Emeritus Councilor - Jeff Sternlieb 

Jeffrey Sternlieb is the first Emeritus Councilor nominee whose experience with the Society is wholly of this century. He attended his first intensive in Pittsburgh in 2002, the year after he had begun to teach at Lehigh Valley Hospital Family Practice Residency, when he had already been working as a psychologist for twenty-five years.

Jeff earned his PhD in psychology with an emphasis in human development from The Catholic University of America in 1977. His trainings at the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Center and the Ackerman Institute of New York City gave him added appreciation for systems.

When Jeff discovered Balint work he plunged right in: he credentialed at Jonesborough in 2005, three years after his first intensive. He was elected to Council that same year and hosted his first of seven intensives in 2006. His second in 2007 established an unrivaled achievement: hosting back-to-back intensives, a feat he has pulled off more than once. He became President-elect in 2009, the same year he began co-chairing the planning committee for the IBF Congress hosted by the ABS in Philadelphia in 2011. His expansive vision for the society included the conviction that we should host a national meeting in the years between IBF congresses, and while nothing gets done in the ABS single-handedly, his co-chairing of the National Meeting Planning Committee has been a sine qua non of that successful event since its inception in 2014.

He has also contributed internationally, both by bringing the IBF here to the United States and through his scholarship, always timely and cogent. His prolific writings run the gamut from light verse through personal essays and analysis of teaching methods. His reflection on emotional vulnerability at the close of an Intensive has become a staple providing perspective to attendees as they return to their lives still in A Balint State of Mind.

Jeff retired from graduate medical education in 2018, from the Lehigh Valley residency where he had begun. His longevity in one setting might suggest he tends not to change, but his whirlwind of activities in the world of Balint work reveals the creativity, enthusiasm and openness to novelty more evident in person. In addition to all the duties mentioned above he has led the Credentialing Coordinating Committee, served as one of the first mentors in the ABS Fellowship program to excellent reviews, and continues to contribute to the Diversity, History and Scholarly Activity Committees. Whenever a new idea comes along, often his own, Jeff will try it out, fearless about taking on new tasks and honestly willing to learn from whatever happens. His unique Balint group for clergy has succeeded for years and has begun to spin off other such groups.

He assesses what Balint work has meant to him with characteristic transparency: Becoming involved in Balint work has been transformative for me. Balint work has been a framework within which I have had the privilege to experience...the sacred nature of trusting, intimate relationships. It has been like a canvas upon which I have been invited...to paint my own layers of the ever changing nature of authentic relationships - among colleagues, between health care professionals and their patients, and among mentors and mentees. Balint has also expanded and deepened the integration of my personal and professional life, and has contributed to my continuing personal and professional development and evolution. The impact Jeff has made on the ABS is commensurate with its effect on him, though it is always hard to appreciate the fruits of originality right away. Certainly he has more than fulfilled his wish ...to return a fraction of the benefit [he has] received." ~Approved by ABS Council October 2020.