Arnold Goldberg: A Biographical Memoir

First, there were the Bulls. Yes, the Bulls. The 1980s and 1990s were the years of the miraculous Michael Jordan and his colorful teammate Dennis Rodman and the skilled Scottie Pippen, along with the rest of the talent on the bench. But most of all it was Jordan, fiercely competitive, amazingly athletic, able to turn a game on a dime. Arnie loved the Bulls. He bought the biggest television set on the market, upgrading as new and even larger ones became available, so that he could see all the action up close. He watched the games in his big, comfortable chair, with a legal-sized yellow pad on his lap, scribbling some essay that his assistant, poor Chris Sussman, later had to decipher and type up, surrounded by a Heidegger time or maybe a mystery novel. He moved seamlessly between Dasein and some paper he was writing about the psychology of perversion as he watched Michael Jordan score on an amazing drive through three defenders. When Arnie got bored he would turn to a mystery novel, written by one of the authors he followed assiduously. Sometimes, he even went to the games because the father of his friend and colleague, Jeffrey Stern, owned part of the Bulls and often invited Arnie, along with his son, Andrew, and sometimes his young daughter, Sarah, to sit in the box at center court and watch the game. It is fair to say that would have been one of the few times outside of clinical work that Arnie didn’t have a volume of psychoanalytic theory or existential philosophy by his side.

Arnie actually loved athletics of all kinds. He regularly went to Bear games until he couldn’t stand the cold of Soldier’s Field any longer; then he watched their games on his giant TV with his yellow pad on his lap. He actually watched all sports, including the Olympics that occurred more irregularly. His special and unique interest, however, was dog shows, believe it or not. He loved them, and his daughter, Sarah, recalls him watching dog shows “all the time.” Sarah’s astute comment on thi