Beginning his explorations into the human psyche in the 1970's, Charles taught the Rogerian approach and led Gestalt/TA groups while taking degrees in Literature, Experimental Psychology and Intellectual History and studying personally with Joseph Campbell, Jorge Luis Borges and others. His ideas culminated in 1974 with a map of the human imagination and his life stories approach to change.
In the 1980's he took extensive training in the then new cognitive-linguistic approaches including General Systems Thinking, Brief Therapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, the latter in which he studied with all of its co-founders. He also took in-depth training in the hypnotic work of Dr. Milton Erickson, M.D. with his leading students. A Certified NLP Trainer through Connirae & Steve Andreas (1987) and Richard Bandler & Associates (1988), he has taught in the Practitioner and Master Practitioner programs of most of the major 'schools' of NLP. He was the Editor of the National Association of NLP journal, The NLP Connection in 1986 and 1987.
Since 1984 Charles has worked primarily as an Expert Modeler. Beginning with accelerated learning which he taught along with NLP to teachers in Japan and for which he founded Learning How to Learn, he returned to the U.S. to model the Metaphors of Identity (1985), Physician Decision Strategies (1986), Futures Trading (1987), and System Structure (a simultaneous strategies model - 1990). In 1988 and 89, he was the Executive Director of NLP Comprehensive. In 1991, he designed and co-authored (with Kelly Gerling, Gerry Schmidt, Robert McDonald, Tim Hallbom and Suzi Smith) NLP: The New Technology of Achievement based on his modeling of outstanding achievers. In 1992, he co-authored (with Robert McDonald) Success Mastery with NLP based on his modeling of flow states. And in 1993 he co-authored and starred in (with Lucy Freedman) the video NLP in Action. In 1993 he completed development of a model of attentional (phenomenological) process, Perceptual Cybernetics™, which he used to discern and describe the seven worlds of subjective experience that NLP draws on for its presuppositions and techniques. He also modelled (with golf pro Mark Staples) the internal and external performance of excellent golfers; co-founding E.P.I.C Golf. In 1994, he extended Perceptual Cybernetics™ and joined it with his Living Myths & Metaphors™ work to form a single unified model; the Metaphors of Perception. From this quickly followed several models including: Worlds Within a Word™, Rhythms of Time™ (1995), and Meta-Patterns (1996).
Today, Charles works primarily as a qualitative expert modeler of exceptional individuals and as a systems modeler of information and organizations. He specializes in figurative information design.