History

The History of Rose City Counseling Center

The BEGINNING

Rose City Counseling Center was founded by Alan Karbelnig, PhD, ABPP, Linda Bortell, PsyD, Mary Jane Freire, PhD, Miriam Kelly, PhD, and Philip Pannell, PhD (1957-2015). These Pasadena-based practicing psychologists began meeting in 1996 to discuss the troubling gap in access to quality mental health services for clients who were either underinsured or uninsured and could not afford private practice services. 

“I remember our monthly meetings,” recalled Dr. Karbelnig, a current trainer and Chair of the Training Committee.  “It took us many years of planning.  We used to meet at an Italian restaurant on Mission Street in San Marino, right near Dr. Freire’s office.”  Others – friends and professional colleagues – frequently joined in these early meetings, including Bob Buente, Bob Fishman, David Impastato, Annette Palmer and Colin Vogel, PhD. 

Although there were several counseling clinics in the area, most served only Medi-Cal recipients and offered limited services, such as medication management or brief therapy.  The clinics usually carried waiting lists and were staffed by graduate students in their first or second year of school, who had little or no clinical experience and received minimal supervision while seeing clients. 

Rose City’s founders began developing a solution to this problem by envisioning a mental health center that would be staffed by experienced clinicians receiving excellent ongoing training and supervision.  In contrast to the impersonal atmosphere of many clinics, Rose City Counseling Center would be modeled on a private practice, a warm and professional setting where clients’ dignity and privacy would be respected and their individual needs prioritized.  Services would be open-ended rather than pre-limited by a third party, and would seek to alleviate symptoms by fostering lasting change in clients’ lives by focusing on psychodynamic psychotherapy, to “explore those aspects of self that are not fully known, especially as they are manifested and potentially influenced in the therapy relationship.”

The idea

Dr. Karbelnig noted that Philip Pannell, PhD, was critically important in the early group meetings. “Phil was Clinical Director of Pacific Clinics at the time and his expertise was invaluable.  He brought a lot of useful information to our discussions about how training programs are supposed to work.

Dr. Bortell, a Rose City supervisor and member of the Training Committee, reported that Hedda Bolgar, PhD, her mentor and a leader in psychoanalysis, was “very encouraging.  She would tell me, ‘I know you can do it,’” when discussing the formation of a new counseling clinic and training program to be based in Pasadena.  Dr. Bortell also reported that in 2001, “we had a catchphrase for our organization, ‘Changing People’s Lives for the Better.’”

“I wrote up the first ‘business plan’ and of course, I had no idea what I was doing,” admitted Dr. Karbelnig.  “We had two big breaks – in 2002, we met with Community Partners, a nonprofit incubator and fiscal sponsor.  Dr. Katherine Sellwood, our volunteer Executive Director, did some research in the CP library.”  Dr. Bortell agreed, stating, “Community Partners helped push us forward in many different ways.”  

Dr. Karbelnig continued, “Then, we wrote a grant application to the California Wellness Foundation (I think I wrote one grant previously in my life, and that was to get an Apple computer for a counseling center where I worked in the 1970s and ‘80s).  When a Foundation representative flew down from San Francisco to meet with the Board, I got hopeful.  She liked the idea of us offering a low-fee counseling center in a private practice setting; she and the Foundation liked that combination since many clinics frequently look like the socioeconomic class they serve (no offense to anyone).”

The FORMATION

Articles of Incorporation were filed December 1, 2000, and signed by Alan Karbelnig, PhD, Miriam Kelly, PhD, and Robert Fishman.  Dr. Karbelnig stated, “We chose ‘Rose City’ because we thought that was the name for Pasadena.  Only later, after incorporation, did we learn that Pasadena is actually called Crown City” – the Crown of the San Gabriel Valley.   In May 2003, Rose City Counseling Center received classification as a charitable organization under the 23701d section of the Revenue and Taxation Code by the Franchise Tax Board of the State of California. In July 2003, Rose City obtained 501(c)(3) tax exemption status from the Internal Revenue Service. Also in July 2003, the California Wellness Foundation awarded Rose City Counseling Center a $50,000 seed grant.  

According to Diane Laughrun, PhD, Rose City’s first Clinical Director, “I designed the Clinical Training Program based on a traditional psychoanalytic program.”  She stated, “Shortly after I joined the group, we held our board meetings around my dining room table for a number of years.  We had a camaraderie that was fun.  It always amazed me that out of our little meetings, this amazing place was born.”

Dr. Laughrun taught the Didactics module within the Clinical Training Program for fifteen years and added, “I’ve always thought that in spite of our learning from experience as we went along – the service that was provided to the community was so essential that Rose City flourished almost on its own.  My favorite part of the whole experience was working with the clinicians.  We had so many young, enthusiastic, and well qualified people doing the face-to-face work.  It was a pleasure to be a part of their developing skills as clinicians and psychoanalytic thinkers.”

Rose City opened its doors in May 2004, the first clinician signed on and by the end of the year a training class of five clinicians provided psychotherapy to 32 clients.  Initially, clinicians began the training program as a cohort, however it was determined that to maintain a smoother consistency in earned fees, it would be best if clinicians did not all begin and complete the program at the same time.  Beginning in 2012, clinicians began the program throughout the calendar year.  Rose City Center has steadily grown each year and during 2023, an average of 14 clinicians each month provided therapy to 373 clients during 5,883 appointments.

our mission

Rose City Counseling Center believes in making mental health care accessible and affordable and we train our pre-doctoral and postdoctoral clinicians to become competent, ethical, and community-minded practitioners.

Rose City’s embrace of telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed our clinicians to reach and serve struggling individuals throughout all of California. With this in mind, the Board of Directors convened a Mission Statement Task Force to update the Rose City Mission Statement in October of 2022. The result?

Our Mission: Rose City Center is devoted to improving our community by offering affordable, high-quality psychotherapy throughout California while providing psychoanalytic training for our clinicians.