Download Author: Levin, Jerome D. Ph.D.

Dr. Levin has been kissed by a wolf, petted a jaguar, climbed Kilimanjaro, plunged into a crevasse on Alaska’s Mount Denali, and looked down on Everest’s base camp from 18000 foot Kala Pitar, all while writing seventeen books, carrying a heavy caseload of psychotherapy patients in Manhattan and Long Island and teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York’s Greenwich Village. His teaching at the New School has been wide ranging. He directed and taught in a program to train addiction counselors for over 25 years, as well as teaching “cross-over” philosophy-psychology courses, the first of which was “Reason and Passion in Western Thought: Plato, Spinoza, and Freud,” followed by “Anxiety and the Nature of Reality,”  “Theories of the Self,” and “Our Relationship to the Wild.” He went on to teach a variety of other innovative courses, which he designed, and has taught more standard curricula at St. Joseph’s, Marymount Manhattan, and Suffolk County Community Colleges. He has also taught and supervised at psychoanalytic institutes and has been a guest lecturer at such diverse venues as the Pennsylvania Society of Clinical Social Workers, Boston College School of Social Work, and Harvard University’s Continuing Education Addiction Program.

Dr. Levin has been featured on a range of media, including over a hundred radio shows, and on television onChris Matthews’ “Hardball,” NBC’s “Dateline,” and Danish, Spanish and German TV.

Dr. Levin was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, McGill University, and New York University, from which he received his Ph.D. He is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where he received his psychoanalytic raining.

His clinical practice has also been wide ranging. He treats adults, older adolescents, and couples. In over thirty years of practice, there is little in the scope of human misery and psychopathology that has not been presented to Dr. Levin by people looking for relief. Priding himself on his ability to relate to all kinds and conditions of men and women, he has usually been able to offer meaningful assistance.

Although primarily about addictions (including sexual addiction) and their treatment, Dr. Levin’s writings have also covered a wide range of other topics, including narcissism, childlessness and chronic depression, as well as book reviews and travel articles. They include textbooks, professional works, and popular expositions. In all these genres, Dr. Levin strives for clarity and accessibility.

He can be reached at jeromedlevin@gmail.com or 212-989-3976. Or you can write him at P.O. Box 309, Manorville, New York, 11949.

38 eBooks available.

What is Alcoholism?

One reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from a perusal of the literature on alcoholism is that nobody knows what alcoholism is. An equally reasonable conclusion is that everybody knows what alcoholism is, but that they just happen not to agree.

What Do We Know About Alcoholism?

In terms of solid, empirically verified, replicated knowledge, surprisingly little is known about alcoholism. Aside from the physiological evidence and some imprecise demographic findings, there are few hard facts about alcoholism. Some studies strongly suggest that there is a genetic component or predisposition to some forms of alcoholism; there are a handful of replicated empirical psychological findings; there are fewer than half a dozen longitudinal studies; and there is a limited body of known fact about special populations suffering from alcoholism. This chapter takes a look at what is known in each of these areas.

Psychodynamic Theories about Alcoholism

There are many theories about the etiology of alcoholism, ranging from the conviction that it results from sin to the belief that it is the result of a biochemical flaw. Recent evidence supports the belief that alcoholism results from a complex interaction of neurophysiological, psychological, sociological, pharmacological, cultural, political, and economic factors.

The Self and Therapy

This is a book about our understanding of the self and of narcissism, healthy and pathological, over the course of history. Focusing on modern developments from the philosophical debates of the 17th-century to contemporary psychoanalytical conceptualizations, it has a direct import theoretically for personality theory and philosophical psychology, and practically for counseling, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis.

The book is unique in integrating the philosophical, psychological, and psychoanalytic traditions of understanding the self. It tells of the lives and cultural and historical situations of each thinker about self (freud, Hegel, Jung, Kierkegaard), thereby vivifying the theoretical and relating it to the personal. some of the author’s interpretations of these thinkers are original and offer new ways of understanding them: particularly Freud.

This volume raises personal, theoretical, and clinical issues for whomever reads its. It is not without answers, but the questions raised may be even more important. (422 pgs)