Pacifica Graduate Institute : Lambert Campus
Pacifica Graduate Institute : Lambert Campus is a established in (unknown). The campus is located in and hosts students with an endowment of .
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Many students attend Pacifica because they are interested in Depth Psychology and C.G. Jung. In reality, the curriculum features a very minimal examination of Jung’s work. Rather, the bulk of the course material focuses on glorifying Greek history, thought, and philosophy to the point of arguing for the literal worship of the Greek gods. The other predominant inclination at Pacifica is the advancement of a synthesis of occult and New Age belief systems. This is why Pacifica has rightly earned the reputation of being a cult.
As other reviewers have mentioned, there is something deeply wrong at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Bad vibes abound. In the name of depth work, dark, sinister, and harmful states are encouraged among the student body and faculty. Torturing the Souls of the World, indeed.
Pacifica will drain you. It will drain you emotionally. It will drain you financially.
If you have a complaint about Pacifica Graduate Institute’s education model, standards, academic rigor, failed APA accreditation, etc, please file a complaint with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) at: https://wascsenior.org/files/Complaint_Form.pdf
However these are all red flags that I wished I’d known and that you can find documented in other places. My goal is to only speak to the Ph.d Clinical all programs are so different. And programs change. Even in 5 or less years so always speak with recent students if possible.
Red flags to consider:
1) PGI was sued for portraying itself as a APA ready. The students won. Why this matters? It speaks to the integrity of how this school will care for you in this phd. They had no problem misleading students. Second this matters because this school can be very quick to defend itself. They will be in the right and you will be in the wrong as a student. You can petition. However, I’ve seen many instinaces where PGI scapegoated or blamed students in ways that were anything but “tending the worlds soul or caring”
2) A former professor told me the school was also sued for misrepresenting its ability to get students licensed outside CA. I don’t know the results but they said “this has always been an issue for that program” Even moreso with non APA. my first day of class a legal document was put in front of us. We were told to look it over and sign. It stated we were responsible for our own licensure and PGI is not.They gave us less than a half hour to read and sign. They did not permit us to take it home. THIS IS A HUGE RED FLAG. you are being ask on the spot to sign your rights away. This ended up harming many students including a clinical director / former grad that left the school and sought licensure outside CA. She mentioned the university should do more to protect students in licensure and noted they do not. I myself was told my state met requirments. And HBO showed they met. However 3 year in a rummor floated that it was not licensable in WA and a student was again denied. PGI had formerly blamed the student saying they were at fault and their failer to take certain steps lead to their denial in licensure. In the end a clinical director let slip that the school “knew for a while” licensure was not possible in WA. However, all student in WA were never made aware of this despite the school learning of this during enrollemnt. A fellow psyd student was also caught off gaurd by this in 2019. Please note if this happens to you you are on your own. The school will not be there to back you or advocate for you.
The school is heavy on documents. If you dont get it in writing it will hurt you. A student in my cohort completed over 1200 clinical hours. His practicum agreement form was misplaced by the program.. Not only did they blame him but they did not accept the hours.
— I’d like to note that PGI seems to have a strong record of blaming students. Again this is a red flag and if you get into trouble the school will likely protect themselves and find ways to make you at fault. I’ve seen this in various forms in different cohorts.
For the MA exam. If you transfered in unites from the masters at PGI or elswhere the school will tell you —“you are liable to know the information on the test”. This exam created a tremendous amount of distress and was disgusting to see a university do this.One student said ” I don’t want to pay 150k to be a guine pig” as they “worked out teh kinks” in their test year 1&2. You can miss no more than 10 questions. 6 of the questions the 1st year were from a class I transfered in and I never took at PGI all I can say is I was lucky to pass ..purely lucky. I’d never read the book they cited. How does testing students on material they were never taught in 2 years classify as ethical? Let alone why test students on 2 yrs of classes they already passed? One student “I cried the whole way through exam”… exam is timed you half less than 1.5 mins per question you will not have time to google.
Lastly in 2022 the school fired and placed on probation 2 core faculty. while 2 retired. They did not notify students of this. Students were caught by surprise that suddenly they didnt have chairs for their dissertation. or that their teacher did not recieve their course papers. During this time PGI did very little to address student concerns or stress. It also lead to a mess with courses the following quarter as teachers were asked to stand in last min. One poor professor and class had the experience of teaching a syllabus that was written for a 3 unit for a 1 unit. The professor did not catch the error until it was too late for some students but all students had been asked to do work for a 3 unit when they received 1 unit of credit.
My issue with most of this is that the institute like to blame students and isn’t looking at their own LARGE unconscious ways. I have not seen them take accountability and the school itself has a large persona/image.
Whatever decision you make please please do your research and please please be careful. This was again written for the phd clinical between 2019-2023 graduation.
If you do not have the money, read the books.
I did both with emphasis on reading all the books, and then, bought the degrees from an out of state graduate school. Cheap and I feel good!
Pacifica leadership also has a long track record of ignoring student protests over these and other Pacifica missteps. As one instructor under whom I studied noted in a private conversation, ” Pacifica has a VERY big shadow”.
My response, then, after seven years as a full time grad student in two separate programs is this: The counseling program was not bad at all, except for several ethical issues with there practicum program and the fact that no one whom I know from my own cohort is currently employed in Mental Health practice – no jobs! The Myth program lacks both depth and actual, practical relevance to both our times and to the sincere study of myth as a spiritual, psychological, or social phenomenon of real import. In short, it was, for me a total, $120,000, wash whose success appears to be based largely upon drawing in neophyte students with no scholarly or practical background in the study of myth, depth psychology, or religious studies
My advice? Try the California Institute of Integral Studies. Unless, of course, all you are looking for is an easy as melt butter MA degree; but it will still set you back seventy grand or so.
PGI is a cult for those who consider themselves “non-traditional” “edge-dwellers” but it is not an actual academic institution worthy of your thousands of dollars, all of which will only line the pocketbooks of its own faculty and staff, since it is a for profit, 97% employee owned institution.
Do your research about cults before enrolling here because this place fits all of the criteria to be considered one. While you’re at it, do some research on this school’s professional reputation, including the 60+ class action lawsuits that have been filed against it.
I learned a great deal about my subject matter while moving through coursework with a cohort that kept me grounded and inspired throughout the program—and yes, when you bring human dynamics into any situation, things can sometimes be less than ideal— but we were also given tools that allowed us to work through issues as they arose, and to grow close and support one another as a group.
Most of all, perhaps, I appreciated the container that allowed me to follow a path of psychological self-discovery and integrate what I was learning about myself through group activities, fieldwork, writing and research. Now that I have finished my degree, I find myself both wanting and feeling empowered, to give back some of my own learning to the larger community, which is very rewarding as well. I will always feel immensely lucky to have had the opportunity to attend Pacifica. I would say that if you are craving the academic experience (in a gorgeous setting), that you work well in a system where you attend residential gatherings once a month or once a quarter (depending on the program), and you are willing to keep the kind of open mind that will allow you to question things and to truly learn and grow, this might well be the place for you, too.
Unlike others, I was not converted to a vegan diet, nor did i find professors narcissistic. You are forced to have a much deeper connection with yourself and need to find subjects like dreams and the unconscious interesting, or it might me a turn off. This is a specialty school. If you are looking for the average PhD in psychology, go elsewhere, however if you are naturally in a depth frame of mind, this school is a dream.
If you are looking for narcissistic navel gazing taught by and for pod people, this school is for you. The degree to which this “graduate institute” appears to be a a cult rather than an actual academic institution is disturbing.
Those who drink the kool aid stick together. While those with the courage enough to speak out about the dark shadow and utter facade of this place are discredited and maligned. This is a school for new age conformists of the empty “love and light” variety, not true seekers.
Having found a few mind-like people at that place he abandoned friends, family, his dog.
The reviews presented here don’t even get into the toll of what the families of these depressed people go through. Very dangerous place, watch out.
At the juncture between earning the MA and going on for the Ph.D., I paused, and, in retrospect, I wish I had stopped right there. The entire third year was a waste*, but I was, I’m ashamed to say, sucked in too far at that point.
*Silly classes such as, “let’s do a little Tai Chi on the lawn and then we’ll journal how we feel about that in relation to the 1000 pages you read to prepare for today”. Not that there’s anything WRONG with those activities, but at $2,500 a pop per weekend’s worth of classes (when I went there) I think I could have done better with adult education at the local city college . . . or just about anywhere.
On a personal level, there are aspects of the education for which I’m extremely grateful. There are a few, and only a few, extremely brilliant instructors. But they tend to be the old-timers and are being phased out. Many of the instructors are completely pathetic, teaching nothing and offering little-to-no feedback on your work.
More than a few of the professors are themselves recent PGI grads. (Cheap hires?) In our program, one was not only a recent graduate but she was also the romantic partner of our head of department, though this fact was kept hidden from the students. He had been her dissertation chair then she came to teach us without one word of disclaimer. Can you say “conflict of interest”? (Eventually they married, thus, at least future students knew where they stood with their teacher who went to bed every night with the chair.)
Oh, and want to meet with your professor? You get 15 minutes, crammed in between other students who also get 15 minutes, during meals, in the public cafeteria. And you ARE expected to make the rounds because, despite all of their supposed enlightenment about introverts, the extrovert still rules even at Pacifica.
Don’t worry about your grades, however: A’s are going currency and very few professors seem to have the courage or interest to engage the students on a level that could be considered academically challenging.
ALL THIS PLACE CARES ABOUT IS THE MONEY. Oh they’ll sell you the line of goods, slicker than the mythological snake-oil salesperson, all wrapped up in secular Jungian religiosity.
Not only is PGI FOR PROFIT, IT IS OWNED BY THE EMPLOYEES, by the very people feeding and TEACHING you. Can you say ACCOUNTABILITY?
Grad school in general has sadly become an enormous scam. But private, for profit “institutions” such as PGI are amongst the worst: They will do whatever it takes to avail themselves of all of those federally funded loan dollars. The students are the lemmings, the means of transferring the funds into the teachers’ and administrators’ pockets.
I love the subject matter, but there are so many varied and better ways to obtain this sort of education. Anyone affiliated with PGI should be absolutely ashamed of the scam they are pulling on its students. A degree from here is no better than one from an assembly line trade school. Nah, the trade school would be better.
Expensive and with an out of control shadow at their core. I would stay away . . . wish I had.
However, there are one or two jewels among the professors. Probably worth contacting externally.
duplicate comments, your web site needs work!
I am in the Clinical PhD program and I have been beyond disappointed in my experiences at Pacifica. Some of the other reviews are for different departments, and it’s important to note that each program has a different administration and faculty.
Many students have great experiences in the Counseling, Myth, and Depth programs, but the Clinical department is something else entirely and it also tends to generally attract a different sort of person. In the three years that I was at Pacifica, I never once encountered a Clinical student who was thoughtful, kind, or conscientious. Every single student in my track seemed like an inpatient. I so longed to have a meaningful exchange with someone, anyone, on campus, but that never happened.
When you look at the faculty list on the website, be sure to note that anyone who sounds interesting or creative is NOT in the clinical department.
Class assignments are usually “read an article and present it to the class.” And then you will sit for hours and hours while each student in the class presents an article, hopefully showing everyone that they know how to read. This is not what I had imagined for my $150K Ph.D.
The food and housing situation is also a nightmare. It didn’t bother me at first, but after two years, I felt angry about being forced to buy the food that it served. What other school gets away with this? Where else do you have to take a shuttle onto campus? That gets really old, fast.
I did a full two years at Pacifica but didn’t bother to go to the last summer session as I had decided that most of what I had learned was a narcissistic head trip. Also, to be perfectly honest, I had heard that the human sexuality course was a huge marathon of pornography, and frankly, I saw no reason to pollute my mind in that way. I am not a prude, but after all, I don’t need to see dozens of car wrecks either to imagine a lot.
I also agree about the behavior of my classmates which was parallel to what is described above. I wonder if more than 10% actually became counselors. I think perhaps at least 2 or 3 actually had nervous breakdowns during the first year. Several dropped out…. Since I did my practicum in another state it was quite a different atmosphere as many of the others in my practicum program in the other state were doing masters at other schools, and they seemed to be a lot more grounded in what they were trying to accomplish. With my background from Pacifica, which I agree is totally narcissistic, I was totally unprepared for most of the things I encountered with ordinary people suffering ordinary things, not on some spiritual head/soul trip.
If you want to spend a lot of money and hear a lot of people talking about animus mundi and other such stuff, and then have art projects with a lot of “rituals”, and meet a lot of crackpots, I definitely recommend the school. it is so very Southern california. So coooool. However, personally I felt that going to Pacifica was a terrific expense and colossal waste of my energy. My sense is it’s an extremely profitable business piggy-backing on a few famous names such as Joseph Campbell, and of course CG Jung, though actually they teach no Jungian psychology. I think that cult has it all wrapped up.. I could never figure out how Joseph Campbell fit into their program.
If you decide to become a counselor, do some serious homework, find out about licensure in your own state and get with a program that will help you get a job. If on the other hand you have a lot of spare time, a lot of money, and a dilettante view that you can incorporate myth, dreams and everything else into some wonderful ball which will make you aware and enlightened, then by all means register and start pouring money into the place called Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Avoid this school!
A few of my classmates not only went into narcissistic rages, but also borderline narcissistic rages where they displayed features of antisocial personality disorder. One classmate in particular, dominated each class and each class session. Unbelievable that these are the types of students that they make us sit with in class for 13 hours a day most of the time! Completely unbelievable!
I’ve heard stories of nutjobs in other programs, and had my own experiences with other students in my master’s program, but nothing compares to the horror of students I experienced at PGI! I just thank Valerie for stating it also.
My sincerest apologies for the typos in my last post, I was typing on my phone.
The classes were very interesting, but I felt drained being around many of my classmates. I found many of them to be more psychologically unwell than my clients. Perhaps this is the case in any program, but I was very surprised that I was going to school with people who were unable to even be appropriate in class, instead storming out of the room, flying into narcissistic rages, dominating the class with their own stories of trauma (not just once, the same story, over and over. I probably spent 30 hours over the course of three years listening to one class mate cry).
Many of the clincial professors do not do clinical work, many don’t even have licesnes to do so. But if you are interested in crop circles or magical shamanic journies, they are total experts.
I have spent $30K+ for one year at Pacifica and I am totally disappointed with the “education” that I received.
Looking back, I can see that there were many red flags that came up right away that I ignored since I was so eager to be in a PhD program (e.g., I should have walked away when I encountered the used car sales techniques of the admissions staff.)
Another red flag that I ignored was how lax Pacifica’s admissions standards are. Pacifica admits anyone who applies. There are students in my cohort who cannot read or write! Most of the students that I have encountered here are “just here for the PhD” and are not passionate about depth psychology. I have also had conversations with third year students and have been shocked by how poorly educated they seemed.
Pay several thousand dollars, talk about Jung a bit, get your PhD–that is the Pacifica experience.
I have been especially horrified by how awful and/or apathetic the instructors here are. The only exception that I’ve found to this is Dr. Gary Groth-Marnat. Unfortunately, he is not a full-time teacher there, so now that I have had my two required assessment classes with him, I will likely not see him again, and it would be impossible for me to have him as an advisor.
Before I applied to Pacifica, I didn’t know anything about Practicums or Internships. It took me a few months to figure this out, and now that I understand this, I can see how not having a practicum lined up for next year will be detrimental to my educational and professional future. There are several people in my cohort who also do not have a practicum, and this is something that would not happen in a reputable PhD program. The staff who are responsible for practicum and internship placements are too apathetic and/or lazy to care about the students.
I could go on and on about everything bad, and it is very sad that I cannot think of anything good about the year that I have been here.