In the Army he was assigned as a social worker on a psychiatric ward at Fort Gordon, GA, where he helped design a discharge program using psychodrama techniques to prepare patients for return to civilian life.
After a brief stay in Paris, where he studied dance and art, Goldblum moved to San Francisco to complete his doctoral education and pursue a career as an LGBTQ+ focused psychologist.
[3] In 1980, Goldblum joined Dr. Patrick McGraw and Joe Brewer as Coordinator of Psychological Services for the Resource Foundation, a free-standing program that provided health education for gay men with or at risk for Chronic Hepatis B.
[4] In 1987, after his life partner Kenneth Payne was diagnosed with AIDS, he left UCSF and focused full-time on his private practice of psychotherapy, consultation, and caregiving.
The emphasis of his practice was working with gay men, and people with HIV-related concerns, and he became a member of the professional staff at Davies Hospital’s HIV Center of Excellence in the Castro District of San Francisco.
These projects included, working with the Foundation for Interfaith Research and Ministry, Houston, TX., the Willamette AIDS Council, Eugene, OR, At the First International Biopsychosocial Conference on HIV, Amsterdam.
Goldblum was a founding member of the National Working Positive Coalition, an organization that shares research and practice to a network of vocational providers serving individuals with HIV.
Goldblum then collaborated with Beutler on his psychotherapy research, specifically designing the Sexual Minority Stress scale for the Systematic Treatment Selection program.
In the first applied research project, Goldblum joined with Mimi Fystrom, Amanda Houston-Hamilton, and Allison Briscoe Smith to plan and implement a comprehensive evaluation of the Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming Schools Guide Pilot Program in the San Francisco Unified School District, funded by a grant from the James Hormel Small Change Foundation.
His contributions to the psychological literature include material on LGBTQ+ bullying, gay men's health, suicide and culture, end of life issues, HIV, AIDS bereavement, and affirmative therapy.
In 2015, Goldblum co-developed the Cultural Assessment for Risk of Suicide (CARS) measure with fellow American psychologists Joyce Chu and Bruce Bongar.
[7] As a part of the CLEAR lab, Goldblum co-developed the Sexual Minorities Stress Scale (SMSS) in collaboration with UCSF AIDS Health Project.
[11] In March 2023, Thompkins, Goldblum, and Stanford/PGSP psychology graduate student William Booker developed a model for intergenerational and cross-cultural engagement within the queer community.