To Philip, with Love

Amidst the many tragedies of 2020, the field of psychoanalysis lost an eminent figure, a cornerstone of contemporary psychoanalysis, when Dr. Philip M. Bromberg passed away of natural causes on May 18^th, at the age of 89, two months shy of his 90^th birthday. During his professional life, with his prime contributions to our interpersonal/relational field, Philip awakened the dreamer—and more—in many of us, as he illuminated the importance of “minding the gap”, helping us witness “the shadow of the tsunami” of loss, and guiding us as we navigated “potholes in the royal road.1”In writing this, I have the extraordinary opportunity to access memories that I did not remember I remembered about him. Yet, as I do, I recognize that I can capture just a sliver: Philip made accessible a multitude of spaces for us. His contributions allowed us to tolerate, stand, and flourish in the spaces of our work - spaces that were unknown before he shared them with us—spaces that we could not, without him, have ever conceived as possibilities.

It was the summer of 1969 when Philip M. Bromberg entered the William Alanson White Institute. For over 50 years, he wrote extensively about mental development and the patient/therapist relationship with a focus on the mutual impact of people. He had a deep appreciation of the private domains of experience, the hidden places where personal existence was preserved. His work has both presented and created an interpersonal/relational point of view that emphasizes self-organization, states of consciousness, dissociation, enactment, and multiple self-states. Philip had a unique vision and those of us who knew and worked with him know that there are countless ways he changed the face of psychoanalysis. His books will be classics for centuries, and he influenced the field in ways that will live forever.

Philip was first and foremost an interpersonal psychoanalyst, focusing on the here-and-now moments and making clinically appropriate use of them, with a fort