Raymond Levy

Raymond Levy, Emeritus Professor, England, United Kingdom
Past President 1995 – 1997

Raymond Levy was born in Cairo in 1933 and studied at Victoria College where he was a contemporary of actor Omar Sharif, playing Moliere’s ‘Le Malade Imaginaire’ and other plays with him.

He left Cairo in 1951 to study Medicine in Edinburgh ROM where he graduated in 1956. After obtaining an MRCPEd in Neurology and a PhD in applied neuro physiology, he moved to London where he joined the rotational training scheme during which he was much influenced by Aubrey Lewis and Felix Post taking an early interest in Old Age Psychiatry and writing his DPM dissertation on an aspect of the neurophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease in 1964. He became a Senior Registrar at the Maudsley and after a period of 5 years at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School (now part of University College) where he first described the behavioural treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder with Vic Meyer.

Dr. Levy returned to the Maudsley first as a Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry and later as the first Professor in the field. He was lucky in attracting a large number of bright young psychiatrists to set up the first and, for many years, the only Research Department in his specialty in the United Kingdom. Many of his trainees have become leaders in the field both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

Raymond Levy retired in 1996 and after a serving as president of the International Psychogeriatric Association (IPA) devoted his time to tennis, scuba diving, art, travel and is writing a book on his native Cairo. His interest in de Clerambault dates from a period of study in Paris in 1963.