Philip M. Bromberg, Ph.D. (1931-2020)

Philip Bromberg, a cornerstone of contemporary psychoanalysis, passed away on May 18th at the age of 89, of natural causes. He was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and an ABPP Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, and one of IARPP’s earliest members. He was one of the founders of the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies; a longtime, esteemed member of the faculties of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the William Alanson White Institute; and a beloved teacher, supervisor, analyst, friend and mentor to many in our community. He was Co-editor Emeritus of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and was on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Bromberg was most widely known as the author of Standing in the Spaces: Essays on Clinical Process, Trauma and Dissociation (1998), Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys (2006), and The Shadow of the Tsunami: and the Growth of the Relational Mind (2011). His teaching and publications, especially on the topics of dissociation in normal and less adaptive mental functioning, multiplicity, enactment, trauma, and the process of healing and growth via human relatedness, have influenced generations of clinicians throughout the world. His insights were extraordinary, his writing profound and often poetic.

The IARPP Bulletin asked a number of friends and colleagues to share reminiscences touching on both their personal and professional relationships with Dr. Bromberg.

Lawrence O. Brown, Ph.D. William Alanson White Institute
Sheldon Itzkowitz, Ph.D., ABPP NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis
Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D. William Alanson White Institute, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis
Stuart A. Pizer, Ph.D., ABPP Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis
Maggie Robbins, M.P.S., L.P. National Institute for the Psychotherapies
Donnel Stern, Ph.D. William Alanson White Institute, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis

Remembering My Friend Philip

Lawrence O. Brown, Ph.D. (USA)

Writing this remembrance of Philip, my friend – still – of 44 years, makes the moment of losing him painfully vivid and acute again. We “entered politics” in the committees of the William Alanson White Institute (WAWI) as kindred spirits together, we shared office suites for almost 25 years, and we co-led a clinical seminar annually at WAWI for nearly 10 years. We tuna fished together, yakked on the phone and emailed each other lots, had “our table at Tenzan” weekly, pre-seminar time and during the year when we weren’t teaching (see photo), and knew deeply and lovingly how the joy of laughing together was but one rich experience of being connected with each other in our special friendship. Except for within the extraordinarily intimate world that always evolved rapidly between us and the candidates who participated in our clinical seminar, our ongoing dialogue was rarely about psychoanalysis and our psychoanalytic work, and almost always about Life (as “they” say) from our very personal experiences and perspectives, with wit, and from what we both acknowledged and shared enjoyment in – that we were two guys from Brooklyn, and an era in Brooklyn the details of which we could reminisce about without end. In fact, having already been in many joint ventures, we occasionally fantasized opening a luncheonette/soda fountain/candy store together in Brooklyn, and would howl as we designed and stocked the place in great and easily envisioned detail.

Our friendship is a treasure for me. Continuing to feel the excitement of learning about clinical process in the midst of living it in the ways that Philip so wonderfully taught and wrote about keeps him close to me. Feeling the impulse still to call him up to share a thought, observation, something funny that I know he’d laugh about keeps him close too. It always took me by surprise when he would tell me that he learned from me until I grasped (again and again) that Philip was that person who was so unusually open and tuned in to the otherness of the Other, and that he was taking something in that was novel or impactful and valuable from my otherness. The psychoanalytic universe has lost a most generous and generative star. I still see Philip’s broad smile, hear Philip’s full-hearted laughter and see his twinkly eyes and can vividly imagine the conversation we’d be having if I could only get a call through.

Lawrence O. Brown, Ph.D.
New York, NY

Fifteen Minutes

Sheldon Itzkowitz, Ph.D. (USA)

I argue that the source of therapeutic action in psychoanalysis is the interpenetration of affectively alive interpersonal engagement and the shifting self-states that organize the internal object worlds of both patient and analyst . . . that, during its creation, allows previously unformulated self-state truth to be cognitively and linguistically symbolized through the involved minds of both partners.                                                         (Bromberg, 2009, p. 356)

On Monday afternoons, for about 12 years, I’d hop into a taxi from my office on the Upper West Side and cross Central Park to Madison Avenue and 79^th Street to join my supervision group with Philip Bromberg. I’m compulsively early, so I’d arrive with enough time to have lunch at one of the eateries on Madison Avenue, and do my banking at the Chase branch on the southeast corner of 79^th street. I’d occasionally have enough time for a brisk walk and sometimes stop into La Maison Du Chocolat and buy some luscious chocolates for myself or the group. And still I’d get to Philip’s office fifteen minutes early.

I didn’t mind sitting in the waiting room. It gave me time to think particularly when it was my turn to present. At some point, I no longer remember when, Philip began inviting me into his consulting room early and we’d have time to schmooze. We’d discuss events of the day, politics, restaurants, martinis, families, etc. But most frequently we’d talk about dissociation and patients with extreme dissociative disorders who because of their tragic trauma histories are vulnerable to revealing the dissociative structure of their minds. There were occasions when something personal was troubling me. Of course, Phillip knew it before I sat down. During those fifteen-minute Monday afternoon chats we became pals.

He was so perceptually sharp and his compassion palpable; he could be gentle and understanding, comforting and supportive. But there were other ways of being Philip or as he’d say, other self-states. Like it or not, Philip always spoke his mind. Regardless of who was presenting, his clinical acumen was laser like in sharpness and accuracy. Philip was never shy about letting us know when he disagreed with our conceptualizations of clinical material. His strongly held beliefs were part of what drove him to be direct and assertive, but never acerbic. And then again, he’d be observing his impact on us; he was trying to avoid hurting us. And yet again, if anyone of us presented a sound rationale for disagreeing with him, he’d listen respectfully, always keeping an open mind.

To be sure, working with Philip wasn’t always easy. Becoming aware of what has been dissociated in our patients and in ourselves, especially in the presence of others, can be very jarring. We always left Philip with much to consider.

In the last few years of his life, as he began to wind down his practice, we could sense a change in Philip. He seemed to slow down somewhat and appear a bit more tired. That’s to be expected when you’re in your late eighties, I guess. None of us wanted to stop working with him or leave him. We respected him and cared deeply about him; we were in it with him all the way. After all Philip at 75 or 80 percent was better than most people at 100 percent.

I am thankful for the 12 years I shared with my kind, insightful and understanding colleagues and grateful for the chance to have studied with Philip. And I will always treasure my weekly fifteen minutes with my pal, Philip.

Sheldon Itzkowitz, Ph.D.
New York, NY

Bromberg, P.M. (2009). Truth, human relatedness, and the analytic process: An Interpersonal/Relational perspective. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 90:347-361.

To Philip, with Love

Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D. (USA)

Philip was a great man and so much more. He was a man of consequence, with a soaring intellect whose impact on psychoanalysis has been immeasurable. He has touched and influenced many of our lives, including mine, and his words will live on in me. Philip felt things strongly; he could be generous, kind, loving, or curmudgeonly, but everything he felt, he felt with powerful authenticity and conviction.

It was the summer of 1969 when Philip Bromberg entered the William Alanson White Institute. For over 50 years, he wrote extensively about mental development and the patient/therapist relationship. His work has both presented and created an interpersonal/relational point of view that emphasizes self-organization, states of consciousness, dissociation and multiple self-states (at least that’s how Wikipedia describes it). But WE all know that there are countless other ways he has changed the face of psychoanalysis. His books will be classics for centuries, and he has influenced the field in ways that will live on forever.

Philip influenced my work in so many ways, most notably in my understanding of how the body’s mind speaks its own affective language, and my sense that the more one can listen to it affectively, without trying to think about it, the more fluent the body’s language becomes in communicating what it knows. Philip supported my thinking about bodily experiences as self-states (i.e., body-states). The idea excited him, and his enthusiastic self-state was motivational for me.

In the spirit of multiplicity and self-states, I also realized in thinking about Philip, that there was “Philip” – and times when we called him “Philip”– and then there was “Bromberg” — and times when we called him “Bromberg.” In our ”Gang of Four” supervision group of 12 years, what we called him often depended on the self-state he brought  in that day, and whether we were thinking of him in a playful manner where we could tease him and get away with it. Truth be told, I always did. “PHILIP! Could you say that in English please?” Jocularity would ensue, our self-states jesting. “Philip” was the intimate, friendly way of responding to him, and he loved that, even encouraged it. When we were engaging with him in serious analytic terrain, we might refer to him in third person rather than being with him. Then he became “Bromberg.” The man who would offer up something that could leave us deferentially dumbfounded, wondering in awe, how did he get there? “Bromberg” was the academically respectful way of referring to him, and he loved that recognition too. And those who knew him well also knew never to call him Phil. If you were writing his name, don’t forget his middle initial “M” either.

Of the many gifts Philip gave me I will share one jewel. In 1996, he contributed to a panel discussion of the work of Leo Stone, a classical analyst who in 1961 had written a courageous book, The Psychoanalytic Situation, which challenged the classical analytic orthodoxy of the era by arguing that technique must be tailored to the patient. In his discussion, Bromberg wrote:

My addition is that technique is not something the analyst tailors on his own because he thinks the patient needs it, but an intersubjectively and interpersonally negotiated commodity. In other words, what has been added in the past thirty years to Leo Stone’s emphasis on flexibility is the dimension of negotiability.

So, let’s talk about the jewel of negotiability and Philip. When I first asked Philip if he would consider being honored by the William Alanson White Institute with a dinner at the restaurant Bouley, he said NO! NO! NO! So I knew enough to wait for a while.

When I raised it to him again, this time showing him the video of former honoree, Ed Levenson, Philip said, “Well ….. that looks lovely, BUT …..” When I added that it was in a test kitchen, he said, “WHO eats in a TEST kitchen??”

So I waited again.

And I asked for a third time:

“Philip, when have I asked you to do something that you haven’t had a great time and experience doing?” He paused and smiled.

I had him.

I added, “Trust me” (with a sort-of Yiddishy but mostly Italian emphasis).

He did, thankfully, and he let me organize the event, which he truly loved.  At the dinner, when I told this story as part of a toast, I thanked everyone who attended for not letting me down. And I thanked Philip, for all the “techniques” on negotiability that he had taught me because sometimes a no is just a no, but sometimes a no is really a dissociated yes.

It goes without saying that Philip was renown in our community, but it wasn’t brought home to me how widespread his influence was until I presented at a conference in Seattle. Once the attendees learned of my affiliation with Philip, it was as if I told them I was hanging around George Clooney, or Bono or Beyoncé or the Dali Lama. They kept peppering me with questions: What is he like? He’s my hero. Is he approachable? Would he come speak here? Would he eat in a test kitchen? You know, the usual kinds of questions.

And so, what I walked away with was the idea that even though we may be constantly struggling with ambiguity and uncertainty, there is one thing I can say for sure: Rock Stars come in all different shapes, sizes and ages.

I will miss you dearly, Philip. I hope you have found some peace, and that somehow you know how many spaces you occupy for all of us, personally and professionally. And I hope you know how much you have helped so many of us tolerate, stand in – indeed, flourish in — spaces we could not, without you, have even conceived of as possibilities.

Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D.
New York, NY

For Philip Bromberg

Stuart A. Pizer, Ph.D. (USA)

Philip Bromberg’s death, on May 18, is a real punctuation point in our psychoanalytic world.  And it leaves a hole in our relational world, globally. My loss of Philip is a hole in my own personal world.

Barbara and I first met Philip (people called him Phil but, over the years, we stayed with calling him Philip) when Steve Mitchell told our MIP (Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis) advanced candidates’ class that he was the best person to come to our theory seminar with Paul Russell and teach us Sullivan. The weekend he spent here conducting a two-day seminar in our living room felt magical. A bit like falling in love. Philip as teacher had an extraordinary ability to focus his listening exquisitely. You could sit there and watch him taking in, with eyes and ears, from the edge of his soul, the plumb lines in each person’s comments. This was not effort but receptiveness, which would lead to his follow up at the heart of an issue. I imagined him listening this way in his office. Philip also looked strikingly like my grandfather.

We quickly became friends. He stayed at our house several times. We ate in his Central Park West apartment, or went out to dinner at each trip to New York. We own a painting by his wife Margo which, literally, we bought off the wall of their living room. Philip’s attachment to his friends ran deep. And he had, and loved, and mentored many.

Philip’s exquisite sensitivity was accompanied by notable vulnerability. He could require special handling, a delicacy at the edge of fragility. He was also temperamental. He could turn abruptly to harsh and chilling projections. But he also had the amazing capacity to look deeply inside and discerningly testify to his own internal processes.

When Barbara and I were founding co-chairs of the MIP Symposium Committee, we invited Philip to speak at a full day Symposium shaped around his work. He wrote his pivotal paper, “Standing in the Spaces: The Multiplicity of Self and the Psychoanalytic Relationship,” for this program, in which he engaged in a heated exchange with Frank Lachmann over how many “selves” our theory needs. Philip also accepted our invitation to speak at the 1998 Festschrift for Paul Russell. Charged with reading and using Paul’s paper on “rendering the repetition,” Philip wrote “Potholes on the Royal Road: Or Is It an Abyss?”

Philip would assert that theory, in itself, did not much interest him. He said he did not consider himself a theorist, but a clinician energized by clinical writing. But Philip developed Sullivan’s ideas on dissociation, textured it with Winnicottian object relations, and generated a model of a multiply constituted self, structured by an innate talent for dissociation which became defensively deployed in the face of relational trauma. He crystallized the image of health as the capacity to feel like one self while being many, and conceptualized resistance as the person’s adaptive struggle to maintain self-stability in the destabilizing process of analytic change. He emphasized the relational process, the living together of reciprocal states and state shifts, rather than what he considered the desperate, or “cranky,” recourse of linear or “content” interpretation.  He declared that what the patient needs in the analyst is a person, not a “saint.” And he defined the essential movement of analytic process as the gradual relinquishment of the dissociative structure of the mind, allowing for experiences of personhood, the recognition of the analyst as a “real” person, and the capacity to hold paradox and multiplicity in conflict. Now, if that is not theory I don’t know what is!

Long after the sadness of today has softened, psychoanalysis will be remembering, using, and building upon the legacy of Philip Bromberg’s foundational ideas.

Stuart A. Pizer, Ph.D.
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Corresponding in the Spaces

Maggie Robbins, M.P.S., L.P. (USA)

As a send-off into analytic training, my private practice supervisor gave me Standing in the Spaces. I told an English professor friend to take a look; he put a chapter on his advanced seminar syllabus. Somehow Philip discovered the class. He was tickled. How had Max even heard of the book, Philip wondered. Max told him, and he asked Max to put us in touch.

Why? I can only imagine that being Philip, if there was anything going on concerning Philip Bromberg, he wanted his finger on the pulse of it.

His next step was to check my pulse. Through the medium of email, he ascertained that I was alive enough to bother with, then challenged me to become more so. And as the extra blood poured into my brain, I started to live more thoroughly, using increasingly more of myself.

After the death of his wife, C. S. Lewis (1961) wrote, with dread, that his memories of her were becoming obscured. Philip (2011) quotes Lewis, characterizing this as a particularly protective dissociation: “Slowly, quietly, like snowflakes . . . little flakes of me . . . are settling down on my image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. . . .  The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone.” Philip’s tang: despite the ache I want to hold on to it, but how? There’s his writing, yes, plus Lawrence Brown’s author photo for The Shadow of the Tsunami, which gives me a jolt I hope I won’t ever get habituated to. But for me even that fierce, joyful picture and all those radiant words don’t capture Philip.

In I Am a Strange Loop (2007), Douglas Hofstadter recalls his reaction to a sudden death, how he desperately piled up anecdotes, journal passages, home movies, photographs. With a large enough accumulation of traces, could he realize a more granular—even a more living—copy of the original? I kept our emails, but I can’t find Philip in them, which makes me so sad. And I expect I will fail if I try to glue together a pointillist collage. But our interactions coaxed a great deal of me out of hiding. I guess my job isn’t to remember. It’s to stay out.

Maggie Robbins, M.P.S., L.P.
New York, NY

 

 

 

 

 

Hofstadter, D. (2007). I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Basic Books.

Lewis, C. S. (1961). A Grief Observed. New York: HarperCollins, 1989, pp. 31–32, as cited in “Playing with Boundaries,” collected in Bromberg, P. M. (2011), Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys. New York and London: Routledge, 2011, p. 62.

My Friend Philip

Donnel Stern, Ph.D. (USA)

Philip was first my teacher, and when I met him in 1976 he was already a mature, creative and sophisticated psychoanalytic thinker and clinician. He seemed beyond my reach. I was young enough that the number of years between him and me carried much more significance than they did later on, as we became close friends. As time passed, Philip recommended me for speaking and writing engagements he could not himself accept. I appreciated these gestures very much, since I was not known. Eventually we referred one another patients, supervisees, and members of our study and supervision groups. During the 80s, at no little risk to himself and his career, he stood by me during a politically difficult episode at the White Institute, very painful to me. He had my back, and thereafter he always did. I grew to love him for it.

Nobody listened better than Philip did, with that adoring, beaming expression that any friend of his saw over and over again. He was just so very happy for you when you had good news, and ready to absorb whatever was less than good, and perhaps to help you see it a little differently.

Philip had a sweetness about him. He was vulnerable in a way that was irresistible. He was shy and very private. He never expected to be lionized, and when he was, or when someone sought him out from some distant part of the world (as people constantly did), he never stopped being surprised, and the attention could make him uncomfortable. But despite feeling that way, he was unfailingly gracious to these people, generous with his time, his interest in them, and his attention to them.

As in any close relationship, we had our share of conflicts, but we always found our way through them. Our affection for one another was such that once, in the midst of a painful fight with him via email, I used the phrase “partners in thought” to convey some aspect of the point of view I was trying to press on him. Immediately, it occurred to me that I should use it as the book title I was looking for, and I was so pleased and excited that I emailed him back right away, smack in the middle of the disagreement, to express my delight. He was delighted in return, and the skirmish ended.

Even when we disagreed, I always maintained the confidence that the motive for Philip’s position, to the extent that that motive had to do with me, was to press for what he believed was in my best interest. I might have been convinced that he was dead wrong, but I knew that he was arguing his position because he thought it was best for me.

For many years we went to dinner at restaurants all over the Upper East Side, where we both had our offices, bouncing around from one eatery to another. I learned to drink a very dry (no vermouth at all!) Grey Goose martini, up, with olives on the side, always on the side. I learned so many things from Philip. That is one of the most enjoyable of them. I will miss our times together, especially those dinners, more than I can express. You can never be prepared for the death of someone you love, no matter how much you may have known it was coming. I knew it was coming. But I am heartbroken, anyway.

Donnel Stern, Ph.D.
New York, NY