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In Memoriam: Cecil Holden Patterson, 1912-2006 Rodney K. Goodyear The Counseling Psychologist 2009; 37; 607 DOI: 10.1177/0011000008319987 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tcp.sagepub.com
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In Memoriam
In Memoriam Cecil Holden Patterson, 1912-2006
The Counseling Psychologist Volume 37 Number 4 May 2009 607-609 © 2009 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0011000008319987 http://tcp.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com
Rodney K. Goodyear University of Southern California
C
. H. (“Pat”) Patterson (1996) was clearly speaking of himself when he quoted Dag Hammerskjold’s assertion that “you have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is possible for you to contribute” (p. 337). He still was publishing at the age of 91 and, until the end of his life, maintained an active Web site as the “Sage of Asheville,” on which he offered his publications, papers, and wisdom. Pat was born and raised in Lynn, Massachusetts. When he entered the University of Chicago, his intent was to prepare for the ministry. But his interests shifted, and he graduated with a degree in sociology. It was 1938, and the country still was in the grip of the Great Depression; so, Pat made do with part-time work over the next year before following a former professor to the Fels Research Institute, Antioch College, where he became a research assistant in the psychology department. It was there that he met Frances Spano, who was to become his wife and the mother of their seven children and with whom he published his first article (C. H. Patterson & Spano, 1941). This experience also launched his lifelong commitment to psychology. Pat joined the air force in 1942 to work in John Flanagan’s program, where he developed measures to screen aviators, bombardiers, and navigators. In 1945, he received his masters in child psychology from the University of Minnesota and a commission as second lieutenant and classification as a clinical psychologist. After the war, he became a Veterans Administration psychologist. But he quickly bored of the assessment work that he was doing as a clinical psychologist; so, when the Veterans Administration created the position of personal counselor, he applied and was accepted. This, however, required that he attend a 5-week program that Carl Rogers was offering at the University of Chicago. That experience profoundly affected him and, ultimately, his career focus. Author’s Note: Address correspondence to Rodney K. Goodyear, 1100 WPH, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0031; e-mail:
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Pat’s numerous publications throughout the 1940s had been almost exclusively psychometric. His shift in perspective is noticeable with his American Psychologist article that questioned the utility of diagnosis (C. H. Patterson, 1948). His client-centered perspective then informed the work that he did for the rest of his life. This was true even for his most famous book, Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy, which for several decades was the dominant counseling theories book; the first edition was published in 1966 and the fifth and final (with Ed Watkins), in 1996. It covered the major counseling theories, but Pat made sure to offer a client-centered critique of each. Pat was already an established author when he returned to the University of Minnesota in the early 1950s to complete his doctorate. During this period, Minnesota was training many who would become counseling psychology’s leaders, and Pat’s advisor, C. Gilbert Wrenn, was mentor to a number of them. Despite Pat’s maturity, his full-time work as a Veterans Administration counseling psychologist for the duration of his doctoral program, and his firmly crystallized convictions about therapy, Pat’s experiences at Minnesota influenced his approach to the professorate. In 1956, Pat took a faculty position at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he remained until he retired in 1975. Among my best memories of my time there as a graduate student were the biweekly doctoral seminars that Pat held at his home over 2 years. It was a chance to discuss recent research and Pat’s take on current issues in the field. There also was the occasional guest, including Robert Carkhuff, whose tone was quite at variance with Pat’s own gentle style (“Have you read my book? If you’ve not, you’ve not earned the right to ask that question”). We students experienced with him what John Krumboltz did (personal communication, September 15, 2007)—namely, that “Pat was shy—but friendly and civil. . . . He always listened to me with warmth, genuineness and unconditional positive regard.” And to that, John added, “I’ll miss him.” It was not until years later when I was privileged to sit in on a reunion of Wrenn and a group of his former advisees that I realized that Pat had been providing us with the experience that Wrenn had earlier provided Minnesota students. It was an important formative experience for us, as it presumably had been for Pat as well. Yet Pat was disciplined, which was noticeable because of his otherwise receptive demeanor. Barbara Kirk once told me that that when Pat was president of Division 17 during 1971-1972 (she then was on the executive board and later served as president in 1973-1974), he ran tight meetings in which there was no room for digressions. Krumboltz noted, “I remember Pat as one who read his speeches verbatim from a typewritten script. And he always carried copies of extra speeches with him in case he were invited to give a second presentation.” Downloaded from http://tcp.sagepub.com at UNIV OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA on May 9, 2010
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Pat seemed always to be in his university office, with the door open. Anyone who stopped by would be given full attention; after which, he would resume writing as if he had not been interrupted. Few have such powers of concentration. Pat had passionate opinions and saw himself as a crusader. He frequently expressed dismay, for example, at counseling practitioners’ tendency to jump on therapy bandwagons. This sense of mission extended to multicultural counseling, where his client-centered perspective led him to an etic position: Because all counseling can be distilled to the client–therapist relationship, it is the universal conditions with which we should be concerned. This was the point of his last article (C. H. Patterson, 2004). During his life, Pat was honored with leadership positions in not only Division 17 but also the American Rehabiliation Counselors Association, for which he served as president. And he was especially proud of being the 1994 recipient of the Leona Tyler Award (C. H. Patterson, 1996). Pat never remarried after his wife, Frances, died in 1966, but he remained close to his children. His daughter Francine (Penny) is a psychologist who gained early fame for her work on communication with primates, especially with Koko the gorilla (who was featured in television specials and so on). There was one memorable photo of Koko holding Pat’s tie in one hand and her other hand on her chin while she looked meditatively—and it was so clear that if her hand holding the tie were to shoot up, so would have Pat! Several of Pat’s articles during the 1980s were in collaboration with Penny (e.g., F. Patterson, Patterson, & Brentari, 1987). In many respects, Pat was a prototypical counseling psychologist, for the arc of his career followed that of the developing new specialty itself. But his ideas—expressed through his writing, his mentoring, and his professional leadership—helped shaped that development. He will be missed.
References Patterson, C. H. (1948). Is psychotherapy dependent upon diagnosis? American Psychologist, 3, 155-159. Patterson, C. H. (1996). The 1994 Leona Tyler Award address: Some thoughts on reaching the end of a career. The Counseling Psychologist, 24, 336-347. Patterson, C. H. (2004). Do we need multicultural counseling competencies? Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26, 67-73. Patterson, C. H., & Spano, F. L. (1941). Breast feeding, maternal rejection and child personality. Character & Personality, 10, 62-68. Patterson, F., Patterson, C. H., & Brentari, D. K. (1987). Language in child, chimp, and gorilla. American Psychologist, 42, 270-272. Rodney K. Goodyear, PhD, is a professor of education and Associate Dean of faculty in the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education (RSOE). He served as training director of theDownloaded RSOE’s counseling psychology program from 1988, until itonwas phased out. from http://tcp.sagepub.com at UNIV OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Mayrecently 9, 2010
