Memories of BAAPT

by the late Richard Hendrickson (1935-2023)

At mid-life, my marriage was coming apart, our two children were leaving for college in the east, the house we were remodeling in Berkeley, with me as electrician, was taking a toll on all, and I was offered a promotion to what should have been my dream job: Director of the Thailand program of the educational foundation I had worked for the last 16 years. I turned the assignment down, as gradually I realized that after years of traveling and working abroad, I was more interested in an inner journey and discovery of self.

I left the foundation (this was mid-1980s) and looked around for what else to do; I joined a job-search group, helped others write their resumes, got good feedback on that, and discovered there was a whole field called Career Development. One could now get a Masters in it at JFK University in Orinda, CA. I signed up (Bill Bridges, author of Transitions,
Making Sense of Life’s Changes, was my first professor.)

Of course in career school, one is introduced to the MBTI® right away. Luckily for me, a qualifying program was being offered on the campus of USF in San Francisco (we believe it was the first such training offered in the western United States.) It was conducted by Mary McCaulley (Isabel Briggs Myers’ associate, and co-founder of CAPT and APT) and Rachel Fitzgerald. Rachel lived in the East Bay, as did I, and she became a good friend and my lifelong mentor in all things typological.Immediately after qualifying to purchase the MBTI®, I attended an early meeting of a group that met at what was then Notre Dame College in Belmont. Bill Yabroff led a workshop on Carl Jung’s concepts of Introversion and Extraversion that is still a vivid memory. There I also met Eleanor and Roy Woenne, Chuck and Kathie Kallander, and others who became the founders of BAAPT.

I was hooked on typology, with still lots to learn, but I also discovered there was the field of Organizational Development, with an interest group called the OD Network, a Training and Development group that met regularly (ASTD), and a Career Development Association. I took classes on OD at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the Haight, classes on Training at UC Extension, classes on Adult Development and Jungian theory at San Francisco State, and for a time joined the OD Network. You could say I OD-ed on CD, OD, AD and ASTD.

In the end, the group that had the most soul, the most intellectual curiosity, and the most integrity in the pursuit of self-discovery and personal / professional development was BAAPT. ❖