Peter Titelman, a clinical psychologist and author and a longtime lover of Truro, died at the Rockridge Retirement Community in Northampton on Aug. 6, 2025 of complications from end-stage Alzheimer’s disease. He was 81.
Peter wrote or edited six books on Bowen Family Systems Theory that continue to be central to training in family systems therapy. He was also a political activist with a lifelong commitment to human rights, an intense conversationalist, a jazz aficionado, a long-distance ocean swimmer, a fierce tennis player, and an enthusiast of outdoor adventures.
Peter was born on March 29, 1944 in Los Angeles, where his parents were part of a radical leftist community whose members were targets of the House Un-American Activities Committee. His father, the late Leonard Robert Titelman, was a human rights lawyer and union organizer, and his mother, the late Lory Dietz Titelman, was the founder and director of the Westland School.
When Peter was 11, his family moved to Altoona, Pa. and then to New York City, where his father ran the marketing department of Puritan Sportswear and his mother was principal of the Bank Street School. Peter attended the New Lincoln School, graduating in 1962, and Earlham College, graduating in 1966.
Pete started coming to Truro when he was 16, staying with the family of Robert Louis Jackson. He came every summer thereafter, often working for the Jacksons and their friends. Eventually he talked his parents into coming, too. After his own children were born, he brought them to Truro every summer.
He was active in the civil rights movement in college and was arrested and jailed for his work with African-American youth in Albany, Ga. He worked in a Head Start early reading program in Mississippi and was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Duquesne University in 1977.
In 1978, Peter became director of a new family therapy program at the Westfield Area Mental Health Clinic. He was also a principal in LaForte & Titelman Associates, providing clinical practice, consultation, training, and supervision in Northampton. He was a founding member of the New England Seminar on Bowen Theory, and he taught and supervised graduate students in family therapy at several New England professional schools. He taught Bowen Family Systems Theory at the Society of Family Consultants and Psychologists in Moscow.
Peter was an active supporter of the Palestinian House of Friendship, a small community organization in the West Bank that offered programs to children and families living in refugee camps. Peter and his wife, Katharine, traveled to Palestine many times, observing first-hand the human rights situation there, and hosted visitors from Palestine in their Northampton home and at the Florence Civic Center. With Sherrill Hogen, they created the American Friends of the Palestinian House of Friendship, and they were active in Jewish Voice for Peace.
Peter was happiest in Truro, which he called “paradise on Earth.” In 2009, Malcolm Meldahl built a house for Peter and Katharine on Yellow Brick Road in North Truro where they enjoyed many happy weekends and the month of July every year until Peter’s dementia made it hard for them to get to the Cape.
Pete was an obsessive long-distance swimmer, often with seals and tortoises swimming beside him. He played tennis with Dick Miller and kadima with his kids, rode on the bike trails, took the kids on whale watches, loved long beach walks, and was expert at taking apart lobsters for the whole family. His favorite book was Henry Beston’s The Outermost House.
Peter is survived by his wife, Katharine Gratwick Baker; his son, Sam Titelman; his daughter, Claire Titelman, and partner Amir Kenan; his former wife, Claudia Jones Titelman; nephew Josh van Praag; nieces Katharine and Lucy van Praag; step-nephews Lucas and Nick van Praag; step-niece Jo van Praag; stepsons Jack Baker, Kendall Baker and partner Sonia Sultan, Andrew Baker and partner Andrea Griswold, and Malcolm Baker and partner Christina Wood Baker; 11 step-grandchildren; seven step-great-grandchildren; numerous cousins; and his closest friend and business partner, Jack LaForte, who taught Peter to be a jazz drummer and visited him weekly in his final illness.
He was predeceased by his sister, Kathy van Praag.
Pete’s daughter, Claire, made a short film this year, Remember Me, about her grief in losing her father to Alzheimer’s. It screened this year at the Provincetown International Film Festival.
Jack LaForte wrote that “Pete was driven by his values, and he was unwavering in his commitment to his beliefs and passions — from his political activism to his love of jazz pianist Bill Evans. Throughout his life he made the most of what he had.”
Donations in Peter’s memory may go to the Westland School in Los Angeles, the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in Washington, D.C., and the Palestinian House of Friendship.
