Ruth Sagar

Interview with Ruth Riley Sagar Conducted by Andrea Schara

May 9, 2014

For the Murray Bowen Archives Project of Leaders for Tomorrow at the History of Science Division of the National Library of Medicine

Schara: So, Ruth Sagar, Andrea Schara. It’s the month of May! [laughter] 2014, May 9th, I think.

Sagar: [laughter]

Schara: And, I really appreciate being here with you, and we could go on for two or three hours.

Sagar: Whatever, maybe we will!

Schara: Ultimately, because you’ve known Dr. Bowen such a long time, and so if you wanted to start the interview with who are you and how did you get to know Dr. Bowen, and how did he influence you?

Sagar: Okay. I met Dr. Bowen in mid-July 1970. I had the previous May graduated from Trinity College with a degree in English. And after graduation, I decided to stay with two of my college friends in Washington rather than go home to Massachusetts. At some point in June I thought initially about maybe applying for a job with the federal government. I knew that would take a longer period of time. So, I had graduation money that sustained me for the first couple of months, and then I decided to – I was living in Glover Park, which is about a little over a mile north of the medical school campus at Georgetown. So I went down to what was then called the Office of Personnel to apply for what I thought would be a temporary job.

Schara: [laughter]

Sagar: While I waited for a real job to come through. So, as it turned out, after I filled out the written application, it was the Director of Personnel who interviewed me. And so we talked, and then she said, “You know, I hesitate, despite what’s on your application, to have a college graduate apply for this kind of job. ”

Schara: [laughter]

Sagar: “Because they won’t stay very long.” So, she saw that maybe there’d be a better alternative for me on campus than that. So, she described Dr. Bowen as a person who had done research and a lot of writing, and that he had a position, a new position, created in the Department of Psychiatry, that I might want to apply to. That sounded good to me, so she contacted Dr. Bowen to arrange a time. And I was pretty free to come at any point in time. So, within the week or so, I’m not exactly sure, I met Dr. Bowen in the Department of Psychiatry, which was in the Gorman Building behind the Hospital. And, without too much explanation, he took me downstairs, across a parking lot, and into the basement of the School of Nursing. Which was a little bit familiar to me, because that’s where the Office of Personnel was. The mail room was there, the garbage trucks were there, and I was like, “Where are we going?” So we went down to what was virtually an unfurnished office, [laughter] because he had recently moved from the Gorman Building over to the basement of St. Mary’s Hall to be closer to the residents. So that he might maintain a relationship with the residents – where residents would be interested in family rather than a Freudian approach. To psychotherapy, which was the prevailing tradition at Georgetown. The residency program was really big. I learned later that he had recently been asked to only teach third year residents, and not second year residents. And so the move was to have continuing contact with the residents now that he wouldn’t have a formal teaching relationship with them.

And, I also learned later that the reason for that had to do with the fact there was a large group of residents from previous years, that had gone into family. As their career. And had begun the Family Symposium, which began in I believe, either ’63 – I believe it’s 1963. And, so he talked about family, a little bit, he asked me what I knew about family, and of course, I thought he was talking about professionally, and I said, “Well, I really don’t know anything about psychiatry at all.

In fact, Dr. Bowen, you’re the first psychiatrist I’ve ever met.” [laughter] And, I said, “But I do know something about my own family.” Which was the best I could come up with. So then we talked a little bit about my family. He learned that I was the oldest of four, born and raised in Massachusetts, both my parents had been born and raised in Massachusetts, and that had gone back a few generations.

So, it was just odd to be in this unfurnished office, with this person, that is you know, according to the Personnel Office, world-renowned. It was like “What is going on here?”

Schara: [laughter]

Sagar: So, at the end of the interview, he asked me, basically, what was I doing next Tuesday evening. He mentioned that there were other applicants for the position. So I said, you know, that I was available, and he said, “Well, the faculty and I are meeting to discuss our upcoming Symposium, and would you like to come in and sit in on that meeting.” And so I said that would be fine. So, I left knowing very little, really. In fact I had an idea, and I think it might have been out of my own anxiety, that the other applicants for the position were also going to be there.

Schara: Okay. [laughter] The herd.

Sagar: Yeah. So, I–I really, I realized that trying to piece this together, I didn’t have too much information, but I thought Dr. Bowen was sort of a fascinating guy. I didn’t quite understand too much of what he was saying [laughter] to me, but I was interested in learning more.

So, the following week, I went to the conference room in the Department of Psychiatry. Two faculty members had arrived before I had. I was a little early and so I talked with them. One was Gary Singleton, who introduced himself and Blanche Ingraham, and they had both come over from Group Health where they worked. And to me, Dr. Singleton looked like a psychiatrist. He was tall, thin, smoking a pipe, and then gradually the other faculty came in. And Dr. Bowen arrived like a minute ahead of schedule. Most of the other faculty were already in the room with me. We were sitting in sort of a semi-circle. And there was a blackboard, as you walked in. And so Dr. Bowen put my family diagram on the blackboard. And I knew it was a family diagram, because on the line between my dad and my mom was the word Mass for Massachusetts. And then I thought, well,

Schara: [laughter]

Sagar: okay, and then I realized I was the circle on the left hand side. So I was like, “okay.” So, then, the meeting convenes, and each person on the faculty had some responsibility for some aspect of the Symposium. And, so the meeting went on like a business meeting, as if I weren’t there.

Schara: But your– but your diagram was there? [laughter]

Sagar: But my diagram was there. And Gary Singleton said, I forgot this, Gary Singleton said, “Well, that’s a pretty good position to be in. [laughter] And I was like, “Okay.”

Schara: [laughter] They– he said that to the group? Or he said it to you?

Sagar: No, I mean he said that to me when he and Blanche were in the room. I don’t remember if anyone else had come in.

Schara: Oh, okay.

Sagar: Oh, he had to have turned to me, because it was after Dr. Bowen put it up on the board of course. And I was sitting, actually, sort of across the room, and he was still smoking his pipe.

Schara: [laughter] That’s a good position to be in.

Sagar: So anyway, he said “Pretty good position to be in!” So, the meeting went on, as you know, I won’t go into the details, since we don’t have too much time, so then, at the end of an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes or whatever, Dr. Bowen turned to me and he said, “Well, Ruth, what do you think?” I said, “I’m not getting too much help here.” [laughter]

Schara: [laughter] You said that?

Sagar: No, no, no. What I said was,

Schara: Yeah, exactly.

Sagar: Well, I just had a sense I was pretty much on my own here. So, I said, “Well, I think what would be important is to have someone who could coordinate the efforts of all the various faculty that have been presenting tonight.” So, anyway, the meeting was over, I walked out with Dr. Bowen and the other faculty went out, I think, ahead of us, and he said, “Well, you know, I was wondering what you might be doing –” let’s just say– Thursday morning, or something, some few days later again. And he said, “I’d like you to come back and meet one of the faculty who couldn’t be here tonight.” And so I went back and went down to the little office at the end of the hall that had, you know, the three hard-backed chairs, the little desk. Long narrow room, not furnished in any other way. And I met Mike Kerr, actually Mike Kerr was not on the faculty at that point, which is the reason he wasn’t at the meeting. He was still a fellow in Child Psychiatry, so I made a mistake there, and what I sat in on was a supervision session between Dr. Bowen and Mike on his own family.

Schara: Wow, that’s amazing.

Sagar: It was amazing. And so, so that’s how I really– I got– without really talking to Mike, that’s how I got to know Mike initially. Was through the supervision session. And it was, you know, there had been his brother’s suicide the year before, and there was a little talk about the work system in the Department of Psychiatry, which if I was offered the job, I would be involved with the Department of Psychiatry. And, so – I just picked up a lot of, sort of, disparate information. It was just sort of a big thing. So, he said to me, afterwards, that he was going to be talking with the Chairman, and that he would give me a call about what they worked out. He didn’t exactly tell me I had the job, he didn’t tell me I didn’t have the job!

Schara: [laughter] Sounds like he’s going to bat for you though, talking to the Chairman.

Sagar: Well, he had to work out the financials because this was a new position, and the Department of Psychiatry did not want to continue to do the administrative work associated with the Symposium and the postgraduate program, which had begun the year before in ’69. So that pool of money that came from successful symposia and the postgraduate program was the money that was going to pay my salary. So, he called me on the phone and told me that the position was going to pay $7,000 a year. Which, at the time, wasn’t a terrible salary. It wasn’t a good salary, but it

Schara: [laughter]

Sagar: was on a university campus, and it seemed like a good opportunity. So, then an appointment was set up for me to meet with the Chairman’s executive assistant. And so I went over to the Department. She was an older woman, I don’t know how much older than I am, but probably fifteen years older than I, and she told me my salary was going to be $6200. [laughter]

Schara: [laughter]

Sagar: Well, we lost $800 when I walked over there! And you know, $800 isn’t a lot, but it’s a pretty big percentage of what I was offered, right?

Schara: Exactly.

Sagar: So, anyway, that took a little bit of working through, because there’s a lot of paperwork that has to be done with the Personnel Office so, although I began work before the end of July, I wasn’t officially an employee of the University until September 9th. Of 1970. Which I discovered years later was the same day in September 1959, was also Dr. Bowen’s anniversary date. It was the same. Day and month of the year. Which was –

Schara: Wow, the same day and month.

Sagar: Different years of course. Because he’d already been there eleven years by the time we met. And I think it was when some paperwork came to me before Dr. Bowen died that was in the file that I just happened to run across.

Schara: So, that same coincidence.

Sagar: Yes, it was an interesting coincidence, I thought. And also, September 9 was the day of the Human Family Symposium in 1978.

Schara: I remember that.

Sagar: Of the people who organized that day, Pat Meyer was a big figure. She arranged to have little desk pencil pen sets, so I always had that date, as I do still, have it on my desk. So, that’s an important date. So,

Schara: So, did they pay you the $7000 or $6200? [laughter]

Sagar: No, Dr. Bowen went back, and I think it’s fine that this is in here but neither Dr. Bowen nor I ever told anyone this, but what he did, for the first several years, he paid me the difference.

Schara: Alright. That sounds, that sounds much better. And more like Dr. Bowen, very principled.

Sagar: Very principled, and also what he did, is he paid for his family members to come to the Symposium, but instead of putting that into the Family Center coffers, it came as a check from him to me. To cover Mrs. Bowen’s registration fee and whoever else from the Bowen family attended.

Schara: Well, that was good too.

Sagar: So that was very good. So I worked primarily with Bud Andres, who came to the campus for Wednesday faculty meetings, and then he spent a good bit of time on Thursdays in the area where my office was located. So I began, you know, without a desk, without a typewriter, without a file cabinet. All that took some arranging, and I worked on that with Elsie Fuller, who was the Chairman’s assistant.

Schara: Yeah, I remember Elsie.

Sagar: And then my first job was to do the mailing of the Symposium brochure, so I had to find my way to the mailroom, and we mailed thousands of brochures back then, and a lot of it was run with equipment, none of us even remember, really. Right down to it.

Schara: So, without a desk, or anything, you would just sit in on the meetings, take notes, and then draw up – you did everything yourself, I imagine –you draw up what it’s going to look like, the flyer?

Sagar: There was a preliminary flyer that had gone out earlier in the summer.

Schara: And then, was there–

Sagar: And there had been programs for the previous years, so it used the Georgetown University color scheme, you know the blue and the grey. And the Georgetown University seal on the front. And so I did have, you know, basically, a template to use. The new feature for this upcoming Symposium would be the first Symposium banquet. Was in 1970. So, that was something that needed to be added to the mix. And so I worked with Eddy in the mail room, right outside the trash trucks and everything. To help me get down to the other side of campus to do this bulk mailing. It all went out on the bulk mailing permit of Georgetown University. So, I just learned things on the fly, really.

Schara: Did he keep wanting you to be in on the other training aspects, of the–

Sagar: Well, we hadn’t had the training. I’m still on the summer so, the training program would begin the last Tuesday in September. And there were applications coming in and that kind of thing that Bud Andres would review when he’d come in on Thursdays. So it was active. Dr. Bowen was off speaking a good deal of the time. And so, I didn’t see too much of Dr. Bowen over the summer, other than the Wednesday afternoon meeting. He ran that as an open meeting, with the theory meeting. The 1:30 to 3:00 o’clock meeting was already in place at that time. So, that’s where I met some of the real old-timers, like Mary Goepfert and the people who came in from other parts of the city and the metro area. And we had a large room that had already been arranged for the summer. So, he did one concept at each meeting. And then took some discussion. So it was, you know, obviously informative and useful.

Schara: So you sat in on these meetings about the concepts? Did you read any of his papers, or writings, or

Sagar: The only paper that I had access to is the 1966 paper, which had the yellow cover and that’s what I quoted from at Dr. Bowen’s funeral. That’s another aspect of my job. At the time, everyone received professional courtesy reprints, and so he had boxes of what I refer to as the yellow paper, because it had a glossy yellow cover and, course, it was the first, as Dr. Bowen described it, the first paper on the theory where the concept of the triangle was worked out. So, it was a real breakthrough. He describes that in a lot of places.

Schara: Yeah. But that was the first place.

Sagar: That was the first place.

Schara: What was the name of that? It’s a chapter in his book, too. It’s?

Sagar: Ah, Family Theory in Clinical Practice, I think. No, the book is Family Therapy.

Schara: Yeah, that’s the book, but was that the name of the chapter?

Sagar: Which he didn’t like. But he had to go along with the publisher on Family Therapy for the book. But I’m pretty sure – and I can let you know if I have this wrong – but I know it was published in 1966 and

Schara: So Family Theory in Clinical Practice?

Sagar: I believe. And if I’m not right about that I’ll let you know. Mmhmm, I think it is too.

Schara: I think that’s right. So, did you feel like, “Wow, I’m doing a job, but I’m in this learning environment, and were you questioning yourself about family at the time? Or were you just interested in the ideas?

Sagar: Well, I mean, Dr. Bowen in the interview, he and I talked a little bit about sibling position, and that was, even back then, that was in the popular literature, a little bit, about how oldest children are different than youngest children, they’re different than only children, and the mixture of boys and girls, all of that. So, that was something that at least gave me a little bit of sense that I knew something! [laughter] And then I attended the training program, when it began in September. It was part of my job because one of the difficulties on the campus, always, was having a classroom reserved and then having someone else be there when you showed up.

Schara: Oh, yeah, I know that one.

Sagar: Yeah. So, I think that was an important factor in the decision of Dr. Bowen and the faculty to move off-campus. In 1975, was the opportunity, first of all, for the faculty to interact on a more regular basis, to develop more programs and to not have to worry about the logistics of working within the University, where we really had no particular prominence. The family program had no, you know, power isn’t the right word but influence, I guess you could say. And so I got to know that the Preclinical Science Building was finished, and so we were lucky enough to get in on the ground floor with LA2, which was in this new Preclinical Science Building, and the AV studio was also in that building. Georgetown University did not have a television studio before that building was built. And I don’t know where the Medical School Library was. I think it was probably in the old Medical School building, but the Medical School Library opened in that Preclinical Science Building. And so that was a big modernization effort on the campus. That was occurring around the time I began to work there. And it was useful because there was someone that we used to put on the evening videos, that would be broadcast on the monitors, in either LA2, LA4, or LA6. We happened to have LA2 but LA-6 was a huge auditorium. So these guys weren’t too reliable.

Schara: [laughter] That’s a good word.

Sagar: Yeah. As far as showing up on time. And you know, there were no cell phones, or anything. It was like, “Well, is Frank going to show up to put on this video because this is important.” And then over the summer I did things, like collect the tuition, make files for the applications since some people were returning for a second year. They had been in the first year of the program, I don’t remember how many. There were maybe fourteen in the first year of the program, and then five were returning. So, one of the rooms we could use for supervision. . . I mean we used biology labs and other places in the Medical School, where we dispersed after the didactic portion was over. But Dr. Bowen used the conference room in the Department of Psychiatry, where I initially met the faculty. And he was the supervisor, and he asked me to sit in on the supervision group. Which I did. In which each of the five people that were in the room talked about what was on their mind.

Schara: Did you learn interesting things, that you were like, “Wow, this is amazing?”

Sagar: Well, you know, it made me start thinking about my own family relationships, needless to say. And you know, in the first years that I worked for Dr. Bowen, you know, I was not married and I didn’t have any children, so my focus was more on my parents and my grandparents, their relationship, my relationship to them, and my relationship with my siblings. And then as time went on, as my own life evolved, the other aspects of family like spouse and children became part of the larger picture. So, sitting in on the supervision group was…

Schara: Yeah. Right. But I remember back to when he had the NIH days, he thought that the families would learn more if the staff would talk about the challenges they had in relating to the families. And the families could sit and listen. And that way they would learn. They weren’t having to risk anything. But they would just listen to these people trying to figure out what the heck was going on in their own lives, and what they were doing in relationship challenges that the family members presented. So this way of learning, that he had developed back at NIH, which is if you sit and listen to other people, you’ll be learning something about yourself.

Sagar: Well that’s right, and the thing is that, since the job had no predecessor in the position, there were no expectations discussed, there were no guidelines, and it was really up to me to figure out.

Schara: Cruel and wonderful. [laughter]

Sagar: How to get the job done. So it, it was challenging, but it was

Schara: Sounds very creative.

Sagar: You know, it was very interesting too. Mmhmm. And then the first learning experience, I guess I could say, in which Dr. Bowen sort of talked to me about Bowen theory and how it related to me, was after the 1970 Symposium, which was when Nathan Ackerman was the distinguished guest. We were in Gaston Hall, which was the largest auditorium, at the time, on the campus. And, it wasn’t adequate in terms of the numbers of people, because there were a thousand people at the meeting. And all of the registration materials were prepared by me by hand.

Schara: Holy cow.

Sagar: And, you know, I didn’t have any assistance, really. It was just something that I needed to do, and so Dr. Bowen would drop in, we’d talk about the registration, in you know, July. He always went away for the month of August. Bud Andres was around, and we did the logistics. He helped out some. Because he had been the coordinator of the Symposium since the first one. And he was sort of Dr. Bowen’s right hand person. So, after the Symposium was over, he came to talk to me. And, one of the issues that had come up was that I shared an office in the basement of St. Mary’s with an employee of the Department of Psychiatry who was responsible for all the paperwork related to the residency training program and the clinic billing. There was a clinic there and that’s where the residents were, and that’s where Dr. Bowen saw the residents. And so they thought it would be a good idea if I helped this person answer the phone. And I was like, “I know that the Department of Psychiatry isn’t funding my position, at all. And so, I said to Dr. Bowen that I really would rather not get into whatever could be going on. Because he had a relationship with the Department of Psychiatry that he would talk about without any detail, particularly. But, after the Symposium, he said that I was inheriting some of the negative. And the negative was – he talked about it in terms of the emotional process – with him and the Department of Psychiatry and the outside world. And the fact that he had developed a theory and a therapy that was radically different than what was in this conventional Department of Psychiatry. And that he was always on the outside. And that I was always on the outside [laughter]. And that there were things that could be done to improve my relationship with the key people. And that, that’s it. So, there were things I could do. Nothing more! There were things I could do. We didn’t have our own copier in the basement of St. Mary’s Hall, so I would have to go over and pick up my mail in the Department of Psychiatry, and do the xeroxing I needed to do it in the lobby area in front of the Chairman’s office, where Elsie sat. And Dr. Bowen was in there, talking with Elsie when I came over, and they were laughing, and they both loved to smoke, and anyway, there was a lot of conversation going back and forth. By them. So I just sort of waved to Elsie as I was leaving, and I thought, “Well, that might be something I could do.” [laughter] Which is, to develop a relationship with, basically, my counterpart. Because part of the tension about that salary thing was that Elsie was a high-school graduate, and I was the first person hired who had a college degree, and there was a certain amount of discomfort, with that, in her, and whatever. And that’s why I had to make less money. Because she needed to be at the helm. You know, even though I didn’t work for her, so I guess was is it like or unlike, Punkin, what you had with Dr. Bowen, in which Dr. Bowen said to you something about, you’re working for me – you know it better than I do –, but “You need to make friends with Ruth, you’ll be reporting to me, but you need to make friends with Ruth”?

Schara: [laughter] Yeah.

Sagar: And that was similar, that I needed to make friends with Elsie, even though I also reported, if that’s the right word, to Dr. Bowen. So, different kinds of little learning experiences were useful to me in the administrative system.

Schara: Yeah, so he could talk about the emotional system in a way that is practical, that’s what I would call it. It’s just sort of a practical thing. And, I think he said something to me about it, like, in kind of a reversal, he said, “You don’t have to do everything the way Elaine has done it, but if you want to, you can follow in her footsteps.” [laughter] And so it was, you know, all these things like, you know, “You’re going to report to Ruth.” And I don’t think he said make friends with her, but said, “You’re two oldests” or something like that. “Let’s see what kind of relationship you can have,” or something. It was something like that. And then, I remember the tenth anniversary party, and I had just arrived, and I videotaped that tenth anniversary party that he insisted on having for you.

Sagar: I know.

Schara: And then he wanted people to talk, and no one would talk, and he said, “Okay, Punkin, you talk about Ruth. What did you see? When you came here to work for Ruth?” [laughter] And then I gave I think a pretty accurate and adequate experience of you. And then other people spoke after that.

Sagar: Did other people speak after that? I, I have a copy of that on VHS. It’s interesting, all the people that were there. And Dr. Bowen was really wanting Dr. Steinbach and Elsie Fuller to come. And they did. It was the first time they had ever been in the space. Because we moved into the space in December of 1975, and this was the summer of 1978. So some time had gone by. We were off-campus, so we had to go to the campus for all kinds of services, such as mailings, and all that kind of thing. So there was someone going from the Family Center over to the campus pretty much every day. It wasn’t always me, but it was often me. Most often me.

Schara: So you decided you could make friends with Elsie, but you were not going to answer the phone for the residency program! [laughter]

Sagar: That’s right. And that issue became a non-issue, really, as time went on. And, anyway, the person who shared the office with me, we became friends, and she was a nice person.

Schara: And so, you’re there at the Department of Psychiatry, in St. Mary’s basement, the program is sort of growing and growing, did that produce more tension between the Department of Psychiatry and Dr. Bowen, or was that taken care of in his relationship with Dr. Steinbach, and your relationship with Elsie, do you think?

Sagar: I think that the Department of Psychiatry was going to be very happy for us to move off-campus, that’s for sure. Because in 1975, with the assistance of the Department of Psychiatry we got the grant from the NIH for the Family Fellowship. And there were other programs that were growing. But the buildings on campus could not contain other programs that were growing, not just ours. Okay, so we got the fellowship, and we moved from the campus, so there was a whole year of planning to move to the campus. This was a building that was owned by some Georgetown physicians as an investment property. A clinical chemistry lab had been on the second floor, and it was proposed that we move to the second floor. And Dr. Bowen, in addition to the money from the fellowship – a five year fellowship – had the year or two previously gotten a $100,000 one-time donation from someone he had seen in his practice. And so, he told me the name of the family. And he said, “This family wants to remain anonymous.” So I said to myself, “Well, I guess I can’t tell anyone.” [laughter] And so, several years later he said something about secrets, and how he always told key people secrets, and then he would find out if they kept the confidence or not. And I said to myself, “Well, I’m so glad I knew to keep that confidence!” [laughter] So I always knew that. I don’t know who else he told. But I know–

Schara: I’m not telling, no. [laughter] I’m not telling either.

Sagar: So, anyway, so those two allowed us to move off-campus. I don’t know what would have happened to us otherwise. The department and the residency program and the department were also growing.

Schara: So it was more, maybe space, than theoretical differences at that time. In other words, they had grown used to Dr. Bowen having his viewpoint about family and having a popularity with the residents, and it wasn’t as threatening to them,

Sagar: Well, you know because the residents were only a little bit older than I was, I was more contemporary with the residents than I was contemporary with any of the faculty. I mean all these were people who were years older than I. So the residents felt comfortable saying whatever they wanted about Dr. Bowen, you know. Like they would kid about the NIH project because he brought it up all the time. You know, it’s like “Oh, there goes–” the guy who’s the current Chairman said, “There goes Murray, off on NIH again.” [laughter] And then a couple of the residents wanted to date me, but I stayed away from them. No thanks. They were nice guys, but no.

Schara: [laughter] No, no thanks. That would have made an unusual bonding, to have one of the residents as your husband. [laughter] It would have been very interesting. Could write a science fiction story about that. [laughter] What would happen.

Sagar: There was never any real temptation on my part. I wasn’t that interested in any of the ones who asked me out, so it never came to anything.

Schara: So you were able to operate as a pretty free agent, for the most part, at least until 19– well, we’ve only gotten to 1975, I guess. But you’re pretty much, in these early years, you’re pretty much a free agent and you’ve learned a lot about the emotional system, in your work in the Department of Psychiatry, and you’ve learned a lot about the emotional system in your own family. But you weren’t a disciple, you were still more an observer of what was going on. You didn’t kind of believe in Bowen theory at that time did you? As an important thing for the society? For society to know Bowen theory?

Sagar: No, not really. The other thing I did – which you know for better or for worse – rather than becoming more a student of Bowen theory, I decided to go to graduate school at Georgetown. So, in the seventies before the move to the off-campus space, I was going down to campus after work to take night classes. That took me two years and a summer. And it was something that I did partly out of a lack of enough work to do in the basement of St. Mary’s because it was a very seasonal program at the time. There was the training program, and there was the Symposium. And there was the 1:30 meeting. And, there was also the Thursday evening lecture once a month, the theory meeting. In the summers only, once, you know, once a week. And after that, that meeting was only once a month too. So I had a lot of time on my hands.

Schara: Oh, that was precious.

Sagar: So I decided, as you know, to take advantage of the tuition benefits.

Schara: Yes, I took advantage of that too.

Sagar: So that was why. I thought I should do something, with my time. So then I got preoccupied in that for those years. And, finished my degree and then I graduated in ’75. December of ’75.

Schara: And you had your Masters in English?

Sagar: English. Yes.

Schara: And it did turn out that you’ve got the journal, and you’ve got a lot of things that are written, a lot of written materials, that have been a gift to the world. Well, let me end here and maybe if there’s more time this afternoon, we’ll see. I can come over to the Family Center. And maybe we can do more, or else at the end of May I’ll be back.

Sagar: Do you know what your dates are at the end of May?

Schara: Or is it the 28th, I’ll have to think–

Sagar: So you’ll come– [tape ends]

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