Carl Goldberg (Died 2003)

Carl Goldberg, my colleague and friend, and fellow pioneer, as Associate Editor for the Americas, in the shaping and establishing of the International Journal of Psychotherapy, died at the end of 2003. Carl is survived by his wife, Virginia, to whom we offer our deepest sympathy.

Carl Goldberg was a significant man. From the rocky granite of a wounding childhood, Carl forged a unique identity in psychotherapy. He was absolutely one of the most independent thinkers in the field. Not for him the abstruser reaches of metapsychology, the minutiae of doctrinal difference in psychoanalysis, and yet further applications of Freudian sexuality theory. Carl consistently, and beyond anyone else I knew of in the field, explored the ethical dimension of psychotherapy through testimony after testimony of engagement in some of the deepest, toughest, and most recalcitrant ethical dilemmas in psychotherapy, and again and again broke new ground through his refusal to avoid the hard choices, or to evade his own responsibility when he felt he had not faced a situation with full courage or compassion. Carl always took on the tough cases others would avoid; poignant and powerful narratives of his work with criminals and other morally deeply ambiguous persons abound in his writings, and yet Carl never succumbed to despair in the face of moral darkness. Carl had given up seeing clients on a fee-paying basis and lived by his writing, bearing witness in that way. Out of the blue, as fellow radicals each in our different ways, we established a friendship, even though I often exasperated him!

His extraordinary directness of being was of significant influence on myself at a time in my life when I was struggling with a deep moral ambiguity in my life-situation. As I never managed to fully express my gratitude; an obituary is the amends one must make.

One of Carl's heroes was the great Polish novelist who came to write in English, , who, like his other heroes, Mark Twain, Dr Johnson, and the author