Committed to Studying Human Interactions, Emotions, and Actions

In the 1960s, Carl Rogers came to California from the University of Wisconsin and joined the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI). There, in 1968, a group of people with Carl, referring to their work as the Person-Centered Approach, split off from the WBSI and formed the Center for the Studies of the Person. An eclectic group of over 30 people met once a week in an office in La Jolla, California.

Fifty years later, a book was published, “ A Place to Be, CSP 50.” You may wish to purchase this book at our bookstore, as it is filled with wonderful writings and memories from members of those early days and beyond. In it, you will read the very different perspectives the members have of CSP. Both books are open and candid regarding the struggles that are found in any human endeavor. You will see our organization continues to attempt to be open, honest, real, congruent, and authentic as we can be about being: being a person and being an organization.

What follows are descriptions of the very early years of CSP as written by Howard Kirschenbaum in his book, The Life and Work of Carl Rogers, 2008. These excerpts are from Chapter 10, The California Years, Part 1, pages 364-370.

Below is Carl’s writing about WBSI and his problems there and about CSP as it was forming:

I felt like the most important decision of our Trustee’s meeting was that the Centers were to be as autonomous as it is humanly possible to make them. This fact released untold energies in the Center for the Studies of the Person as we called our group. New projects, new ways of raising money, the idea of all of us turning in our fees, so our full energies would go to the Center—dozens of new ideas were sprouting all over the place. It was an exciting period like the first days of WBSI…

Within a week I was more depressed than I have ever been before. {He was feeling so sick about it physically that he saw a doctor.} The reason was that although I deeply love WBSI and have worried about it during various previous crises, this was the first time that the dream had ever been strangled from within.

Although Rogers’ version of these events got the most attention at the time, and his role is the best known, he was not necessarily the prime mover in the new center or splitting off from the WBSI. As Tom Gillette described it a few years later, “I would put Bill Coulson and Bruce [Meador] and myself in the front lines of leading us out of WBSI and into CSP. Carl was in the second line.”

In this version, Rogers was as much caught up in the group process, in the momentum toward separation, as leading it. On the other hand, if Rogers did not support and go along with the division of the WBSI, it probably would not have happened, and in that sense, he was ultimately responsible for what occurred.

Over the years, the story of their departure had taken on mythic proportions with Rogers relating in his oral history shortly before his death how “A group of us left WBSI in the middle of the night. That’s literally true. We weren’t quite sure whether they would agree to our taking our property that we felt belonged to us: desks, typewriters, files, and so on; and so Bill Coulson’s idea… was to rent a moving truck, and one evening we went into the WBSI, took our all our things, brought them to the new quarters, and the next morning we were established as the Center for Studies of the Person.”

Richard Farson, who, in spite of this episode, remained friends with Rogers all his life, had a very different version of the story. He recalled,

I think there is a whole myth about their sneaking in the middle of the night and stealing stuff. They seem to be proud and happy about that. The fact of the matter (I remember the discussion very well in the board meeting) is we just would give them what they needed to start their organization. We gave them some contracts [i. e. contracts obtained by Center staff but legally owned by WBSI] and we gave them some furniture and so forth…They think that they stole some furniture but we gave it to them. The fact is that their organization was still WBSI…Their letterhead [said] “ a development of WBSI. “They didn’t have any corporate papers. They didn’t have a 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt status. They didn’t have what they needed, so we decided that we would sponsor that group. They didn’t become autonomous until they were able to stand on their own. We tried to help them.

Eventually, Center for the Studies of the Person did achieve its independent legal status and the break was complete. What was experienced at the time as a most painful episode by everyone involved turned out to be a freeing move that neither Rogers nor the many CSP staff members I talked to ever regretted.

Although CSP was legally organized as a corporation, the members proudly thought of themselves as a “non-organization headed by a ‘non-director.’” That is, the director has no power to direct anyone but is empowered to speak for the organization publicly and to raise support for its various projects. It was a revolving position, one which Rogers never held.

Not too far from the WBSI, they rented office space at 1123 Torrey Pines Road in La Jolla. Each member contributed a small sum to pay the rent and office expenses. They would all get together for weekly staff meetings, at which both personal and professional agendas were likely to be raised.