In August of 1967, the “Instituto Psicológico de Puerto Rico” (Psychological Institute of Puerto Rico), renamed the Carlos Albizu University in 2000, began its first academic session in Dr. Carlos Albizu Miranda’s office with a class of just 20 students. They didn’t have much at first. It wasn’t the building we have now, with all our classrooms and office space. They had to move around until they finally found the beautiful building right in the heart of Old San Juan that the university would soon call home. This amazing school has had a long history of changes, both in name and in place, but never in purpose; for it was always to create individuals who would practice psychology with faith, hope and love, and who would transmit the same humanistic message to the people they served.
When Dr. Albizu founded the university in 1966, his hope was to create a school in Puerto Rico for graduate studies in psychology. In those times, Puerto Rican students could earn their bachelor’s degree in psychology right in their home country, but they would have to go abroad to earn a graduate degree because there were no specialized programs for the subject. Dr. Carlos Albizu was one of those students that had to go to the United States to earn his master’s and doctorate degrees in Clinical Psychology.
While studying, he learned the theories and concepts that involve human behavior and the tactics used by American psychologists on their patients’ therapy. However, he also realized something: while these theories and techniques were heavily applied on the North American population and yielded great results, they could not be applied to the Puerto Rican population, because they were not the same. The cultures were different, as were the traditions and people. Applying all these tactics on Puerto Rican clients would only cause confusion and incorrect assessments, which would make the therapy fail and also damage the reputation of the psychologists of Puerto Rico. Not on Dr. Albizu’s watch though!
Dr. Albizu was a visionary who decided to take the fate of the people in his own hands. His students would not only be prepared in psychology, but in Puerto Rico’s history, its culture and its racially diverse habitants’ ways of thinking. And Puerto Rico needed it! During those years, social and political turmoil threatened the island. People would need help coping with the changes brought by modern times and, with only five clinical psychologists for a growing population of almost three million, the need for mental health professionals kept increasing. Dr. Albizu answered these needs with his promise to bring a good education to any student wishing to be trained in the art of understanding the human mind. A very religious man, Albizu decided to integrate the university with an Episcopal seminary and the theological faculty of the Dominican Order in Bayamón. Back then, the academic offer included psychology, sociology and pastoral psychology. He wanted to train well-rounded psychologists with kind hearts. It was a beautiful concept and, though it didn’t last, I like to think that we can keep his views alive by practicing psychology with the faith-hope-love perspective he so cherished and encouraged.
Today, Albizu University also has a campus in Miami, USA and a newly established campus in the city of Mayagüez. All three campuses offer bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology, and the Miami campus also offers degrees in education, speech-language pathology, criminal justice, and human services. Albizu University is a place where students learn to serve the people, to be compassionate and fair and, most of all, to be empathic. To understand where people come from without judgement, to help them find the answers to their problems and to help them fight the battles within their selves.
To you, student, I ask you not to forget Dr. Albizu’s purpose. Be proud of what you’re studying and be proud that you’re studying it here. Most of all, remember that while we can learn every theory and strategy to deal with other people, it’s the connection we form with the person that makes it all come together. To earn the trust of another human being is an honor in and of itself.
References: Silva Gotay, S., Mayo Santana, R., & de los Angeles Vazquez, N. (2014). “Más allá del saber, está el amor”. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Publicaciones Gaviota.