Lewinsohn, Peter M.

I was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1930. With my parents and my brother, Tom, I immigrated to Shanghai, China in 1941, where I lived throughout World War II. I then immigrated to the United States in 1947. After I received my BS from Allegheny College in 1951, I went on to obtain a doctoral degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1955. Six years later, I received my diploma in clinical psychology from the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology. While I completed postdoctoral training at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic between 1958 and 1959, I met my future wife, Cynthia Stiefel. We were married and have two sons, David and Mark, and are now the proud grandparents of five grandchildren.

I served on the clinical staff of numerous organizations, including the State Hospital in Osowatomie, Kansas, the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, and LaRue D. Carter Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I remained until 1963. Throughout my career, I have been a faculty member of various educational institutions, including the Department of Psychiatry at the Indiana University Medical School, the Department of Psychology at the Southern Illinois University, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon. I am currently professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health and Science University.

Issues with significant clinical relevance have encompassed my research interests. My first study, published in 1956, dealt with psychosomatic disorders, and subsequent works include the creation of the Pleasant Events Schedule, the Unpleasant Events Schedule, and the Life Attitudes Schedule. Since 1964, my research has concentrated on depression across the life span and related phenomena, such as suicide, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, cigarette smoking and physical disease, subthreshold conditions, effects of brain damage, and continuing education for psychologists.

The psychological treatment of depressed individuals has always been a primary focus of my research. Starting with a behavioral formulation of depression, my associates and I derived a number of cognitive-behavioral strategies for individual and group treatment. These treatments have been adapted for use with depressed adolescents and elderly individuals. Depression is probably unrivaled in the breadth of issues that it raises. It can easily raise all, or almost all, of the clinical, theoretical, and methodological issues that are of importance in psychotherapy research. Its study and treatment involve interactions among cognitions, emotions, and overt behavior; among psychophysiology, brain chemistry, and environmental influences; and among developmental issues. Depression is the most common mental disorder, especially if one considers that it occurs by itself and also in conjunction with many other mental and physical disorders. Thus, depression is an extremely broad condition that can be used to focus on many theoretically and clinically challenging questions.

My focus on depression was strongly influenced by Charles Ferster. Focusing on the passivity (i.e., low behavior rate) of depressed individuals, it was a relatively small step to postulate that they must be on an extinction schedule, that is, that a lack of, or a reduction in, response-contingent positive reinforcement might be an important antecedent for the occurrence of depression. This approach led me to formulate what later became known as the “behavioral model of depression” and to develop specific interventions based on [Page 357]this model. If people become depressed because their behavior no longer leads to reinforcement, then one needs to help them change their behavior and their environment. These studies were designed at first for use with individual patients and later for use with groups.

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