Zack Boukydis, Ph.D.
Zack Boukydis, Ph.D., was a developmental/clinical psychologist whose career was
devoted to research and clinical work with mothers, families, and babies. He
was the editor or coeditor of three books: Support for Parents and Infants: A Manual for
Parenting Organizations and Professionals (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), Research
on Support for Parents and Infants in the Postnatal Period (Ablex, 1987), and Infant Crying:
Theoretical and Research Perspectives (with Barry M. Lester, Plenum Press, 1985),
as well as the author of numerous research publications and grants.
Throughout his career, Dr. Boukydis’s work focused on the influence of infant
crying on parents, the neurobehavioral development of at-risk infants (including
preterm and substance-exposed infants), interventions to support families in neonatal
intensive care units and mothers and infants in drug treatment programs, and an
ultrasound consultation program in which practitioners joined with mothers and families
in watching their baby during routine ultrasound screens in obstetric clinics. He
was a focusing coordinator and focusing-oriented therapist with the Focusing Institute
of New York and developed a special international training program, Focusing-
Oriented Parent-Infant Consultation: Bringing Focusing to Work with Parents and
Infants. He was also a trainer on the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS™;
Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2004) in the United States, Europe, and Africa. Dr.
Boukydis was a member of the Harris Professional Development Network and was a
Fulbright Fellow between the United States and Hungary.
Dr. Boukydis was on the editorial review board of the Journal of Visualized
Experiments and was a reviewer for Acta Paediatrica. He was on the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics, Semmelweis Medical School, and the Institute of Psychology,
Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, and was Visiting Professor, Department
of Pediatrics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.