Dr. David A. Levy has extensive experience as a professor, therapist, author, actor, researcher, and media consultant.
Professor and Therapist
Levy is a Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University, where he has been teaching graduate psychology courses since 1986. He received his BA degree in theater arts from UCLA, his MA in psychology from Pepperdine University, a second MA in psychology from UCLA, and his PhD in psychology from UCLA, where he specialized in social psychology. He served as a Visiting Professor of Psychology in the Soviet Union, where he delivered lectures and workshops at Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University and the Leningrad Academy of Science. He was honored as a Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellow and with the Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence at Pepperdine and was a recipient of the Shepard Ivory Franz Distinguished Teaching Award and Charles F. Scott Fellowship at UCLA. Dr. Levy holds professional licenses both in psychology and in marriage and family therapy and has worked in a wide range of private practice and inpatient settings.
Author and Researcher
Levy’s book, Tools of Critical Thinking, (acclaimed as “the thinking person’s self-help book”), garnered widespread acclaim for its innovative approaches to improving thinking skills. Levy coauthored (with Eric Shiraev) Cross-Cultural Psychology: Critical Thinking and Contemporary Applications (currently in its 6th edition), which has become an international bestselling textbook and has been translated into four foreign languages. Levy is the author of Family Therapy: History, Theory, and Practice, which was the first textbook on the topic available to Russian readers. His numerous theoretical and empirical research studies have been published in scientific journals and presented at professional conferences.
Satirist
Levy has published numerous satirical articles, including “How to Be a Good Psychotherapy Patient,” “The Emperor’s Postmodern Clothes,” “Psychometric Infallibility Realized: The One-Size-Fits-All Psychological Profile,” “Stinks and Instincts: An Empirical Investigation of Freud’s Excreta Theory,” and “A Proposed Category for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): Pervasive Labeling Disorder.”
Media Experience
As a media consultant, Levy has appeared on over seventy television and radio broadcasts (including CNN, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, Fox, NatGeo, A&E, and E!), providing psychological perspectives on current events, and examining issues and trends in the mental health fields.
He has also worked as a professional director, producer, writer, and actor in motion pictures, television, and stage. He received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Network Television Series, and he was a guest star on the television series “Cheers,” where he portrayed the leader of Frasier’s low self-esteem group (a role which he adamantly maintains is not “type-casting”).