The Institute for Human Development was founded in 1976 in Upper Montclair, NJ. Its goals were to provide counseling and psychotherapy to individuals, couples, groups and businesses and to create a series of educational programs with broad appeal to the general population on topics of psychological interest and concern. Among the earliest course offerings were The Healthy Personality, Sex After Sixty, Treatment Modalities in Psychotherapy and A Guide for the Cautiously Introspective . These courses were offered at the Institute and adult education programs in the surrounding communities of South Orange, Livingston, Newark and Montclair, NJ.

By the Spring of 1980, the Institute was relocated to the upper Westside of New York City. The focus shifted more toward providing direct clinical services, workshops and consulting with businesses and organizations.

Following a relatively quiescent period beginning in the mid-nineties, the Institute relocated to Kingston, NY in rural Ulster County in 2003, about ninety miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan. The focus shifted back toward the development of educational programs, though direct clinical services remain an important function. A new initiative in the form of bi-weekly newspaper articles in the Kingston Times commenced in 2004, followed shortly by Ya Gotta Have Heart, a live call-in mental health/baseball television show on Kingston Public Access TV six months later. In both venues, the focus is on community mental health, which is to say psychologically-related pieces that have a broad appeal to almost any adult audience as well as a particular appeal to a select segment of that population.

2004 saw the development of the Stanford Marriage Enrichment Program ®, an eight week course designed as an alternative to traditional marriage counseling. A second in the Stanford series, the Stanford SmartDating Program®, an eight week training for building a happier and more rewarding social life, will be ready for students by Autumn, 2005.

The goal of the Institute for Human Development is to facilitate the growth of the individual human spirit and humanity in general by making psychological and spiritual concepts available to the ordinary person in terms they can understand, accept and integrate.