This tribute includes contributions from several of us who knew and worked with Tom Bourbon—Tim Carey, Rick Marken, and Dag Forssel. (If others come in, I will add them.)
Some of Tom’s important contributions were printed in Closed Loop, edited by Greg Williams. I recommend reading Tom’s essay Vol. 4 no. 1 pp. 41-47.
Tom’s obituary at the funeral home in Bellville, Texas, is here (link provided by Tim).
— Bruce Nevin
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Tim Carey:
Some of you might want to know the sad news of the passing of Walter Thomas Bourbon (Tom) Jr (26 February 1939 to 29 May 2025).
Tom was my first PCT teacher and mentor and someone I had the privilege of knowing as a good friend. We were both keen Star Wars fans and I used to email him as Obi Tom my Jedi Master. 
We had many adventures in our battles against the Dark Side (with the Dark Side being loosely defined as the psychology establishment that vigorously opposed the notion of controlled input)!
I first met Tom over email in the mid 1990s. I was very new to email and the internet then and I only had internet access at work. For me, everyday was like Christmas arriving at work to see if there was another email from Tom. There usually was. He was the consummate teacher who always urged me to question and probe things a little more. I remember him constantly exhorting me to “read the words” and not assume I knew what a particular author meant when they were vague or imprecise. He was also never a fan of citing secondary sources and routinely implored me to find the original source of any piece of information I wanted to use. I lost track of the number of times I discovered that, like a game of Chinese Whispers, the secondary sources were not accurate reflections of the original material.
Tom taught the history of psychology at University and I loved our discussions about where various psychological concepts came from and how unscientific a lot of academic psychology activity was.
Tom’s emphasis with PCT was “the phenomenon first”. He constantly reminded me to ground all of my thinking and learnings in an understanding of the physical phenomenon of control. The theory came later as an explanation of the phenomenon. Whenever people suggested changing or modifying the theory, Tom would encourage me to interrogate their suggestions in terms of the ability of the proposed modification to better explain the phenomenon than the current version of the theory. Invariably, the suggested improvement wasn’t anything of the sort. Tom was a precise and meticulous scientist who brought a scientific attitude to all that he engaged in. His standards are still a benchmark for me.
Tom supervised many Masters students and conducted groundbreaking work in understanding social interactions from a PCT perspective using tracking tasks to explore the way in which variables could be jointly controlled, or not.
I was humbled, honoured, and thrilled beyond words when Tom agreed to be a Supervisor for my PhD which was a research project exploring the obscure Skinnerian concept of countercontrol. It was a privilege to publish three papers with him.
The world is so much richer for Tom’s presence in it and now, a little duller with his passing.
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Rick Marken:
I was very sad to learn from Tim Carey that Tom Bourbon had passed away.
My relationship with Tom dates back to 1979, the same year I met Bill Powers. At the time I didn’t know of anyone else who was as excited as I was about what came to be known as PCT. But Bill had a map in his house with pins showing the location of others who had contacted him about his work. There were only a few pins and Tom was one of them.
I contacted Tom because he was an experimental psychologist, like me. Indeed, I knew of Tom because he was one of the authors of a paper on auditory perception that I referred to in my PhD thesis. We maintained a telephone and snail mail correspondence for several years until we finally met in person at a cybernetics conference in about 1985. It was the conference at which a small group of us came up with the idea of forming the Control Theory Group (CSG), dedicated to sharing scientific and applied work that had been done based on Powers’ theory.
Tom turned out to have the best understanding of PCT of anyone I knew (other than Bill Powers, of course) and we became good friends and were sort of “comrades in arms” in discussions about PCT at the CSG conferences and on the newly formed (circa 1990) internet discussion group, CSGNet. Tom eventually cut his connection with CSGNet and PCT over a disagreement we had about some aspects of Ed Ford’s “Responsible Thinking” program. I wince when I look over those conversations. I have no idea why I kept pressing my point. I should have just dropped it. But it enraged Tom and I have had no contact with him since about 2000-2001.
But I mourn his passing because he was one of the earliest psychologists to recognize (and understand) the brilliance and revolutionary significance of Powers’ work. And, besides Bill Powers himself, Tom was the most articulate and enthusiastic early promulgator of PCT.
Rest in peace, Tom.
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Dag Forssell
I met Tom Bourbon in 1985 when I traveled to the Control Systems Group conference at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In early 1990, Gary Cziko sponsored our email discussion group CSGnet (Control Systems Group Network) on his university’s listserv system, and Tom became a very active participant. The IAPCT Discourse forum includes an archive of CSGnet email.
While CSGnet provided lucid posts about PCT on a daily basis, the CSG conferences were where I met participants. Through the 1990s, most conferences were held at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Participants stayed in the college dorms, meals were together, and evenings were spent with spirited discussion in a lounge. Tom was always in the thick of these discussions. Tom brought his masters students to these conferences. I especially remember Michelle Duggins-Schwartz’s thesis titled “When is Helping Helping?”. My wife Christine was with me, and she never let me forget that helping is in the mind of the helpee, not the helper.
Tom provided unlimited, selfless help to anyone who wanted to understand PCT. Before I came along, Tom actively supported Ed Ford, not the least as technical consultant and editor for Ed’s book Freedom From Stress (1989, 1993). To the best of my understanding he should have been credited as co-author.
When Ed created a program to help teachers manage classrooms, Tom traveled repeatedly to Scottsdale, AZ, to teach the basics of PCT. When Tim Carey came along, he joined Tom in this effort. I was privileged to videotape a number of Ed’s conferences. These videos are available in PCT archives held by several PCTers.
Unfortunately, teachers told Ed they did not want to understand, they just wanted to be told what to do. Collaboration got strained, but Tom did his best to keep on teaching.
Tom was totally dedicated to PCT, a solid friend. He is missed, but his work lives on.
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