He served as Chairperson of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Department of Child and adolescent psychiatry[5] and Harvard Medical School until his retirement in 1988.

[6] Eisenberg completed the first outcome study of autistic children in adolescence and recognized patterns of language use as the best predictor of prognosis.

[citation needed] Eisenberg completed the first RCTs of psychiatric consultation to social agencies and the utility of brief psychotherapy in anxiety disorders.

He published a forceful critique of Konrad Lorenz's instinct theory and established the usefulness of distinguishing "disease" from "illness".

This interest may have been encouraged by his stepson, Alan Guttmacher, then acting head of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

He and his wife, Carola B. Eisenberg, former dean of students, first at MIT, then at Harvard Medical School, had been active with Physicians for Human Rights, which as an organization received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

[citation needed] A 2012 article in the German weekly publication Der Spiegel gives an account of an interview Eisenberg gave in 2009, seven months before his death.