E. Mark Stem (1929-2014) Erwin Mark Stern, who had retired to Bare Market Farm in Clinton Corners, New York, died of a glioblastoma on March 11, 2014, in the peaceful shelter of Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. He was interred at Green River Cemetery in East Hampton, Long Island. He is deeply mourned by his wife Virginia Fraser Underwood Stem, whom he married in 1967; children Sarah (and Thomas Crowell), Cailean (and Darren Press), and Cameron (and Rebecca Stem); six grandchildren; and a host of students, colleagues, clients, and friends. E. Mark Stern was bom in New York City on Decem­ ber 5, 1929, the only child of Esther Schwimmer and David S. Stem, who were secular Jews. Mark’s parents divorced around 1934, remarried other spouses, and divorced again before Mark turned 15. The psychic pain of Mark’s child­ hood soon impelled him into a transformative spiritual pilgrimage that wandered from Christian Science Sunday School to an eventual commitment to Catholicism, closely intertwined with a psychotherapeutic journey throughout which Andras Angyal was his major guide. Mark graduated from the Horace Mann School for boys, attended Syracuse University for a year, then trans­ ferred to Boston University, earning a bachelor’s degree in education in 1952. He completed his master’s degree at The Pennsylvania State University in 1953 and earned his doctorate in developmental and clinical psychology in 1955 at Teachers College, Columbia University. Mark joined the American Psychological Association (APA) and ended 1955 as a visiting clinical psychologist at London’s Maudsley Hospital. In 1956, he began working at the Theodor Reik Clinical Center for Psychotherapy. He earned a cer­ tificate in psychoanalysis in 1958 at the Training Institute of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanal­ ysis, supervised by Silvano Arieti. Mark was licensed as a psychologist in New York in 1959 and was certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology in 1976. He was intimately acquainted with the trailblazers of the psy­ chotherapeutic community through the American Academy of Psychotherapists, and he edited their journal Voices: The Art and Science o f Psychotherapy from Winter 1976-1977 through Spring/Summer 1989. In both his editorial and writing roles for Voices, Mark lived out his view that the therapist’s role “reverences the mysteries inherent in per­ sonal transformation.” Mark was elected a fellow of APA Divisions 12 (Clinical Psychology), 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology), 29 (Psychotherapy), and 39 (Psychoanalysis), honors reflecting the mature therapeutic and highly literate voice he brought to his editing of The Psychotherapy Patient (1984-2004), a journal devoted to an experiential and attribute-focused approach to clinical

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practice that featured many of Mark’s finest clinical case studies. In 1965, Mark joined the faculty of the Graduate Division of Pastoral Counseling at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, retiring in 2000 as professor emeri­ tus. Mark viewed this calling as the culmination of his work with all his mentors, and his teaching inspired his books for Christian publishers: Psychotheology (1970), co­ authored with Catholic priest Bert G. Marino; Holiness and Mental Health: A Guidebook fo r Pastoral Counseling (1972), coedited with physician Alfred A. Joyce; and the edited volume The Other Side o f the Couch: What Thera­ pists Believe (1981). In 1966, he was the founding editor of the annual Journal o f Pastoral Counseling. Mark joined Psychologists Interested in Religious Issues and helped bring it to APA Division status in 1976. He served the new Division 36 as Newsletter editor (1979), president (1981— 1982), and council representative (1983-1986 and 1988 — 1991) and was a division fellow and a recipient of both their Distinguished Service Award (1992) and the Virginia Sexton Mentoring Award (1996). Mark found his ideological home in humanistic and existential psychology. He published articles in the Journal o f Existential Psychiatry, the Journal o f Existentialism, The Humanistic Psychologist, and the International Gestalt Journal. He served APA’s Division 32 (Humanistic Psy­ chology) as president (1990-1991) and council represen­ tative (1994-1999) and helped draft the 1995 Bill of Rights for Psychotherapy Patients/Clients. He was a division fel­ low and the 1999 recipient of the division’s first Carl Rogers Award for outstanding contributions to the profes­ sion and practice of humanistic psychology. In 2014, he was posthumously presented the Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Humanistic Psychology. Mark’s colleagues remember him as “a soul filled with grace,” who brought to psychotherapy a sense of depth, reverence, and awe manifested in a compassionate and witness-bearing presence to human suffering. Mark’s experiences on the APA Council of Represen­ tatives propelled him into entering the race for APA pres­ ident-elect in 1992, in which he was unsuccessful. Mark’s strong humanistic stance led him as a member of the APA Council of Representatives to oppose the 1995 Resolution on Sexual Orientation, which declared “conversion thera­ pies” for homosexuality to be unethical. Mark believed that “It should be a client’s right, totally and completely, to choose a therapy which is consistent with his goals and values.” Hendrika Vande Kemp Private Practice, Annandale, Virginia

December 2014 • American Psychologist © 2014 American Psychological Association 0003-066X/14/$ 12.00 Vol. 69, No. 9, 932 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038226

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E. Mark Stern (1929-2014).

This article memorializes E. Mark Stern (1929 -2014), a clinical psychologist who found his ideological home in humanistic and existential psychology...
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