Boris Mayer Levinson | |
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| Born | July 1, 1907 Kalvarija, Suwałki Governorate, Russian Empire (now Lithuania) |
| Died | April 2, 1984 (aged 76) Brooklyn, New York City |
| Education | New York University (PhD, 1947) |
| Spouse(s) | Ruth Berkowitz (m. 1934, div. 1974); Aida Peñaranda (m. 1977, until his death) |
| Children | 2 |
Boris Mayer Levinson (July 1, 1907 - April 2, 1984) was an American psychologist who accidentally discovered the therapeutic benefits of animal-assisted therapy. [1]
Levinson was born to Jewish parents in the Lithuanian town of Kalvarija, Suwałki Governorate, then in the Russian partition of the Russian Empire. He was the third eldest of four siblings. When Levinson was 14, his family emigrated in 1923 to the United States to New York City. The Levinson family established themselves in Brooklyn, East New York. He graduated from Eastern District High School in Brooklyn and afterwards became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1930. [2] [3] [4]
Continuing with his studies, Levinson did a Bachelor of Science at City University of New York in 1937 and in 1938 he earned a Master of Science in Education. In 1947, he earned his PhD in clinical psychology from New York University. His dissertation, "A Comparative Study of Certain Homeless and Unattached Domiciled Men," lead him to become a pioneer in the study of homeless men. [4] [5] He wrote several articles about the topic. He also wrote about other topics, such as the psychological traits of children of traditional Jewish backgrounds, [6] [7] [8] childhood autism, intellectual disability and animal assisted therapy. [4]
In 1953, while giving therapy to a withdrawn child he observed that the child opened up to his dog, Jingles, by talking to it. It led to the accidental discovery about the possibility of using a dog in therapy. Initially, he dismissed the idea, but later, in 1961, wrote an article titled "The dog as a "co-therapist"," which he later presented at a meeting of the American Psychological Association. Many of the audience met him with ridicule, while some others accepted his ideas. [4] [9] [10] Levinson's first article about the human-animal bond cemented the way to later research and ideas in this field. He also coined the term "pet therapy" on his second article about the human-animal bond in 1964. [11] [4]
He continued to write more articles about the topic, as well as books. [4] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] He's known as one of the fathers of the field of animal-assisted therapy. [4] [9]
In 1934, Levinson married his first wife, Ruth Berkowitz, and they had two sons. They later divorced and Levinson married for the second time to Aida Peñaranda, a diplomat from Bolivia, in 1974. [4]
Levinson died of a heart attack in 1984. He was the director of human animal companion therapy at the Blueberry Center and was professor emeritus of psychology of Yeshiva University. [4] [1]
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the most effective means of treatment for substance abuse and co-occurring mental health disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions and their associated behaviors to improve emotional regulation and develop personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. Though it was originally designed to treat depression, its uses have been expanded to include many issues and the treatment of many mental health conditions, including anxiety, substance use disorders, marital problems, ADHD, and eating disorders. CBT includes a number of cognitive or behavioral psychotherapies that treat defined psychopathologies using evidence-based techniques and strategies.
Psychology is the study of mind and behavior in humans and non-humans. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.
Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive/cute appearances, intelligence, and relatable personalities, but some pets may be taken in on an altruistic basis and accepted by the owner regardless of these characteristics.
Clinical psychology is an integration of human science, behavioral science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment, clinical formulation, and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. In many countries, clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events.
Logotherapy was developed by neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl and is based on the premise that the primary motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life. Frankl describes it as "the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" along with Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology.
A therapy dog is a dog that is trained to provide affection, comfort and support to people, often in settings such as hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, libraries, hospices, or disaster areas. In contrast to assistance dogs, which are trained to assist specific patients with their day-to-day physical needs, therapy dogs are trained to interact with all kinds of people, not just their handlers.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are two categories of psychological therapies. Their main purpose is revealing the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension, which is inner conflict within the mind that was created in a situation of extreme stress or emotional hardship, often in the state of distress. The terms "psychoanalytic psychotherapy" and "psychodynamic psychotherapy" are often used interchangeably, but a distinction can be made in practice: though psychodynamic psychotherapy largely relies on psychoanalytical theory, it employs substantially shorter treatment periods than traditional psychoanalytical therapies. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is evidence-based; the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and its relationship to facts is disputed.
Joseph Nicolosi was an American clinical psychologist who advocated and practised "reparative therapy", a form of the pseudoscientific treatment of conversion therapy that he claimed could help people overcome or mitigate their homosexual desires and replace them with heterosexual ones. Nicolosi was a founder and president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Medical institutions warn that conversion therapy is ineffective and may be harmful, and that there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be changed by such treatments.
The dog is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from extinct Pleistocene wolves, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. The dog was the first species to be domesticated by humans. Hunter-gatherers did this, over 15,000 years ago, which was before the development of agriculture. Due to their long association with humans, dogs have expanded to a large number of domestic individuals and gained the ability to thrive on a starch-rich diet that would be inadequate for other canids.
Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. Extended inspection or analysis in place of repetition also produces the same effect.
Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is an alternative or complementary type of therapy that includes the use of animals in a treatment. The goal of this animal-assisted intervention is to improve a patient's social, emotional, or cognitive functioning. Studies have documented some positive effects of the therapy on subjective self-rating scales and on objective physiological measures such as blood pressure and hormone levels.
Leslie Samuel Greenberg is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Toronto, and also director of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto. His research has addressed questions regarding empathy, psychotherapy process, the therapeutic alliance, and emotion in human functioning.
Although modern, scientific psychology is often dated from the 1879 opening of the first psychological clinic by Wilhelm Wundt, attempts to create methods for assessing and treating mental distress existed long before. The earliest recorded approaches were a combination of religious, magical and/or medical perspectives. Early examples of such psychological thinkers included Patañjali, Padmasambhava, Rhazes, Avicenna and Rumi.
Reflective listening is a communication strategy involving two key steps: seeking to understand a speaker's idea, then offering the idea back to the speaker, to confirm the idea has been understood correctly. Reflective listening is a more specific strategy than the more general methods of active listening.
Human–canine bonding is the relationship between dogs and humans. This relationship can be traced back to at least 15,000 years ago, to the Bonn-Oberkassel dog, who was found buried alongside two humans. For centuries, dogs have been considered man's best friend. This is most evident in western countries, such as the United States, where over 48% of households have a pet dog.
Between 5% and 10% of homeless peoplein the United States own pets. Studies of homeless pet owners in urban settings show a sense of identity and community connection between pets and their owners. This topic is part of the Animals and Society branch of study in the field of Sociology, and is also an issue with the values and responsibility of pet ownership.
Eclectic psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy in which the clinician uses more than one theoretical approach, or multiple sets of techniques, to help with clients' needs. The use of different therapeutic approaches will be based on the effectiveness in resolving the patient's problems, rather than the theory behind each therapy.
Samuel Abraham Corson was an American professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University who, with his wife Elizabeth, led early research into pet therapy, which contributed to dogs and other pets becoming commonplace in settings such as nursing homes.
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