PTI was founded by Don and Carol Hadlock in 1982. In Don’s own words:

“Carol and I were traveling over the Santa Cruz summit discussing psychotherapy as we were returning from one of our graduate classes. All of a sudden, a window of awareness opened to me and I understood clearly the difference between content and process. As we continued our discussion, it became even clearer that content is what the client is saying and the process is what the client is doing as they were saying it. Two very different things. Everything grew from that clarity. We formed a training institute where pre-licensed therapists could explore the concept of process that lay much deeper than the content, which often becomes cyclic, and ever-ending. We became licensed, rented a building, and began to see clients and train student therapists. We filed papers to become a non-profit organization, and 1982 the Process Therapy Institute was born.

As the institute grew, we taught more people about the importance of focusing on process as a way of deepening therapy with clients. Within the institute we continued to develop further concepts that enhanced the process model of work. Next, we continued to explore and discover how important it was to bring the process into the here-and-now moment, how to help clients connect more deeply to their process experience, and eventually how to transcend incomplete processes such as traumas, wounds, injuries, and rigid identities.

We continue to use the institute as a location and a vision in the expansion and development of process concepts. We continue to practice using them and teaching others how to use them.

To date we have trained hundreds of therapists and worked with thousands of clients as the development of this model continues.”