Peter P. Homans ’52

A distinguished scholar and teacher, Pete came to us from Taft. His father, Howard, was Princeton 1901.

At Princeton, Pete joined Tiger Inn and rowed 150-pound crew. He was WPRU classical-music director and roomed with Bob Stott.

After graduation he earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary, and in 1964 a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he taught from 1965 until 2001. The dean at Chicago called Pete “a leading thinker about psychology as a — if not the — decisive cultural expression of the 20th century.”

Pete wrote books on Freud and Jung and, most notably, The Ability to Mourn: Disillusionment and The Social Origins of Psychoanalysis.

He died on May 30, 2009, from a stroke, leaving his wife, Celia, and daughters Jennifer, Patricia, and Elizabeth.