The Paul Rosenfels Community emerged in the late 1960's after Paul had moved to the East Village from California and began to attract young men and women who were eager to learn from an unconventional yet highly credentialed authority. Paul was a strictly leading-edge anti-Freudian humanist who set himself apart in lots of psychological areas, especially gay liberation. And he advertised in the Village Voice, which psychiatrists and lawyers were not supposed to do. In 1973 he and I founded the Ninth Street Center to facilitate group discussions and co-counselling for ambitious, creative and independent people who did not care to think of themselves as being "sick".

The Center became the psychological arm of the gay movement, but Paul died only 12 years later, and as the AIDS crisis built panic and anxiety in New York City, people had found it more urgent to volunteer in the health fields than to work on anything as self-indulgent as personal growth. After we lost our physical plant, a few Center die-hards still ran discussion groups at the Lesbian and Gay Center in the West Village until 2009, but it was clear that the advantages for a scientific and educational institution of focusing on the Manhattan gay community was winding down. In the period of quiet that ensued, and at the instigation of Rachel Bartlett (see ), we rewrote our quaint 1995-style website and, instead of using a name based solely on our geographic location, we came out of the closet and finally became the Paul Rosenfels Community, an organization serving our friends from all nations, sexual orientations and educational backgrounds.