I first heard of Claude as the author of the Warm Fuzzy Tale, and of Games Alcoholics Play, but when I read my first article in Issues in Radical Therapy, the publication of the Radical Psychiatry movement, I was completely won over. I was already attuned to the issues of American imperialism and feminism from a personal and political point of view. To read his explanation of the difference between native power and position power was to grasp how my work with clients could be connected with the kinds of social change in which I fervently believed. Between Claude’s work on relationships, including No Power Plays and No Secrets, and his partner Hogie wyckoff’s work on true equality, I found inspiration for linking personal and social change to which I adhere to this day. Claude’s brilliant understanding of how the whole system maintains artificial scarcities of power, strokes, etc. to control people, is something I wish we could transmit to every child growing up anywhere in the world.

As I got to know people in ITAA and became a friend as well as follower, I valued Claude’s advice. When I considered my run for President of ITAA in the mid-eighties, I consulted Claude to see what he thought. I wasn’t sure that ITAA was a good vehicle for my leadership. He pointed out that it was the vehicle that was available to me, and encouraged me to run.

I often observe the irony that people teach what they need to learn, from Eric Berne on down. In Claude’s case, I noticed his ability to show people the stroke economy, to encourage Permission for giving and receiving strokes, while he tended not to take strokes in for himself. On at least one occasion, I made it a personal mission to insist that he take in the strokes that people had for him. I took great pleasure in holding him to his principles, and watching him receive even a small portion of his due.

While he could appear crusty, and would willingly argue over key points of TA, Claude was truly loving and caring, and made the effort to travel and teach where he was invited. I know he loved his ranch in Northern California, and that he joined with others in social experiments both on the land and in his Bay Area office. He continued to write and develop ideas that challenged the status quo throughout his life. Claude contributed to the liberation of the human spirit, and I hope that in his passing, he felt the satisfaction of a life well lived and a legacy that will continue to ripple outward.