Honoring Jim Framo

By Carole Eigen PhD

Jim Framo's greatest gift was the way in which he used his entire person in all that he did so that he could always be seen as himself. His work, his personal belief system, his intimate relationships and his family history were seamlessly woven together so that his life and his life's work consistently made sense.

Jim offered the "gift of my family" as a token of friendship in the year of his departure from Philadelphia and Temple University. He was certain that the one-time meeting with adult children and their family of origin created impact that produced lasting change. In order to share his conviction and encourage the use of his methodology in my own work, he organized a video crew to tape four hours of a meeting with my family of origin. A few months later we taped a review session between the two of us to discuss the work as colleagues.

This event was very special among all the personal/professional encounters with Jim. He dared to cross the boundary between friendship and therapy because he trusted the enormous power inherent in the experience of sitting with one's parents and siblings to discuss relationships of the past in the presence of a skilled observer. My family was told that a good friend offered to meet with us to give us a chance to talk all together and that our meeting would be captured on video tape for us to see afterwards; our own family rendition of 'This is Your Life". Although Jim had little therapeutic leverage during this meeting, as he would have under ordinary circumstances in which issues to be explored are identified with his client in advance, he was meeting with my family at a moment of crisis where change was possible. My father was suffering from a reactive depression stimulated by the loss of a finger in a machine accident. This caused the reemergence of a war trauma from fifty years earlier. Jim's careful unfolding of the circumstances in an easy conversational mode allowed my father to revisit an event that had remained untold for all his adult life. He was able to release himself from the guilt of being unable to save his friend in a combat situation. Jim revealed his own war experience and enabled my father to feel understood and relieved of the burden he carried. I was able to see my father through adult eyes and understand his difficulty to take his place in the family after this trauma experienced as a very young man. I could forgive him his emotional absence and he could acknowledge how much I longed for a father who would be present in my life. Jim's intervention enabled my father's depression to lift; his preoccupation with war memories stopped and his interest in his grandchildren heightened. Jim dared to use himself fully in this four hour meeting in order to build upon the trust and love in our own friendship and to enable giant relationship leaps to take place inside the family.

Jim's wife, Felise Levine took this photo on the patio of their home in San Diego. I remember their wedding reception on this same patio in the days before my psychology licensing exam. Jim inspired the kind of loyalty that encouraged me to travel gladly across country to celebrate this important occasion. I remember his surprise when his colleagues at AFTA were unable to welcome his bride into the family therapy community that he helped to found. It was very difficult for Jim's long term married colleagues to accept his divorce and remarriage to a dynamic younger woman. Jim was perplexed by this reaction and was wounded by the rejection. His injury was very moving for me. I could see both sides of the complex situation and recognize that there are times when one has to make an unpopular decision and declare a life choice fraught with personal and professional consequences. Jim's decision was absolutely right for him and has stood as a model of personal courage for me over these years.

Jim invited me to become an AFTA member during his presidency in order to pursue interest in the movement from a psycho dynamic towards a systemic mode of intervention in human dilemmas. The theory and practice built upon the expansion of these methodologies has enabled effective interventions into the functioning of family businesses and larger organizations. As Vice President of Bridgewater Professional Associates, New Jersey, USA and board member of the International Forum for Social Innovation, Paris, France, I work in close contact with the interlocking dynamics that influence change in human behavior and transformation in large systems.

Carole Eigen PhD