Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (and Women)

By Don Bloch

As fate would have it, two colleagues who were key to starting AFTA died within a short time of each other earlier this year. They were both friends of mine, alike in some ways, and quite different in others. They are 'famous men' in the most transcendent sense—the sense I think James Agee had in mind when he chose the phrase from the Apocrypha, as the title for his wonderful book of photographs of farmers, sharecroppers, and workers. The lives of these founding brothers, Framo and Berenson, were linked, so far as I know, only in the beginning of AFTA. At that time, Jim Framo was already well into an important career in family therapy. Jerry Berenson did not trust himself quite enough to fully realize his potentialities, but he did originate this idea of AFTA. Many of the characteristics I appreciated in Jim, his warm responsiveness, courage, intelligence, his ability to spot significant professional issues before they became widely understood, his willingness to stand outside of conventional wisdom—all of these characteristics led to his playing an essential role in the founding of AFTA. Jerry did not stay close to the AFTA group even though he sparked the founding of the organization. It was in his nature to dart to the center of things and then, as quickly, drift out of sight. The report is that he died "in March or April, some weeks following a heart operation." Not much else is known, and he had moved around a bit in those last years. Nevertheless, AFTA started with Jerry Berenson connecting with Jim Framo.

A photograph of one of the early planning meetings accompanies Jim's article on "How AFTA Got Started," which appeared in the Winter 1989 issue of this Newsletter. It shows them both along with a dozen others: The photo was taken by Mary Framo, Jim's first wife. In the photo we see a mostly cheerful looking group—even Murray Bowen smiled, although he did not fully drop his doleful demeanor for the occasion. It was a time of high excitement and the sense of new beginnings The date was February 1977 and it seemed then as if family therapy would just grow and grow. It was a territory worth fighting for.

Let me quote from Jim's article: "I think it is not accidental that the person who took the initiative in starting AFTA..was Jerry Berenson. Jerry was somewhat controversial, and not the sort of person one would have thought of as providing the impetus. But he deserves credit for overcoming our inertia and ambivalence, and pushing us when the time was right…. He had already met with Ivan Nagy and Gerry Spark and had been in touch with Murray Bowen, and several others, and would I join them?" It was an intelligent invitation: Jerry Berenson was an unconventional, out-of-the-box thinker, and somewhat impulsive to boot. If an idea of his was to lead to something enduring he needed partners. Perhaps Berenson did not know that Framo had fought as an infantryman in the drawn out Italian campaign of World War II. Moreover Framo had essential ties to Murray Bowen, who would become AFTA's first President. It was a good melding of talents. The others in the group were well chosen as well.

So, for that brief moment they were allies, along with a mixed group of professionals, some of whom went on to have significant parts of their professional lives in the organization and others of whom left quickly. There were four women in the early band: Kitty LaPerriere already had a distinguished career in the field and became AFTA's third President following Framo. Mostly, as things were in those days, it was a white male show; Jim, like most of us, was willing to continue to be educated on the subject.

Throughout his life he was an active teacher and clinical innovator. Our personal contacts ebbed and flowed—San Diego is not exactly a suburb of Greenwich Village. But we kept in touch by phone and met last at an annual meeting a few years ago. I came to know and admire his wife, Felise, and to appreciate the strength of their relationship as they negotiated the treacherous waters of his long terminal illness. Jim was a model of candor and openness about his situation. I think he was not tyrannized by his incapacitation or by the knowledge that his death was not far away. Being of his generation, I feel in touch with the side of him that, as a young infantryman, endured the bitter struggles of the Second World War. Death was never far away—and I think that changed him, although, as I write these words, I wonder if it in any way prepared him for the deaths, one by one, of his two young sons. I have been mercifully spared all of these experiences, but his endurance and sharing of them was part of the bond that connected us.

Kipling, again a bit in favor, takes the lead phrase from the Apocrypha:

"Let us now praise famous men"—

Men of little showing—

For their work continueth,

Broad and deep continueth,

Greater than their knowing.

—A School Song, Stanza I

Don Bloch may be thought of as an icon of cultural evolution over the last half-century, embodying all of the confusions, inconsistencies, and changes in course such a description would suggest. He has lived in three families: the first, into which he was born, was a highly traditional non-observant second generation Russian Jewish family; his first marriage was modern transitional/traditional; his second marriage is blended dual career post modern. As an oldest son, he has been a persistent optimist in the face of the often overwhelming evidence to the contrary that history has provided. The three children of his first marriage and the one child of his second marriage have, together with his two wives, struggled valiantly to educate him in human development and the ways of the world, and would probably consider their efforts to be partially successful. Other education has been as a physician, psychoanalyst, family therapist, editor, home owner, and small plane pilot.