Therapist, author, LGBT-rights activist Betty Berzon, 78
Posted: Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 6:35 pmPioneering psychotherapist and writer Betty Berzon died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 78 years old.
Berzon had been sick with cancer, but still continued to see patients and write while undergoing chemotherapy.
Her desire to continue work while sick seemed like classic Berzon persistence. She was known for turning one of the lowest points of her life into her life’s direction. During her early adult years, she had been hospitalized after trying to kill herself, in part because she struggled with her sexual orientation. During her recovery, doctors encouraged her to become a psychotherapist. She went on to become one of our community’s best-known, with a gift for helping gay people come to terms with their true selves and with each other. …
She was one of the founding board members for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in 1971. …
[Terry] DeCrescenzo, the president of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, and Berzon became a couple in 1973. They married in 1993 during a mass wedding ceremony at the March on Washington. … Read full obituary
