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Deborah Ward posted an update
My photo was taken in September 2024, during the week I became a widow with the passing of my wonderful husband, Spencer A. Ward, M.D., a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Spencer was an intuitive, brilliant, and deeply compassionate psychiatrist.
Both of us were educators and psychotherapists. Together, we trained and taught psychiatry residents to become more aware of the relational field within marriages, families, and relationships with children. At the heart of our teaching was the importance of establishing emotional safety between family members and developing the capacity to listen to one another with genuine care.We taught that the purpose of listening is not necessarily to agree or disagree, but to understand. There is a profound distinction between listening in order to form a judgment and listening in order to know another person more fully. The latter asks us to enter another person’s experience with curiosity and respect—to listen closely enough that, for a moment, we can understand the world as it is experienced by them.
This was the higher purpose we hoped to cultivate: relationships in which there is enough emotional safety for differing points of view to be spoken, carefully heard, and genuinely understood. Agreement may or may not follow. Understanding comes first.
