Dr. Harold Stone

1927 - 2020

December 14, 1927 - May 23, 2020 Hal Stone, Ph.D., passed away naturally and peacefully in his sleep on May 23, 2020. He lived a full, rich life up until the end. Dr. Stone was an explorer of consciousness, a teacher and a pioneer. He was beloved by his family and the extended circle of friends, colleagues, students and patients who were fortunate enough to have accompanied him on his journey.Dr. Stone, or Hal as he preferred to be called, will be remembered as the founder of the Center for the Healing Arts in Los Angeles, perhaps the first holistic health training center in the United States. With his wife, Dr. Sidra Stone, he created Voice Dialogue, a method for exploring and understanding the many selves that make up the human psyche. Over the 43 years of their marriage, Hal and Sidra wrote seven books on aspects of Voice Dialogue, published an extensive series of audio lectures and interviews as well as a video introduction to their work, and traveled the world teaching their method to therapists and others.Hal was born in Detroit Michigan in 1927 and moved to Los Angeles in 1945. He attended UCLA for both his undergraduate and graduate studies, receiving his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1953. He served as a psychologist in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1957, attaining the rank of Captain.Following his army service, Hal began private practice and entered the training program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. After completing his training in 1961, he practiced as a Jungian analyst during the 1960s and early 1970s. Throughout his life, Hal's Jungian training and fascination with mythology, dreams and fairy tales guided him along an ever-deepening path of inner exploration.During the Sixties, Hal became a certified member of the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology, served as a training and teaching consultant to the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Mt. Sinai Hospital, in Los Angeles, and was one the coordinators of the Humanities program of the California School of Professional Psychology.The late 1960's marked a time of searching, exploration, and experimentation in the field of psychology. Hal helped to coordinate a series of programs through the University of California at Berkeley Extension that brought many of these new developments to a larger audience. His interest in these new modalities eventually led to his separation from the Jung Institute in 1970 and his resignation as a Jungian analyst in 1975.Dr. Stone established the pioneering Center for the Healing Arts in 1973. It was the dawn of a new age in psychology and medicine, and the Center was at the forefront, bringing doctors, psychologists, traditional healers, and spiritual teachers together and providing a fertile environment for creative cooperation. The Center's cancer clinic pioneered the use of meditation, acupuncture, energy medicine, and psychotherapy to assist cancer patients undergoing traditional medical treatment.By the early 1970's, Hal and Sidra had developed Voice Dialogue as a method for working directly with sub-personalities. They married in 1977. Through both their personal relationship and professional collaboration, their work evolved over the following decades into a complex methodology for working with selves and a complete theoretical system, which they called the Psychology of Selves, Relationship, and the Aware Ego Process. They began travelling to teach their work in the early 1980s and continued to do so for three decades, conducting seminars across the United States, all major cities across Europe and Australia, as well as Thailand, Mexico, and Israel. Their books were translated into eleven languages.Later, much of their teaching was done at Thera, their home in Mendocino County, on California's north coast. Here they conducted workshops, offered private consultations and wrote a total of seven books, including the groundbreaking Embracing Our Selves and Embracing Your Inner Critic. Hal Stone's first book, Embracing Heaven and Earth , is the story of his personal journey. The Path of Relationship: The Life and work of Drs. Hal & Sidra Stone, by Dianne Braden, chronicles the evolution of their work.Hal is survived by his wife, Sidra; his daughter, J. Tamar; his stepdaughters, Elizabeth Winkelman, Claudia Sadoff, and Recha Bergstrom; seven step-grandchildren; his first wife, Audrey (Thea Soroyan); and his cousins, Herb and Beverly Gelfand. His son, Dr. Joshua David Stone, passed away in 2005.