department of Dermatology tried to appoint her to the faculty to revise curricula but was unable to fund the position.

Dr. Cauwels has consulted in communications and graphic design for 3M Company, Honeywell, Control Data Corporation, TIAA-CREF, CNBC, and Sperry Univac as well as many smaller firms. Clients have praised her leadership and diplomacy as well as her expertise and creativity and have described her work as “flawless.”

Besides creating the film script Mirror, Mirror, Dr. Cauwels has written, produced, and taped voice-overs for videos and contributed material performed by the Open Stage Players. Her dissertation and her related article in PBSA cover the life and writings of Elizabeth Inchbald, a popular 18th-century British actress and playwright. An actress herself, Dr. Cauwels has created stage and film roles for Vittoria/Furris Productions, New Dramatists, New Actors' Repertory, and the Ironbound Theater, recreated leads in classic American plays, and recorded commercials.