Bob Holt
Paolo MIGONE
Dear friends,
one loss after the other… Also Bob Holt died. On Dec. 27, 2023, Bob celebrated his 106th birthday, and had a birthday party with Zoom, that he enjoyed. I remember that at our 2009 meeting he wanted to say his goodbye to the group, and we decided to forgo the usual Saturday morning go-round and, instead, give everyone a chance to express their appreciation to Bob. Everett published the transcript of the discussion and also some photos:
www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/rapaportklein/bobholt/bobholt%20transcript.pdf
www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/rapaportklein/bobholt/bobholtphotos.pdf
Joan Holt just sent the email below, and gave me the permission to send it to the group, to “his” group.
Paolo
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Bob proved himself human after all. He died at home at 2:15 am yesterday, after a rapid decline starting just a few days ago. Once it was clear he was dying, we did everything we could to keep him comfortable—regular
doses of Morphine to ease any pain or breathing difficulty and Ativan for anxiety/agitation—all under the guidance of his hospice nurse. Though we were unable to tell if he was aware, Michael and I and Tracy (Michael’s girlfriend) followed the now common
practice of telling him we’re with him, we love him, we will keep him comfortable, and reassuring him that he can go whenever his mind and body is ready; that we will miss him but will be alright. We also left him alone at times to give him whatever inner
space he might need. It all seemed to work well to keep him, and us, calm and ready. Michael and I were with him when he took his last breath. Danny, Ellen, and Rachel drove up from NY and were able to spend a little time by his bedside with his body before
it was taken to U. Mass. Chan Medical School in Worcester where Bob and I had already arranged to donate our bodies. So now Bob will perform his final act as a teacher (of medical students).
The grief comes in waves, but having our immediate family here to share it is a great comfort. I am aware that Bob’s longevity has resulted in the his being predeceased by many of his former students and colleagues, and that he is little known by today’s
professionals and students So we count on you to get the word out to those other professional colleagues who may want to learn of Bob’s death, like the Rapaport Klein Group, his Italian friends, etc.
I think you know how much Bob loved you. I will continue to.
Joan
Da: rapapor...@googlegroups.com <rapapor...@googlegroups.com>
Per conto di Paolo MIGONE
Inviato: mercoledì 10 aprile 2024 17:45
A: rapapor...@googlegroups.com
Oggetto: Fran
Dear friends, another sad news, Fran Lippmann passed away last week:
www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/berkshire/name/frances-lippmann-obituary?id=54830513
Paolo
Da: Paolo MIGONE
Inviato: mercoledì 10 aprile 2024 11:04
A: rapapor...@googlegroups.com
Oggetto: Bernie
Dear RKSG members,
with great sorrow, we learned that Bernie Maskit died. We are very close to Wilma for this very painful loss.
I copy below a beautify email that five of his collaborators and friends just sent to the Psychodynamic Listserv.
Paolo
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Dear Friends and Colleagues:
It is with great sorrow that we note that on Friday, March 15, 2024, our dear friend and colleague, Bernard Maskit, passed away at Mt. Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan at the age of 88. Bernie, despite his accomplishments, was such a friendly and modest person.
He was a Professor of Mathematics at Stony Brook University where he guided generations of students. He was well known in the field, particularly for the “Maskit slice through the modulii space of Kleinian Groups and the Klein-Maskit combination theorem.” He received his PhD from NYU, was a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, then at MIT, before coming to Stony Brook where he taught, from 1972 until his retirement in 2008. In 2012, he became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.
In the late 1990s, he began to collaborate with his wife, partner, and professional colleague, Wilma Bucci. To those of us who worked closely with them, our minds were always on “Wilma and Bernie” or “Bernie and Wilma.” In the early 2000s, they both became intrinsically involved with the Pacella Research Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NYPSI), whose focus has been to integrate an empirical research perspective with its excellence in clinical psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Bernie’s contribution to our work goes far beyond his official title as chair of the NYPSI IRB.
Bernie’s mathematical and programming expertise enabled an exponential leap in the understanding and utilization of Multiple Code Theory (MCT) and the Referential Process (RP). This allowed for the further development of sophisticated methods to empirically evaluate narratives, including psychotherapy and psychoanalytic sessions.
Bernie was instrumental in guiding the work of many graduate analysts and students, including mentoring dissertations, papers, and posters. Traditionally, the evaluation of the transcriptions of recorded psychotherapy and psychoanalytic sessions has been based on the words and sounds uttered by both patient and analyst without consideration of pauses and silences. Bernie’s most recent work involved the creation of a program which allows for the evaluation of the various language measures along a time axis (rather than just considering the word and sound order).
While Bernie was in the hospital, prior to his death, he kept telling Wilma that he was eager to go home so he could complete the program. Unfortunately, death interrupted this plan. We hope that we can complete Bernie’s final contribution. In addition to the work at the Pacella Research Center, Bernie’s and Wilma’s work has been influential nationally and internationally. Some international centers utilizing the principles of the Referential Process include Bergamo and Rome, Italy, Israel, and Argentina.
He is survived by his wife: Wilma Bucci, Children: Sidney Maskit, Professor Jonathan Maskit, Daniel Maskit, Jocelyn James, Michael Bucci; Grandchildren: Adrian Fultner-Maskit, Kyle Van Belle, Hanna Van Belle, Marisol Bucci, Nicolas Shoop-Cohen, Celeste Shoop-Cohen, Evelyn Condo-Cohen
We will all dearly miss him.
A memorial will be held in the near future.
Christopher Christian
Leon Hoffman
Rachele Mariani
Sean Murphy
Attá Negri
As representatives of many colleagues
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Blinder, Barton
Christopher Christian
On Apr 11, 2024, at 6:03 PM, Blinder, Barton <bbli...@hs.uci.edu> wrote:
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Deborah L Browning
It is indeed sad news, and yes, it seems, sometimes the losses just pile up. I took Bob’s psychoanalytic theory course in the NYU Clinical Program in 1974 or 5. That led to a seminar on the use of his Primary Process Manual which I applied to a study of the libretto of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire which was – well, really a fun application of his serious, carefully thought-out work. He was pleased with it and appreciated my earlier training in musicology and offered me a kind of respectful mentorship I sorely needed at that time in my life. He trusted me to organize his large project of scoring Loevinger’s Ego Development Sentence Completion Test from the Yankelovich Youth Study.
I met Joan, and Bob and she decided to trust me to teach their sons, Danny and Michael, piano lessons. Despite Bob’s reputation for laboring over people’s dissertations, inadvertently slowing down the whole process, in my case, Bob ushered me through quickly and efficiently, respectful of the fact that I needed that degree to support myself. That decade of Bob’s gentle, thoughtful, yet intellectually challenging contact provided me a secure grounding in this field as well as a network of friends and acquaintances – including my eventual husband and my analyst -- all of whom had known or worked with Bob in some fashion.
After years away from New York, somewhat losing touch with Bob, coming into the Rapaport-Klein Study Group, which had been home base for my husband, brought me happily back in touch with Bob. I cannot imagine what my career as a clinical psychologist would have been like without the role that Bob played in it. My heartfelt condolences to Joan, Daniel and Michael.
Deborah (Browning-Schimek)
NYC and Alford, Mass
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Holly Levenkron
On Apr 11, 2024, at 7:07 PM, Deborah L Browning <deborah....@nyu.edu> wrote:
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Rebecca Curtis
On Apr 11, 2024, at 9:06 PM, Paolo MIGONE <paolo....@unipr.it> wrote:
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