Professional History

Return to Home Page

For a complete vita, click here

    When I first started to learn counseling in my masters program at Idaho State University, Carl Rogers' Person Centered Therapy was the primary model we were taught.  A wonderful man named Art Lloyd spent, literally, over a hundred hours teaching me and others how to do effective reflections and reflections of feeling.  It is a model for which I have much more respect today than I did then.  In the latter part of my training program, I was introduced to the Rational Emotive Therapy of Albert Ellis.  To tell the truth, I wasn't much better at RET than I had been at Person Centered Therapy.  Still, with Art Lloyd as a model, I was clear about what I ultimately wanted to become as a counselor and a human being.  I am still in the process of becoming.
 
 

In

     In my last year at Idaho State University, I was privileged to study with Steve Feit.  Steve was extremely talented in training  doctoral students in counselor supervision.  And more importantly for me, he helped me bring the most important collaborator I would ever have into my life.  Steve introduced me to the Adlerian counselor, Manford A. Sonstegard.  The elegance of his work convinced me that Adlerian psychology and counseling was the model for me.  It seemed then as well as today to be a perfect blend for me of empathic understanding and systemic dialogue in the service of motivation modification and human caring.  While at Idaho State University, I also was able to meet and learn from two other very important Adlerians, Ray Lowe and Oscar Christensen.

    I have been fortunate over my career to have known and/or studied with some of the greatest Adlerian theorists and practitioners in America.  Among the many influences in my life, I especially want to honor the contributions that have been made to my work by Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher, Marion Balla, Jon Carlson, Oscar Christensen, Carolyn Zoe Crowder, Tee Dreikurs, Jane Griffith, Clair Hawes, Guy Manaster, Harold Mosak, Gerald Mozdzierz, Bill and Monica Nicoll, Robert L. Powers, Robert Sherman, Mary Frances Schneider, Seymore Schneider, Kirsten Sonstegard, Manford Sonstegard, Len and Patti Sperry, and Richard Watts.  Each of these people--and so many more--have mentored me in their own way and have helped to make Adlerian Psychology and Counseling a lifelong learning experience.

Back to the Top

    In 1979, I met the late pioneer of American family therapy, Virginia Satir.  I attended a month-long process community she conducted in English and French at a resort just outside of Montreal, Quebec.  She was the most humanistic, caring, and nurturing individual I had ever met, and she transformed my thinking about human contact and the possibilities of human validation.  In 1981, I was invited to join her training staff as a member of AVANTA, an organization I would later co-lead with Virginia for a couple of years.  I was also a member of her training staff at four month-long process communities held in Crested Butte, Colorado, her summer home away from home.  Virginia died on September 10, 1988, of cancer.  She had just returned from an extended training program she offered in Russia, before for the fall of communism, and she was full of hope and dreams for the possibilities in that country.  She taught all of us in AVANTA to dream; to believe that anything was possible; that peace, like freedom, started within, was shared between people, and would spread among all who embraced it in this world.
 
 

Back to the Top

The greatest gifts Virginia left me were the friends and colleagues she brought into my life.  Jean McLendon, the Director of the Satir Institute of the Southeast, runs one of the finest training programs in the country.  AVANTA is now called The Virginia Satir Global Network.  For many years, the network was guided by my friend Margarita Suarez.  Hugh Gratz, who taught me what brotherhood really was, lives in New Jersey and is an internationally known consultant on the Satir model and multicultural interventions.  Bill Kelly, my only true spiritual advisor, and Karen Krestensen (they're actually married) are consultants, counselors, and lovers of life: Both of them have served as President of AVANTA, as has my dear friend, Judith Wagner .  Satir also enriched my life with Bunny Duhl, Joan Winter, Mel MacNeal, Judi Bula, Joe Dillon, and so many others.
 
 

   Shortly after Satir died, I went to a workshop in California that featured Miriam and Erv Polster, two master Gestalt therapists.  They were the founders of the Gestalt Training Institute - San Diego, and they conducted month-long training seminars for professionals from around the world almost every summer in Southern California.  It was one of the best training programs in the country, and I had the privilege of learning from them in this program twice.  Their approaches to awareness, contact, and experiment in therapy broadened and clarified the interventions I learned from Virginia Satir, and they have made much of my Adlerian work come alive with creative processes.

Back to the Top

   My most recent interests include an integration of Adlerian counseling with the work of Michael White and Narrative Therapy, who led work at the Dulwich Centre until he died in April, 2008.  Here, I owe a great deal to my friend and colleague Graham Disque who is keeping the latter part of my career fresh and dynamic.  I also have been blessed by the influence and guidance of another colleague, Patricia Robertson, a feminist therapist who has recently helped me to reclaim the early pro-feminist positions of Alfred Adler as they related to both his psychology of human nature and his therapy.
 
 

Back to the Top