Introduction

Irascible, cantankerous, idiosyncratic, brilliant, generous, a man of largesse and gentleness—all of these are words used to describe Arnold Goldberg in this Memoriam. Indeed, he was, as one of our contributors says, a man who perhaps embodied the very vertical split he understood and wrote about so well.

This issue of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context celebrates Arnold particularly as the Founder of Progress in Self Psychology, a book published annually to gather the findings of the new discipline of Self Psychology that Heinz Kohut originated, and the publication to which our own Journal owes its origin.

Goldberg is one of our most controversial forebears. While he was a primary force in promoting the works of Heinz Kohut and disseminating the ideas that we know today as Self Psychology as it emerged from Classical Psychoanalysis, he was, in his idiosyncratic fashion, equally negating of other more recent efforts made to expand the field of contemporary psychoanalysis—to such an extent that at some point he even stopped coming to our yearly Self Psychology meetings. One might ask why we are honoring such a man, aside from the fact that it is right to do so.

As the relational/self-psychological/contextual/intersubjective/nonlinear system dynamics/phenomenological troupe we have become today, we spend a lot of time speaking about acceptance and empathy for those that are different than ourselves, even those who alienate us. We spend many words in our Journal trying to understand racism, social justice, and how not to “other” the other. Arnold Goldberg himself was deeply concerned with empathy, and how much empathy we are capable of for those that seem incapable of being empathized with. How far can empathy go? Unfortunately, in our efforts to follow our own ideals, we often end up becoming alienated from one other because of our different views on how to reach our goals.

In this issue, you will hear from some of Goldberg’s friends and devoted colleagues about