We created this website to capture memories of Tom. So many of you have already sent us personal notes. We would like to share them so that all of you can see them.
Thank you for the outpouring of love and affection for Tom.
With love,
Jean, David and Susannah
Tributes
Leave a tributeWe never will forget you! We miss you!!
Thom was a good learner and a good teacher in the art of loving, in respecting people, in the search for meaning. And he was a master at delving into analytical psychology and its history.
Today, our daughter Susannah will swim again in the waters of the San Francisco Bay, which freely mix with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, which in turn share their waters with all the seas of planet earth. In December of 2017 your family chartered a boat to take us through the Golden Gate to deposit your remains in the open sea, according to your wishes. The pink salt urn that held your ashes plunged into the sea like a homesick mermaid! You were home.
I had never understood why you chose that resting place, but over the years it has occurred to me that it is most appropriate, since you were a citizen of the world, not of one single place. Conceived in Palestine in 1935 of German Jewish immigrants, born in the United Kingdom, raised in West Los Angeles, and living out your lifespan in Palo Alto, through your vocation as Jungian analyst and your service to its international organization, the International Association of Analytical Psychologists (IAAP), you proved yourself again and again as a citizen of the world. Now your worldly essence circulates the globe and enters new life, again and again, in eternal return.
We love you, Tom, and hold you alive in our hearts.
Jean
October 22, 2022
The time goes so fast but suddenly we remember you. We miss you.
With ternure
Rubens
Steve
Many friends have remembered our/your jahrzeit, expressing their/our loss of you, and their certainty of your ongoing presence in our memories and our lives. Deep gratitude, we feel, for your strong presence in absentia.
Thank you Tom. We love you.
I just want to let you know how much I've been missing you, yet you're with me in many ways, because somehow being Jungian means for me being your mentee and one of your many friends. This August I took part in the IAAP World congress in Vienna, and met Jean. I told her that I feel sorry that I couldn't say good bye to you properly. She was so kind to comfort me with saying that you're always with us, and she was right. You must know that your good old friend, Murray Stein and your young friend Luis Moris talked about your posthumous book, A Jungian Legacy, Tom Kirsch, in a genuinely intimate and a deeply moving way at a book launch. In the same conference I feel lucky to meeting your other friends and co-authors of this book, Andrew Samuels and Thomas Singer as well. When it turned out that you and Jean had been my patrons in San Francisco and how much I was grateful for you for introducing me and mentoring in the Jungian world, they accepted me well, if you'd have introduced me to them in person. I also met Sheng Heyong, and shared some nice memories of you. Always thinking of you Tom with love, Blessings,
Days like today are tough, and they are also filled with love. Know we are missing you, thinking of you, and loving you.
It's hard to believe it has been two years already. I'm sure my loss is nothing like yours but what I want to say is that I will always remember Tom's many kindnesses. We had brunches and talks where there was a powerful sense of kinship and friendship, and where the conversatgion was open, humorous, mutually respectful and very thoughtful. He was so helpful in orienting me to the Jungian world. I miss him and will never forget him.
Thanks for doing this.
Steve
We love you, Tom and miss you each day.
Love
Jean
Jean, David, and Susannah, thanks deeply for sharing this invaluable wealth of memories.
Bonnie Payne
San Francisco
like a white bird into the eternal light
of life, afterlife, and before life,
in which we are all together......
I hear your Mozart Fantasia in D-minor..
a piece you loved, and played ...
Much gratitude to Jean and Tom's family for posting this golden
web page with images of Tom, and messages from people he loves, of happiness, and beauty... enabling us all to dream on.......
Marcel / APJQ
Pere Segura and colleagues from the Institute
Enviem el nostre record i gratitud per Tom Kirsch. Amb ell va començar la Psicologia Analítica al nostre país, en el Congrés de Chicago. Sempre hem agraït el seu testimoni i la seva cura per la Història de la Psicologia Analítica. Els seus ensenyaments han estat presents en el Màster Universitat organitzat per l'Institut C.G.Jung-Barcelona.
Pere Segura i col·legues de l'Institut.
Dear Tom:
Christine graciously loaned me the DVD of your interview with Murray Stein and it was wonderful! I can't tell you how much Emily and I got out of it!
I noted your mentioning to Murray Stein that you were not a "intellectual" as others were. It brought to mind the term applied to Washington - The Indispensable Man. Washington was also feeling inferior to some of the other revolutionaries around him, e.g. Jefferson and Madison, who were intellectiuals and writers. But the Revolution would never have been successful without his leadership. Perhaps a similar thing could be said about you. It seems to me that you were indispensable to the Jungian movement.
I will forever remember your role in my life. I shan't try to describe that here! I remember the first thing I said to you, and your response, and the dream with the little man in blue that I had that night.
You were my therapist and second parent for 34 years. Goodbye and Godspeed whereever you are!
Warmly,
Bill
I am honored to have had the opportunity to know him and to listen to his sharp thoughts, which Tom used to convey with intense emotional empathy.
We are all poorer than before. However, the gift of his presence still remains in the memory of those who have known him, heard his speeches, read his books, and who will remember him to the Jungian community that will come.
A dear and affectionate thought for Jean and the family, to whom I extend my condolences.
Patrizia Michelis (AIPA)
Gershon Weltman
Jean picked up and told me that Tom had passed away early in the morning.
Not being able to have that seemingly unimportant conversation has affected me deeply, a small thing that connects me to the memory of a man who was a large presence in the Jungian community and a friend and mentor in my own life from the years I joined his consultation group in Palo Alto through my analytic training and years as an analyst in the Bay Area. He was generous with me in sharing the landscape of the field, introducing me to people of interest, and when I asked for it, giving me excellent personal and professional advice.
Tom had many gifts and important positions, yet he was never arrogant. He appreciated people from all walks of life and from many cultures and even hostile viewpoints. I used to kid him that he was only three degrees of separation from anyone in the world: he helped to connect so many people with one another. His friends included medical and psychoanalytic colleagues (both Freudian and Jungian), authors, artists, and musicians, and people from many walks of life. He went frequently to concerts and listened to music in his home.
Tom was a very loyal friend, especially to a group of male physicians who became Jungian analysts around the same time he did. This group dominated the Jung Institute for many decades. Tom was also deeply attached and loyal to his wife Jean, their daughter Susannah, and his son David--not just in feeling but in time spent together at home, traveling, attending concerts and ball games. He really thought about them, worried about them, and mainly took joy in them.
It is going to take some time for me to absorb that Tom will no longer tell a story about someone he met just by accident who turned out to be...
or pass along a bit of news about a small drama in the analytic world or recommend a new recording--or just be there to greet me, open to engaging about whatever might be going on at the moment!
Fare Well, Tom!
It was a pleasure, an honor and a treat to meet and work with Tom on the ARAS National Board. I first met Tom as one half of the "Tom's": the renowned tag team from CA and I have very much enjoyed working with both for these past many years. And now I will miss Tom.
His joy, feistiness and humor, his sense of history, and his warmth and
fierce devotion to ARAS and Jung were a treat to be around. I will miss him at the Annual meetings; and feel we have lost a great and committed advocate for ARAS and for the Symbolic value and depth of images. I know that you all knew and loved and worked and enjoyed sparring with Tom for far longer than I so just send my thoughts and care for you as well.
Best
Bruce
Hong Kong Institute of Analytical Psychology
Suzy Spradlin, San Francisco
Leave a Tribute
Our mentor...
Innovation and creativity
Dear Jean and Susannah,
We still miss Tom so much.Here was a story about Tom.
Cheng Wen-Yu and Tom at China Town in San Francisco 2014.
Edward Po-Yuan Huang...
The Indispensable Man
Dear Tom:
Christine graciously loaned me the DVD of your interview with Murray Stein and it was wonderful! I can't tell you how much Emily and I got out of it!
I noted your mentioning to Murray Stein that you were not a "intellectual" as others were. It brought to mind the term applied to Washington - The Indispensable Man. Washington was also feeling inferior to some of the other revolutionaries around him, e.g. Jefferson and Madison, who were intellectiuals and writers. But the Revolution would never have been successful without his leadership. Perhaps a similar thing could be said about you. It seems to me that you were indispensable to the Jungian movement.
I will forever remember your role in my life. I shan't try to describe that here! I remember the first thing I said to you, and your response, and the dream with the little man in blue that I had that night.
You were my therapist and second parent for 34 years. Goodbye whereever you are!
Warmly,
Bill