Obituary: WILLIAM GOLDFARB (1915-1995)

William Goldfarb was something of a wunderkind. He achieved his PhD in experimental psychology with distinction under the mentorship of Irving Lorge at Columbia University Teacher's College at the unusually young age of 21 and soon after, working with the Foster Home Bureau of the New York Association for Jewish Children, completed his research on the effects of institutionalisation on young children, a seminal piece of research in which he studied the distortions left in the personalities of adults who had experienced early childhood institutionalisation.

This study, one of the first of its kind, strongly influenced the movement away from institutionalisation of dependent children and towards foster care. For this outstanding and most practical contribution to the mental health scene he was presented with the Devereux Schools Award for Child Research at the Centenary Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1944 at the age of 29, the first of many honours he received during his research career. His findings about early institutionalisation were featured in John Bowlby's report, Maternal Response and Child Mental Health, sponsored by the World Health Organisation.

Bill went on to do research as a public health officer and then, because of his conviction that a psychiatric and psychoanalytic perspective would contribute importantly to his research efforts, in his early thirties undertook medical training at Cornell University Medical School, completed a residency in psychiatry at Columbia University and psychoanalytic training at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, broadening his research perspective and adding an exceptional clinical facility to his talents.

Recognising his special abilities, two of his mentors, Abram Kardiner, a pioneer in the application of psychoanalytic thought to anthropological research, and David Levy, another genius of child development research, gave him strong moral and financial support during t