Dr. Robert Cooley (founder and executive director of Catherine Freer Wilderness Academy) sat down with Dustin Tibbitts during a NATSAP conference earlier this year, and shared what it was like to start and lead a program.
According to Catherine Freer’s website “Dr. Cooley grew up on the McKenzie River in Oregon, where he learned to row a whitewater boat at age four. He made his way through college and graduate school by spending his summers logging, doing Forest Service trail work, and working as a river guide. He earned his PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Oregon in 1979 and has specialized in family and adolescent therapy. He has lived abroad several times and speaks French, Spanish, and German. Dr. Cooley developed and directed a family therapy program at Oregon’s child welfare department and had a private therapy practice, while taking summers off to run a whitewater rafting company. In 1988, he combined his outdoor and therapy interests in founding Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions. Dr. Cooley and his wife Ingrid, a family therapist, live in Albany, Oregon, and have four children.”
We are so pleased that Dr. Cooley took the time to talk with us:
Please follow along this week as we post more videos from our interview with Dr. Cooley:
Dr. Robert Cooley (founder and executive director of Catherine Freer Wilderness Academy) sat down with Dustin Tibbitts during a NATSAP conference earlier this year, and shared what it was like to start and lead a program.
According to Catherine Freer’s website “Dr. Cooley grew up on the McKenzie River in Oregon, where he learned to row a whitewater boat at age four. He made his way through college and graduate school by spending his summers logging, doing Forest Service trail work, and working as a river guide. He earned his PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Oregon in 1979 and has specialized in family and adolescent therapy. He has lived abroad several times and speaks French, Spanish, and German. Dr. Cooley developed and directed a family therapy program at Oregon’s child welfare department and had a private therapy practice, while taking summers off to run a whitewater rafting company. In 1988, he combined his outdoor and therapy interests in founding Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expeditions. Dr. Cooley and his wife Ingrid, a family therapist, live in Albany, Oregon, and have four children.”
We are so pleased that Dr. Cooley took the time to talk with us:
Please follow along this week as we post more videos from our interview with Dr. Cooley:
Aspiro – a wilderness adventure therapy program for boys and girls – came to visit last week. I was impressed and pleased with their approach to their students. They made this comment during their presentation: “Because we take our students into more ‘public’ ares such as Arches National Park, we have been accused of only being able to treat ‘softer’ kids – kids who won’t run away.”
I was struck with how similar our approaches are, and how similar the criticisms levied against us were during our first five years in business. New Haven has been around for 15 years this month. In our first five years, much like Aspiro, we were refining a more relationship-based model of residential treatment for girls. (We were tired of working in places that just applied a boot-camp or behavioral model to the treatment of teen girls.) We were questioned repeatedly about being able to treat “harder” girls – but what our critics really were wondering is if we would be able to “contain” girls who didn’t want to be in treatment.
How ironic that, 15 years later, our model is the most copied by new startups in the world of private teen treatment for girls! “Relationship-based”, “family therapy”, and “values” – all terms which were never spoken together in 1995 – are now tired old buzzwords in our industry. Even though it means competition for us, I’m glad. Girls deserve better treatment.
Why is Aspiro able to take its students into public places? Why is New Haven able to operate on 31 acres without magnetized steel doors? It’s because our students realize quickly that we love them and want the best for them. What’s more, we won’t constrain, abuse, or coerce them into doing what is best for them.
The beauty of a relationship-based model is that “tough” kids CAN be treated. No, Aspiro and New Haven don’t take highly violent kids. But we do take the very ill family systems, the kids who have internalized their problems to the point of suicidality, and the kids who have failed treatment time and again.
All good therapy begins and ends with a strong therapeutic relationship.
