Robert John Willis, born to Judge and Mrs. Robert J. Willis in Yakima, Washington, on April 28, 1935, in 1953 entered the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus. He lived, studied and worked in that religious order for the following nineteen years.
After much consideration he decided to leave the Jesuits in 1972. The continuing war in Vietnam and the church’s lack of response to it was the immediate occasion. A deeper dissatisfaction, however, stemmed from the resolute backtracking of church authorities from the openness to the modern world taken by the Second Vatican Council. He could not in conscience represent any longer a monarchical, male, clerical church.
Bob Willis and Pat Cannon married in La Jolla, California on July 4, 1972. They left immediately for Pennsylvania where he taught psychology at La Salle College in Philadelphia. The next year they moved to Ewing, New Jersey, a suburb of Trenton. Bob directed the Counseling Center at Rider College in nearby Lawrenceville.
Bob’s interest in psychology had begun during his theological studies in California. At the request of the director of a Catholic action organization at Santa Clara University, he spent one day each week for three years counseling college students. Given this stimulus, he also completed a three-year course of training in the newly created “family therapy,” at the Family Therapy Institute in Los Gatos.
Subsequently, he worked with Dr. Carl Rogers and staff at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla. He participated as a small group leader in Rogers’ research on the effectiveness of sensitivity groups with ordinary (rather than hospitalized) populations. This involvement eventuated in Rogers’ agreeing to tutor him in doctoral studies in psychology in conjunction with the United States International University in San Diego. As a staff therapist and group leader at the Center for Studies of the Person, he practiced under Rogers’ direction and studied psychology until he received a Ph.D. in Leadership and Human Behavior in June 1972.
A licensed psychologist in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Bob left Rider College after four years. For the next ten years he pursued a private practice in psychotherapy, working principally with adults in both individual and couple’s therapy.
Bob and Pat Willis bought a home in Connecticut in 1987. He joined the Pastoral Counseling Center of West Hartford as director of family therapy. Within a year, this job included that of clinical director; in 1991 he assumed the position of executive director. For the next nine years he saw patients in psychotherapy, supervised staff therapists, and oversaw the financial and public relations welfare of the Center.
At the age of sixty-five Bob retired. He needed the time and energy to devote to his lifelong love of learning and writing. To date he has produced three books, the first detailing his method of doing psychotherapy, a second considering his life as both a religious and a psychologist, and, most recently, one offering a direction for resolving the current crisis in the Catholic Church in America.