Daniel David - National Achievements

National Achievements

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 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. 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", 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, 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.