Daniel David (born November 23, 1972, in Satu Mare, Romania) is an "Aaron T. Beck" professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, the head of Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy[1] of the Babeş-Bolyai University and the vice-president of the Babeş-Bolyai University Council for Research. He is also an adjunct professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Contents |
At the national level, David created the first school of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in Romania, based on international principles, recognized as such by the founders (e.g., Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. Aaron T. Beck) and the international organizations in this field (e.g., Academy of Cognitive Therapy, USA, Albert Ellis Institute, USA); he and his trainee also extended the application of CBT in education (e.g., rational-emotive & cognitive-behavioral education) and organizational fields (e.g., cognitive-behavioral coaching). Recently, he has been accepted as a Fellow in the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, USA and he is the national representative in the Social Sciences Standing Committee at the European Science Foundation. He is among those who introduced for the first time in Romanian academic psychology the evolutionary psychology and genetic counseling as modern interdisciplinary approaches between psychology and biology. Also, professor Daniel David has recently reintroduced and up-dated the Retman concept, and is the coordinator of the team that created the comics and stories with this character. Basically, by all these, along with the introduction of the postdoctoral programs and the first large-scale randomized clinical trials comparing psychotherapy and medication for various disorders in the Romanian clinical field, he promoted the reform of Romanian clinical psychology and psychotherapy based on modern principles.[2] This reform was fundamental taking into account that during the communist period of Romania both clinical psychology and psychotherapy were practically forbidden by the communist regime, and thus, the field was basically almost frozen in time (e.g., Szondi and Lusher tests were the "golden standard" for clinical testing). As one of the leaders of the first generations of psychologists after the anticommunist revolution of 1989 (i.e., in a Romanian survey he was named as a main representative of the "Next Generation of Romanian Psychologists",[3] David, who studied abroad (for both his doctoral and postdoctoral studies) at prestigious universities in USA, was the one who, by his professional stature (e.g. he is the most cited Romanian psychologist in the international literature,[4] and his Governmental and professional positions/leadership, marked the reform of the clinical field in Romania, helping in moving the field from a '70s style approach to the modern one.[5]
At the international level, he significantly contributed to the assimilation of cognitive science principles in the clinical field, supporting both a scientist-practitioner and an evidence-based approach in psychology in general, and in the clinical field in particular. A more specific contribution was focused on developing the theory and practice of rational-emotive and cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT/REBT), which brought him both the Aaron T. Beck Award and the Albert Ellis Award of the International Institute for the Advanced Study of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health. In 2004 he was invited as "Guest Editor" by the Journal of Clinical Psychology to organize a special issue titled: "Cognitive revolution in clinical psychology: Beyond the behavioral approach" in order to present the state-of-the-art regarding the impact of the cognitive revolution on the clinical field. As founding editor of the Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Psychotherapies (abstracted: SSCI/Thomson ISI Web of Science; SCOPUS; PsycInfo; IBSS and full text: EBSCO; ProQuest), a Journal focused on evidence-based practice, he has supported the evidence-based approach in the clinical field. For his merits in research and education he was knighted in 2008 by the 201 Decree of the President of Romania (17/01/2008), in the National Order of Knights for Merit.[6]