Harry Levinson, Ph.D., was chairman emeritus and founder of The Levinson Institute.  He was also clinical professor of psychology emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.  Born in Port Jervis, New York, Dr. Levinson received his B.S. degree and his M.S. degree from Emporia (Kansas) State University.  He took his training in clinical psychology in the Veterans Administration-Menninger Foundation University of Kansas program, which led to his Ph.D. from the university.  As coordinator of professional education at Topeka State Hospital from 1950 to 1953, he played a key role in the dramatic and widely acclaimed reformation of the Kansas state hospital system.  In 1954 Dr. Levinson created, and for the next 14 years directed, the Division of Industrial Mental Health of The Menninger Foundation.  During the academic year 1961–62 he was a visiting professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 1967 at the School of Business at the University of Kansas.

From 1968 to 1972 Dr. Levinson was Thomas Henry Carroll-Ford Foundation distinguished visiting professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.  He has been an adjunct professor in the Boston University School of Business Administration and in the Pace University Graduate School.  Dr. Levinson was a Ford Foundation visiting professor at the H. C. Mathur Institute of Public Administration in Jaipur, India, in the summer of 1974. He was a visiting centennial professor at Texas A&M in April 1976, and in September 1979 conducted the international course on occupational social psychiatry for the Finnish Government Institute of Occupational Health, under the sponsorship of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Dr. Levinson was a consultant to and lecturer for many business, academic, and government organizations.  He received the Perry L. Rohrer Consulting Psychology Practice Award for outstanding achievement in psychological consultation in 1984; was recognized with the Massachusetts Psychological Association's Career Award and the first award of The Society of Psychologists in Management in 1985; received the Organization Development Professional Practice Award for Excellence from the American Society for Training and Development in 1988; was recognized with the I. Arthur Marshall Distinguished Alumnus Award of The Menninger Alumni Association in 1990; and was named co-recipient of the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Knowledge in 1992.  In April 1986 he delivered the Dr. Nathan Sidel Lecture at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.  Dr. Levinson was past president of the American Board of Professional Psychology, past president of the Kansas Psychological Association, and former chairman of the Kansas Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission.

Dr. Levinson passed away on June 26, 2012, in Delray Beach, Florida.  He was 90.

In addition to numerous articles, Dr. Levinson was the senior author of Men, Management, and Mental Health and author of Emotional Health in the World of Work; Executive Stress; Executive (a revision of The Exceptional Executive, which won the McKinsey Foundation, Academy of Management, and James A. Hamilton College of Hospital Administrators awards); Organizational Diagnosis; The Great Jackass Fallacy; Psychological Man; Casebook for Psychological Man; Casebook for Psychological Man: Instructor's Guide; with Dr. Stuart Rosenthal, CEO: Corporate Leadership in Action (which won The American College of Healthcare Executives James A. Hamilton Book Award in 1986); Ready, Fire, Aim: Avoiding Management by Impulse; editor of Designing and Managing Your Career: Advice from the Harvard Business Review; Career Mastery; and Harry Levinson on the Psychology of Leadership.