Dr. Phil Bersh of Temple University passed away in early April 2004 at the age of 82. He was teaching as a full-time faculty member just two weeks before his death and was also awarded a research grant shortly thereafter. He taught at Temple for 35 years.
Phil worked under Nathaniel Schoenfeld at Colombia University. Their work assessed conditioned reinforcement. Later Phil went to Rome NY to do work with the Department of Defense where he conducted human heart-rate conditioning to aversive stimuli. At Temple he was a student of Pavlovian-operant interaction. He and his students assessed negative reinforcement and stimulus control in learned helplessness as a model. This led to some work in his lab in mid 80’s on opioid mediation of LH at the time when that was in its heyday.
One of Phil’s former graduate students once said that he, Phil, believed that "Pavlovian conditioning is operant conditioning in disguise and operant conditioning is Pavlovian conditioning in disguise." He taught a graduate seminar course on experimental psychopathology, which of course was Pavlovian- (Ganttian-) based and noted Gantt's work just outside of Baltimore.
Phil’s students were close to him intellectually. He was described as family man as he spoke much about the importance of family and activities outside of academia (e.g., sports, music, politics, economics). He was described as a true mentor and teacher of Pavlovian Conditioning. Several graduate students in his later years referred to him as “Dad”.