Michael Shernoff, gay psychotherapist, dies at 57

Courtesy: John Goodman

Michael Jon Shernoff, 1951-2008

By Paul Schindler

Michael Jon Shernoff, a psychotherapist for more than 30 years, a prodigious writer, a professor and an LGBT, AIDS and environmental activist, died on June 17 at his home in Chelsea at the age of 57. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, according to his partner of nine years, John Goodman.

Shernoff was born on March 31, 1951 in Jackson Heights. A 1972 graduate of Harpur College at SUNY Binghamton, he became only the second openly gay student to enter a graduate program in social work when he enrolled at SUNY Stonybrook, where he earned his MSW in 1977.

In an article written after he learned of his cancer diagnosis — in 2006, on his 55th birthday — Shernoff talked about how he established criteria in the 1980s for disclosing his HIV-positive status to patients. In time, he published articles about being an openly HIV-positive gay therapist, and began to get referrals from colleagues of positive patients seeking a therapist of the same status. This final article by Shernoff is due to be published soon by the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health.

In total, Shernoff published more than 60 articles, mostly related to mental health issues involving gay men, sexuality, and mental health. In LGNY, the predecessor to Chelsea Now’s sister paper, Gay City News, he wrote a history of how a community patrol responding to homophobic attacks during the first wave of large numbers of gay men moving to Chelsea during the late 1970s evolved into the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project.

Shernoff also edited seven anthologies, including “Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner,” a topic on which he wrote, from personal experience, another article for LGNY. In 2006, Routledge published Shernoff’s book, “Without Condoms: Unprotected Sex, Gay Men and Barebacking.”

He was a pioneer in the development of AIDS prevention sex education, creating an early program called “Hot, Horny & Healthy: Eroticizing Safer Sex,” which earned him vilification on the floor of the US Senate.

From 1991 through 2001, Shernoff taught courses in social work at Hunter College, moving over to Columbia the following year, where he taught until 2006. He also had affiliations with Fordham University and Rutgers University, and served on the editorial boards of several professional journals.

Shernoff was in private psychotherapeutic practice beginning in 1994, and prior to that worked with Chelsea Psychotherapy Associates, Greenwich House, and the Lower East Side Service Center. Before enrolling in graduate school, he was a junior high school teacher for three years.

In the article slated for publication in the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health, Shernoff wrote in personal and moving terms about his “sudden retirement… due to terminal illness.” He described the painful process of ending his practice and the crippling depression he fell into, which coupled with the physical deterioration he experienced, led him to consider ending his life. Despite the intense conflicts these feelings caused between him and his partner, Shernoff wrote that without Goodman’s insistence that he investigate the use of antidepressant medication, he would not have recovered from this “lowest point in [his] life.”

After that time, Shernoff wrote , both he and Goodman experienced what he termed the happiest time in their lives together, in which they were able to share significant physical affection, with his depression “largely abated.” Still, he acknowledged, he lived “with an ever-present sense of existential solitude,” which left him only when speaking to other cancer survivors in his support group.

In addition to his considerable professional achievements, Shernoff was an avid scuba diver and an inveterate world traveler, once regaling this reporter with a wild and wooly account of his adventures in Cuba.

In addition to John Goodman, Michael Shernoff is survived by his brother Jeffrey Shernoff and Jeffrey’s wife Barbara; his brother Jerome Feldherr and Jerome’s wife Linda; and his sister Barbara and her husband Billy.

Plans for a memorial service are not yet complete. Donations in his memory can be made to the LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York 10011; The Nature Conservancy, 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, Virginia, 22203; and Lambda Legal, 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500, New York 10005.