The Great Connector

M. Duncan Stanton, Ph.D.

In late 1971, as I was completing my Army psychologist's stint at Walter Reed, I began scouting for jobs in communities where family therapy was well established. A number of options presented themselves, but I could hardly believe that one of them was in Philadelphia—at the University of Pennsylvania/Philadelphia General Hospital's psychiatry service. In 1972, Philadelphia had probably the largest concentration of family systems luminaries on the planet. In addition to Jay Haley, Salvador Minuchin, Braulio Montalvo and Harry Aponte at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, the city was also home to such already-accomplished professionals as Jean Barr, Ray Birdwhistell, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, Alfred Friedman, Rachel Hare-Mustin, Florence Kaslow, Emily Mudd, Otto Pollak, David Rubinstein, John Sonne, Geraldine Spark, Ross Speck, Oscar Weiner, Joseph Wolpe (how did he get in there?), Gerald Zuk, and Jim Framo. I thought, "This has got to be great!" And it was.

Soon after arriving I heard that Jim was conducting a multiple couples group that dealt with family-of-origin issues. I contacted him to inquire if I might observe a session or two. He knew me not from Adam, but graciously agreed to it. That was the beginning of what became a warm, stimulating, and continuing relationship. The next year he strongly encouraged me to pull together, and submit to Family Process, a national survey of family therapy-oriented psychology graduate programs and internships. At the time it was just an idea I had been tossing around. He emphasized how much it was needed. Without his urging it very likely would not have happened. And, of course, he was right. Over the years, innumerable faculty and students from those programs have thanked me for mapping that topography, for helping them all to connect. They should have thanked Jim. He was the Great Connector.

As one trained in community psychology, I was also impressed with Jim's experience, savvy, and, yes, frustration in establishing family therapy within a community mental health center. I don't know that there is another publication comparable to his description of that experience; it came out in Phil Guerin's (1976) book, Family Therapy. That was Jim, always the pioneer, always the ground-breaker, always the conceptualizer. Not only was he courageous, he was wise. I once called him the "South Philly Sage." He was too modest to accept the mantle. But he did chuckle.

Most of Jim's and my professional dealings centered on the Family Institute of Philadelphia. One night, following an F.I.P. activity, I introduced him to Thai cuisine. He was eternally grateful, and usually suggested we "go for the Thai" (rather than, I suppose, the win) when we dined together in other cities.

For my money, there has been no more seminal paper than Jim's chapter "Symptoms From a Family Transactional Viewpoint," published in Nathan Ackerman's Family Therapy in Transition (1970). It blew my mind when I first read it, and it has been required reading in every family course I've taught. That, and his 1972 book Family Interaction, laid the groundwork for much of the important work in the field that followed.

Last year my wife, Ann Marie Lombardi, and I took Jim and Felise to dinner when we were in San Diego. Jim talked about a trade book he was working on which would reveal what it was really like in the trenches during World War II. I shared with him my chagrin-drenched, multiply-reinforced expertise in how to fail at getting a trade book published. But it really was a lovely dinner, a lovely evening. The note of appreciation he sent afterward, thanking his "old friend," now has a place of honor among my memorabilia. So I want to thank you, Jim, for making my work, and my life, richer…fuller…and more inclusive. Miss you, guy.

M. Duncan Stanton, Ph.D., and James Framo, Ph.D., overlapped for 11 years in Philadelphia while Stanton was at the University of Pennsylvania/Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic. From there Stanton succeeded Lyman Wynne, M.D., Ph.D., as Director of the Division of Family Programs at the University of Rochester School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry. In 1997 he moved to Spalding University to become Dean of the School of Professional Psychology and Social Work, as well as Vice President for Academic Research. Presently he is Professor Emeritus and directs, at The Morton Center in Louisville, KY, an NIH/NIAAA 5-year randomized clinical trial comparing group and family therapies for adolescent substance abusers.