Tributes

Jeffrey Lee Longhofer, PhD, LCSW
(1955-2023)

Deceased January 31, 2023 | Posted 02/03/2023 | Updated 11/26/2023

Sad News: Jeff Longhofer's Passing

To Our Members,

It is with deep sadness that we inform you of the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Jeff Longhofer, Past Co-President of AAPCSW. Jeff contributed to our organization and the field in so many ways, with his original, sharp, and brilliant ideas. He blended clinical social work and psychoanalysis with his earlier work as an anthropologist. We will miss him. May his memory be a blessing.

Our sincere condolences to Jeff's partner, Jerry Floersch, Past Co-President of AAPCSW with Jeff. The duration of Jeff's illness, allowed Jerry to prepare his thoughts in advance for their OnCaring.org website.

See the link below for details of mourning Jeff and celebrating his life. https://oncaring.org/blog/x2hfy0zwqmlh5pfsavim669jlnhsh9

Jerry wrote that it is his hope that “as Jeff's physical self transformed into a spirit self, Jeff's spirit will inspire us to imagine what we are not now.”

In sympathy,
Penny Rosen, Brian Ngo-Smith on behalf of the AAPCSW Board
PS: Tributes in Memory of Jeff are being collected for posting on our website. Send tributes to Penny Rosen at rosenpmsw@aol.com.

Commemorative Remarks

Posted 11/26/2023

Good afternoon friends and colleagues,

It's been a wonderful conference here in Chicago. Our organization is 43 years old and it's incredible to have 9 past-presidents here still supporting AAPCSW!

I feel privileged to have been asked to tell you a little about another past-president, Dr. Jeffrey Longhofer. We were fortunate to have him serve as a valued member of the Advanced Education Foundation Board. We are a not-for profit educational organization spun off from the New York State Society for Clinical Social Work when continuing education requirements were enacted by the NYS legislature in 2015. We offer quality CE presentations for the 62,000 licensed social workers in the state as well as for psychologists, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists and licensed psychoanalysts.

Our Board meets for only 1 hour, the third Friday of every month, except August, of course, on Zoom. Jeff never missed a meeting. He was a charming, quick-witted, kind-hearted, and a remarkably generous contributor to any all discussions ranging from fees for presenters to marketing strategies.

He was the clinical social worker who made you feel you must be part of his circle and that clinical social work knowledge and practice were relevant, substantial, and effective.

Not surprising, I met Jeff and his treasured partner Jerry Floersch, PhD, LCSW, when they shared the presidency of this organization. After several meals together in New York, exchanging concerns about the future of psychodynamic education in MSW graduate schools, it seemed obvious to invite them both to be Board members of the ACE Foundation. Fortunately for us, they both agreed. Jeff's contributions to our monthly meetings were in a word, dynamite. Ideas sprouted from him - about organizational structure, educational program concepts, upgrades to our website, including recommending our genius IT person, self-study guidelines, honorarium arrangements - so many ideas spontaneously and enthusiastically shared.

And then, regretfully, they moved back home to Kansas. But I am very happy to report it didn't change the prodigious level of Jeff's contributions one bit. A Zoom tour of their new home's garage revealed an extraordinary assembly of technological equipment for bringing educational activities out of the Midwest to the rest of the profession.

As most of you know, Jeff died on January 31, 2023. I miss his thoughts on our current dilemmas for our clinical social work profession. The efforts to dismantle the LMSW license and in some areas the LCSW are undermining our professional status and dangerous to patient protection. Social work curriculum at the Master's level has for the most part eliminated psychodynamic education, diluted field work experience and seems to have eliminated emphasis on the power of patient-therapist relationship and the development of the professional self. Jeff's intelligence and commitment to clinical social work will be missed by many but most especially by our Board. As a footnote, I would add that we are fortunate that his partner Jerry with his internet knowledge has agreed to continue to benefit the ACE Foundation. For this we are very grateful.

Thank you. With great sadness,

Commemorating Jeff Longhofer
Marsha Wineburgh, New York, NY
(President, Advanced Clinical Education Foundation (ACE) of the NY State Society of Clinical Social Work; AAPCSW Past President)
Presented at the 2023 AAPCSW Conference

Jeff Longhofer's death has saddened all who knew and loved him. He simply embodied our better angels.

An anthropologist, an analyst, and a social activist, Jeff managed to understand human beings from the inside out while advocating for their most basic human rights. In him we saw the best of ourselves and our profession. He promoted social justice while advancing an unwavering commitment to level of in-depth psychodynamic theory and practice.

Jeff was a passionate man. Whether it was food, good wine, the arts, travel, he fully indulged in the pleasures of the senses. But his passion was also channeled into disciplined writing. He co- authored two textbooks for beginners, one on case management, one on core psychodynamic principles. He co-edited two casebooks on sexual trauma, one focused on LBGTQ populations. He co-edited a book on spirituality. Each of these books married psychodynamic practice with social injustice in ways that were accessible, simple but never simplistic. As a scholar, Jeff's curiosity was insatiable. One of his more recent projects was on caring. Here he and his beloved Jerry developed podcasts during the pandemic that covered topics such as covid, or mass incarceration, in the contexts of social, spiritual and community care. While most of us, during Covid, were watching Netflix or paralyzed by anxiety or depression, Jeff and his beloved Jerry were thinking, creating, and developing ideas on caring!

Jeff modeled critical thinking to students and to his colleagues. I remember that after each presentation I gave at this conference, Jeff came bounding up fulsome with praise but also with an incisive and oh so smart critique, that left me nothing short of envious of his intellectual gifts. Each of us who knew him were infected by his intellectual curiosity as we also observed him mentoring the next generation of practitioners and scholars at this meeting, at Rutgers, and in the field.

Finally, Jeff was a very generous man. He was a mensch. He and Jerry were partners in every sense. They were co-collaborators in life: contributing their time and resources to indigenous peoples. As co-presidents of this organization, Jeff and Jerry gave of themselves fully, creating new learning opportunities, opening up the organization to new members, advancing the balance between sophisticated clinical knowledge and social activism: Jeff thrived on kibbitzing, questioning, embracing ideas and pushing back when he saw injustice, organizationally, academically and politically. He did not suffer fools.

Those who knew Jeff admired the profound and deep creative synergy between his most loyal and loved collaborator, Jerry. They were a team of intellectuals, a brave couple who moved from NJ to Lawrence, Kansas, two men who created beautiful environments wherever they lived. Their love for each other and for the natural world was a model for the rest of us. Jerry told me recently that they were a team. Jeff was the bee, Jerry the honey. Jeff could attract every kind of person, Jerry could bring them in. And so as we grieve the loss of Jeff, we also feel gratitude to both Jeff, and to Jerry for all of the ways that they, together, gave to our profession and to us.

Commemorating Jeff Longhofer
by Joan Berzoff, MSW, EdD
Presented at the 2023 AAPCSW Conference

Jeff Longhofer was a very special human being for many reasons. I will take just a few minutes to tell you a story about when I first met Jeff that illustrates a number of his most salient qualities, the ones that demonstrate his unwavering commitment to care, his kindness, his love for other humans.

I first met Jeff when he and Jerry moved to New Jersey from Cleveland. Cathy Siebold, then President of AAPCSW and herself living in New Jersey, encouraged me to meet him. We encountered each other at a local professional workshop and agreed to have lunch. Jeff shared with me his and Jerry's vision for a new kind of social work doctoral program that would be based in psychodynamic thinking, broadened by a transdisciplinary approach and would build on the knowledge of clinicians, encouraging them to engage with other clinicians and the general public through writing and multi-media projects. I saw immediately Jeff's energy, enthusiasm, love for our field, and confidence in the field of psychoanalytic social work to change the world.

But that wasn't the whole story. We met shortly after the gay Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi suicided by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate broadcast him on a life webcam with a lover. Jeff and Jerry were instrumental in setting up the Tyler Clementi Center for Diversity Education and Bias Prevention at Rutgers. At the time, I was working in a nearby high school and running the Gay/Straight Alliance. I asked Jeff if he would be willing to come to our school and talk with the group about his work at the Tyler Clementi Center. Of course, he said yes! And then he began to tell me about what he would like to say. He told me that he had been thinking a lot about the emotion of shame and wanted to address the shame associated with being gay. At this point, I wondered about what I had just gotten into. My students, I thought, wanted to think about gay pride. How was this talk about shame going to go over? Not well, I thought. But this kind and generous man that I was just getting to know had hooked me, and I couldn't turn back. So, with some significant trepidation, we set a date, and he came to the school.

About 20 students sat in a circle, and Jeff regaled them with his own story of coming to understand his own homosexuality as a boy in Kansas, of dealing with shaming images of gay people in the media, of listening to reports about Stonewall on a short-wave radio. Jeff, by the way, was hilarious at imitating voices, and in this case, he imitated the static of the short-wave. The kids were rapt. As he shared with them his own experiences of shame, they began to open up to him about theirs and to ask him questions about his experience. I was awe-struck. He had managed to engage a group of teenagers around the topic of shame.

I have many stories about Jeff Longhofer. I think I like this one because it highlights so many of the things I love about him. He was one of the most generous people I have known in my life. And I am not talking about giving things or money, but rather giving of his heart. In this story, he gave his time, shared his story, and helped a group of teenagers who often considered themselves to be outcasts to feel that they belonged, they mattered, they were understood. He was an amazing story-teller, but also a keen and empathic listener. He could engage people in thinking and talking about the most difficult thoughts and feelings. He had deep compassion for others, and most of all, his love for human beings shined through in everything he did and said.

Jeff should have lived many years longer so that his ethic of care could have spread more deeply to all he touched. It is now up to us to carry that forward, to use his example and legacy to guide us in making all humans feel accepted and loved, to challenge injustice, to remember that the cure for human suffering, as Freud once told us, is effected by love.

Commemorating the late Jeff Longhofer,
By Wendy Winograd (11/11/23)
Presented at the 2023 AAPCSW Conference

Member Tributes

Submitted by email. Posted 02/03/2023

This is devastating news. Jeff was one of the most engaged, interesting, talented, warm, inviting, curious scholars I've ever been lucky enough to know and he made a profound impact on our field. The world is diminished without his charm, talent, enthusiasm, and kindness. I will miss him and hope that we can honor him at AAPSCW, in November.

Joan Berzoff, Northampton, MA.

The first time I met Jeff was when I took a class from him as an American Psychoanalytic Association teaching scholar. He was totally brilliant. Somehow we then stumbled upon the fact that my father was a well-known Anthropologist (in retirement). He literally almost leapt into the air, as he had admired and read my father's work. It was deeply moving to see this response. When I presented at an AAPCSW national conference in North Carolina my father came to hear my talk. Jeff met him and spoke to him about the deep impact my father's work had on him. My father, who is very humble and elderly, was deeply moved. The way in which Jeff embraced my father and his work was not unusual. I think this is the way he approached so many things in his life-- with incredible energy, joy, and brilliance. My deepest condolences to his family and to his beloved partner, Jerry.

Natalie Peacock-Corral, AAPCSW North Carolina Area Chair, North Carolina

So sad. A terrible loss. Such a smart and lovely man. Condolences to Jerry.

Samoan Barish, Santa Monica, CA
(Former AAPCSW President)

Very sorry to hear of Jeff's passing. Warm condolences to Jerry. Many thanks for the lovely words and poem.

Janet Burak, New York, NY

It was with deep sadness that I recently learned of Jeff's passing. I had the privilege of hearing him present at AAPCSW some years ago and getting to know him through his unwavering commitment to establishing Psychoanalytic Social Work as AAPCSW's official journal, as well as through his later contributions as a journal board member. His keen intellect, passion, and scholarly command of three different disciplines — clinical social work, anthropology, and psychoanalysis — made him truly exceptional, and his leadership as our organization's co-President represented yet another of his many talents. My deepest condolences to Jerry, and to his many friends and colleagues. He shall be missed.

Jerry Brandell, Ann Arbor, MI
(Editor in Chief, Psychoanalytic Social Work)

As many of you have already learned, we have lost a valued member of the ACE Foundation Board, Jeffrey Longhofer, PhD, LCSW. If you ever met a charming, quick-witted, kind hearted Rutgers's tenured professor who made you feel you must be part of his group to learn the basics of clinical social work practice, chances are you had encountered Jeff. Not surprising in view of his commitment to clinical social work, I met Jeff and his treasured partner, Jerry Floersch, Ph.D., LCSW when they shared the presidency of AAPCSW. After several meals together exchanging concerns about the future of psychodynamic education in graduate schools, it seems obvious to invite them both to be Board members of the Advanced Clinical Education Foundation (ACE). Fortunately for all concerned they agreed. Jeff's contributions to our monthly 60-minute meetings were dynamite. Ideas about organizational structure, educational program concepts, upgrades to our website, including our genius IT person, self-study guidelines, honorarium arrangements …..so many ideas generously and enthusiastically shared. And then they moved back to Kansas. And I am very happy to report it didn't change the prodigious level of his contributions one bit. A ZOOM tour of their garage revealed a new level of technological undertakings for bringing educational activities out of the Midwest to the profession. Jeffrey Longhofer, PhD, LCSW died on January 31, 2023. His intelligence, genuineness and enthusiasm for the future of clinical social work will be missed by many but most especially by our Board.

With great sadness,
Marsha Wineburgh, New York, NY
(President, Advanced Clinical Education Foundation (ACE) of the NY State Society of Clinical Social Work; AAPCSW Past President)

My heart is heavy as I write my thoughts about Jeff. As anyone who had a conversation with him could attest, Jeff was an engaging intellect. It is how we first became acquainted at a coffee shop in Highland Pak, NJ, where we were both living at the time. Discussing theory with Jeff was just fun. Our professional paths persisted over the years. We shared common cause as professors who were dismayed at the lack of depth in clinical education at schools of social work. But my more poignant memories are the personal ones. Over the years, my husband and I enjoyed many experiences with Jeff and his beloved spouse Jerry. Along with his curious mind, he loved to travel, attend theater and was quite a foodie. He knew how to enjoy life. We crossed paths with Jeff and Jerry in many places. In Cambridge, MA, where they came to do a radio taping; at theaters or restaurants in New York City; we even got together in Palm Springs where we were both vacationing. Were it not for Jeff, we might never have been aware of Pink Martini, an orchestra that we have come to enjoy a great deal. For these and many other memories, I will keep Jeff in memory. He touched me with his kindness, intelligence, belief in social justice, and joie de vivre.

Cathy Siebold, New York, NY and Cambridge, MA (AAPCSW Past President)

At one of the Shiva evenings held for Jeff Longhofer, Jeff's zest for life came alive. Whether guests were in person or on zoom, we heard heartwarming remembrances of Jeff. Jerry Floersch, Jeff's beloved partner, was the gracious host in Kansas. We were asked to share words that came to our minds about Jeff. For me, the words were: brilliant, creative, caring. Even Jeff's caring and activism was widespread. For example, addressing the infrastructure problem in their New Jersey community (a traffic issue affecting predominately a specific population in their town). Professionally, Jeff's presentations were original, referencing many disciplines. At a profound play at the Park Avenue Armory in NYC that Jeff, Jerry, and I attended, Jeff's mind raced to give his impression and give it a contemporary context. Jeff's words - “it's complicated; life is complicated” - always resonate as true. I miss him and his vibrancy. May his memory be a blessing. My deepest condolences to Jerry, and everyone who knew Jeff.

Penny Rosen, New York, NY (AAPCSW Past President)