Dearest Philip, our wonderful teacher,

The time has come … that bittersweet hour when the heart tightens and triggers tears full of love.

All we can do is feel shaken, moved, and cry… letting, like flashbacks, the experiences of our contact with you emerge.

You take form within us, a warm presence with a penetrating gaze into the "here and now" of the other that fills the absences of life … a slender figure exuding a calm strength that embraces vulnerability by tenderly wiping away its tears.

You are gone, but you have left us a precious legacy.

A legacy of knowledge about social and personal responsibility, transcendence, exclusively aggressive behavior, social injustice, equality, oppression, human rights, faith versus safety, and so much more!

But mostly you have left a legacy of a way of being and existing in the world, both as a therapist with ethics, commitment, care, boundaries and authenticity, and as a sensitive, true, loyal teacher, citizen, friend, companion, father and grandfather ... it is a legacy that defines us and honors us.

So we thank you, dearest Philip, from the bottom of our hearts, and we will be forever grateful to you!

Philip Lichtenberg, Professor Emeritus at Bryn Mawr College and Co-Founder and Faculty Member of the Gestalt Institute of Philadelphia, Passed away peacefully and naturally on May 22, 2020 at Kendal at Longwood in Kenneth Square, PA.

Dr. Lichtenberg was born in Schenectady, N.Y. on October 1, 1926. He grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana excelling in basketball at South Side High School. After attending Rose Polytechnic Institute and Indiana University while in the U.S. Army Air Corps, he served in post WW 2 Germany as a sergeant in the cryptography section. He completed his BS, MA and PhD degrees at Western Reserve University (now CWRU) in Cleveland. Dr. Lichtenberg taught at Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work from 1961 to 1996 and at GTIP from its founding from 1984 to 2011.