RadioScope:Contributors to this tribute to Paul Goldin spoke warmly of his achievements as a hypnotherapist and stage performer and of his generosity as a friend - but for most of us, I suspect that these are not the qualities that caused a little surge of regret when we heard of his death.
Liveline: Paul Goldin Tribute, RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday, February 13th, 1.45pm.
Paul Goldin had an energy and a flair that kept him in the hearts of people who had seen his performances on television or on stage. That, I think, is what brought that surge of regret when his death was announced last Wednesday. Joe Duffy and his team lined up this tribute within hours of the announcement.
Hypnosis has been used to treat psychosomatic illnesses and mental-health problems since the 19th century. Freud studied hypnosis under the great French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot towards the end of that century and used hypnosis himself with patients until he developed his psychoanalytic method.
The thought of Paul Goldin and Sigmund Freud sitting down together in some Elysian field to discuss hypnotherapy is pretty startling but I suspect they'd both enjoy the conversation.
Despite the association of hypnosis with stage shows, hypnotherapy never went away. Indeed, the late Jack Gibson used hypnosis in his hospital work when he was county surgeon at Naas General Hospital in the 1960s - he even hypnotised yours truly when I was admitted one night in pain from appendicitis. He died last year in his 96th year.
Gibson also ran relaxation classes, using hypnosis, in Naas almost until his death. He was alerted to the possibilities of hypnosis, though, when he saw a stage hypnotist put on a show in the Channel Islands when he was a boy.
Which brings us back to Paul Goldin, whose stage shows made him famous but who seems to have put most of his energy into clinical work.
Hypnosis is a most extraordinary trade. Is there any other health technique which leads a double life as a stage act and as a clinical intervention and in which a man who practised both could have been as elegant and as well-liked as Paul Goldin?
I was unaware until I heard this programme that he didn't get the clinical side of his work off the wind. His father was a French psychiatrist who encouraged his interest in medicine and mental health. I have met very good psychiatrists who definitely have a touch of the showman or show-woman in them, so there is something appropriate in the trajectory of Paul Goldin's career.
And it says something for his energy and flair that I was about to write that he died too young. But he was 79, which still qualifies as a good innings.
I'm glad Joe Duffy and his team broadcasted the tribute on the day of the announcement - even in dying, Paul Goldin got our attention.