Doctoral Trio Create Name Confusion at CSUN Campus : Professors: Richard and Robert Docter and their psychology department colleague Ronald Doctor have spent 20 years explaining they are not the same person.

A trio of college professors have been trying to straighten out the confusion that has existed for the past two decades on the campus of Cal State Northridge.

Meet Dr. Robert Docter, Dr. Richard Docter and Dr. Ronald Doctor, three psychologists who collectively perplex CSUN students, faculty members and the general public.

“Everybody gets us confused. All the time,” said Ronald Doctor. “Mail is always confused. Phone calls are confused. I don’t know how many times I’ve had term papers where I’ll look at it, start reading it and think, ‘Where did this student come from?’ ”

On the third floor of the Sierra South building, his mailbox in the psychology department is right below Richard Docter’s mailbox. They’re labeled R. Docter and R. Doctor.

“I pasted an arrow saying Richard Docter, pointing to my box, but it doesn’t do the trick,” Richard Docter said. “I’ve had people write a paper for me and at the last minute, they get a little mixed up, and they put down Ronald Doctor on the paper, even if it’s for me.”

Across campus, in the educational psychology and counseling department, is the office of Robert Docter, who is Richard Docter’s fraternal twin. Despite the distance, he is not immune to being mistaken for his brother or their fellow psychologist with the nearly identical last name. And the same goes for his mail.

One of his students once turned in a paper a little late, but by the time it was in the right hands, an incomplete mark had been recorded on her transcript.

“The paper showed up half a semester late in my brother’s mailbox. We finally got it figured out,” said the professor, who prefers to be called Bob Docter.

Even CSUN President James W. Cleary sometimes calls Richard Docter by his brother’s name.

“He addresses me as Bob. I kind of take it as a compliment, because he has hundreds and hundreds of faculty members. The fact that he can get that close is far better than I could do,” Richard Docter said.

Other colleagues also have trouble remembering who’s who.

“They can’t quite remember what my first name is. Some of them call me Richard or Ron,” said Bob Docter.

Bob Docter, Richard Docter and Ronald Doctor try to clarify their identities but admit that they have fun perpetuating the confusion. The running joke on campus is that Richard Docter, 62, is Ronald Doctor’s father. Some even refer to the trio as the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.

“On the first day of class, I try to straighten out who I am,” said Richard Docter. Ronald Doctor, 52, added: “You get so tired of explaining that you are not related, so you just make a little fun of it.”

And there is a fourth professor who sometimes adds to the confusion. Dr. Robert Dear, chairman of the psychology department, said his name sometimes gets muddled with the others.

“My mailbox is right by Richard Docter’s, and so I get his mail and also mail for his brother since we have the same first names,” Dear said. “There haven’t been any major crises, but there have been a number of minor incidents.”

The muddle goes back 21 years, when Ronald Doctor wrote to Richard Docter, who was then head of San Fernando Valley State College’s psychology department, asking for a job. In the fall, the college, which would become Cal State Northridge in June, 1972, hired the new graduate of the University of Illinois.

The twin Dr. Docters were already on campus, so the mix-ups increased when Ronald Doctor arrived on the scene in 1969.

Earlier that year, Bob Docter had been elected to the Los Angeles City Board of Education and was earning a reputation as a consummate liberal. He opposed the use of corporal punishment in schools and strongly favored changes in state statutes to allow identification of a bargaining agent for teachers.

In 1976, when he was president of the board, Docter voted against appealing a Superior Court decision forcing the Los Angeles Unified School District to integrate their schools. The issue became a political football, and in 1977, he was defeated by antibusing activist Bobbi Fiedler.

“People would call my house wanting to talk to Robert Docter,” Ronald Doctor said. “At parties, people would come up and start talking about the school board. A lot of times, people were very angry because he was a liberal. Fortunately, I was a liberal too.”

Richard Docter also heard from members of the public seeking his notable brother and was even introduced a few times at events as Bob Docter.

Sons of Salvation Army ministers, Bob and Richard Docter (the last name is Dutch) are San Francisco natives, graduates of Fairfax High School (class of 1946) and U.S. Army Korean War veterans. Bob Docter received his bachelor’s degree from UCLA and his master’s degree and doctorate from USC. In 1960, he joined the staff at San Fernando Valley State College.

Richard Docter was elected president of the student body at Los Angeles City College in 1949 and earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara, and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He started at Valley State College in 1966.

The son of Jewish and German immigrants, Ronald Doctor would have had the last name Dachtar, had Canadian immigration officials not changed his father’s last name while processing his paperwork.

Born and reared in San Diego, he received his bachelor’s degree from USC and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois. He is regarded as an expert in helping people overcome phobias.

As expected, Ronald Doctor differentiates the personalities of the three in psychological terms. He maintains that he and Bob Docter are right-brained people: emotionally centered, intuitive, creative, whereas Richard Docter is left-brained: orderly, verbal, sequential.

Once, while Ronald Doctor was substituting at Richard Docter’s class, he gave a lecture on that very subject. It didn’t take long for the students to grasp the concept.

“I told them to observe how he would approach lecturing compared to me,” Ronald Doctor said. “He was very orderly with his notes, and mine were all over the board. They saw the difference immediately.”

As children, none of them set out to earn their doctorates just so their professional title would match their last name. However, Ronald Doctor remembers during graduate school contemplating whether to change his major to law.

“Part of my decision was based on the name. I felt as though I really should get my doctorate because a Mr. Doctor was worse than a Dr. Doctor,” he said.

Bob Docter said more than half of the people he knows with his last name have their doctorate, including two of his children.

“You have to wonder if it wasn’t a motivation for some people,” he said.

Among themselves, funny stories abound. For example, the time, from 1978 to ‘80, when Richard Docter and Ronald Doctor attempted to share a practice in Woodland Hills. A day didn’t pass when patients didn’t mix up the psychologists and often were convinced they were talking to the correct doctor. Eventually, the men decided the arrangement was too much of a strain and gave it up.

There were also times during the 1980s when stressed-out police officers would start pouring out their problems to Ronald Doctor, thinking they had reached Richard Docter, who was then a consulting psychologist for the Los Angeles Police Department.

But relief is in sight. Next summer, Richard Docter plans to cut his teaching schedule to part time. His twin brother will follow suit either in 1991 or 1992.

“It’s been very memorable,” said Richard Docter. “After Ron Doctor came out here and established himself as a very good psychologist and a very well-liked and honorable person, I then said to myself, what would it have been like if he had turned out to be a person who was not very highly regarded and everyone thought I was him? I wouldn’t have been too happy about it.”

Ronald Doctor believes each has benefited from running in similar circles with virtually the same last name. He even fantasizes about the trio making a guest appearance on a new sitcom called “Doctor, Doctor.”

“The three of us are like one Dr. Doctor because we have created this one person,” said Ronald Doctor. “I’ll run into people who will say, ‘Oh, I’ve heard of you,’ and they’ll know Bob or Dick. Somehow you’re well-known because there are three of us with the same name.”