ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Amir Levine, who grew up in Israel and Canada, has always had a fascination with biology and the brain. His mother, a popular science editor who valued creativity and self-motivation, allowed him to stay home from school whenever he wanted and study what interested him. Although this freedom sometimes got him into trouble, during high school he wrote his first large-scale work, about birds of prey in the Bible and in ancient Assyria and Babylon. His thesis examined the evolution of symbolism from a culture of multiple deities to one of monotheism. After high school, Levine served as a press liaison in the Israeli army. He worked with renowned journalists such as Thomas Friedman, Glenn Frankel, and Ted Koppel, and was awarded a citation of excellence.
After his compulsory army service, having developed a passion for working with people as well as a love for science, Levine enrolled in medical school at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he received numerous awards. During medical school, he organized student meetings with Dr. Eiferman, a psychoanalyst, to discuss how doctors can preserve their sensitivity to the hospitalized patients’ needs while negotiating a complex hospital hierarchy. He was awarded the faculty prize for his graduation thesis, “Human Sexuality Viewed from the Perspective of Childhood Gender Nonconformity,” which was later adapted for a university seminar.
Levine’s interest in human behavior led him to a residency in adult psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he was ranked first in his class for three consecutive years. He received several awards, including an American Psychoanalytic Fellowship, which gave him a rare opportunity to work with a world-renowned psychoanalyst, the late Jacob Arlow. Levine then specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry. While working in a therapeutic nursery with mothers with posttraumatic stress disorder and their toddlers, he witnessed the power of attachment to heal and realized the importance of attachment principles in the daily lives of adults as well as children. During the last year of his three-year fellowship, he joined the lab of the late James (Jimmy) Schwartz, a renowned neuroscientist.
Currently at Columbia University, Levine is a principle investigator, together with Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Eric Kandel and distinguished researcher Dr. Denise Kandel, on a research project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. He also has a private practice in Manhattan.
Levine is board-certified in adult psychiatry and is a member of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Society for Neuroscience.
He lives with his family in New York City and Southampton, New York.
For as long as she can remember, Rachel Heller has been interested in human behavior and culture. As the daughter of two university professors—a historian and a political scientist—she spent her childhood in the United States, England, Israel, and other countries. Perhaps as a result of this early experience and her keen interest in diverse cultures, she became an avid traveler, spending long periods of time in, among other countries, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Uganda, Kenya, Madagascar, and Pakistan, where she trekked in the high Himalayas and learned about local traditions, hiking, and exploring.
Before entering the field of psychology, Heller worked as a tour guide for American, British, Australian, and South African volunteers in the Israeli army as part of her compulsory army service. Later she served as an aide to a member of the Israeli Knesset, conducting research on legislation and working with the press, especially on human rights issues.
Heller holds a B.A. in behavioral sciences (psychology, anthropology, and sociology) and an M.A. degree in social-organizational psychology from Columbia University. After completing her master’s, she worked for several management consulting firms, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, and Towers Perrin, where she managed high-profile clients.
Before a recent move to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she now lives with her husband and three children, Heller worked for the Educational Psychology Service in Modi’in. There she helped families, couples, and children within various educational settings to improve their relationships and lives.
