S1E7: Ronald Levant: An intimate conversation with one of the giants in the field of men's mental health

PsychSessions: Conversations about Teaching N' Stuff

Dr. Ronald Levant is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Akron and a former president of the American Psychological Association and the APA’s Division 51. Ron discussed his challenges as an adolescent and that his pathway was not one that would have necessarily led him to college and graduate training at some of the world’s most prestigious universities. He discussed challenges as an adolescent in school and in his family, including being expelled from one high school. A small circumstance resulted in Ron taking a college admission test and then attending UC Berkeley and later Harvard. Ron discussed some of his contributions, such as his work on normative male alexithymia and his research on fathers. He provided some context for how he developed the idea for the normative male alexithymia hypothesis. Finally, Ron discussed some ideas about how we can move the field forward by addressing several areas, such as men’s self-compassion and sense of shame.