Tag: Anxiety

From Marty Franklin, PhD

I am writing this tribute while waiting at an airport gate for a flight to a national conference. Over the course of the next few days I will have the opportunity to present applied research data, participate in a clinical roundtable about OCD and its treatment, & engage with colleagues as we toss around ideas for how best to move the field forward. Edna’s profound influence on my career, my life, and even my thinking is most often accessible during relatively quiet moments like this, where opportunities for reflection make their way forward amidst the work I have committed to myself to doing.  Indeed, I learned of Edna’s passing a few weeks ago while right in the middle of presenting a clinical training about exposure-based treatments for OCD. I paused for a moment to take it all in, but before I could decide how best to proceed under the circumstances, I heard Edna’s voice, in her characteristic and unmistakable Israeli accent, telling me that these clinicians took time out of their busy schedules to receive this training, and therefore I must continue straight through to the end. My feelings?  You can process those later. Classic Edna.

My very first day of internship in 1991 at the Medical College of Pennsylvania was spent in Edna’s presence at her Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety, the unit she established in 1979 to develop, test, and disseminate cognitive-behavioral interventions for anxiety and related conditions. Edna’s work even by then was highly influential, and her legend was already well in the making.  At that initial meeting, Edna slid a formidable stack of old-school medical charts across the table to me and said, “Marty, is it?  These are your OCD cases for this rotation.” I thanked her, then asked the first of myriad naïve questions in the legendary Tuesday Meetings:  “When will I receive the training to treat these cases?” She pivoted back to look at Michael Kozak, her Clinical Director, as if to wax nostalgic about the process of indoctrinating yet another green intern. Edna then gestured at the pile, and said, “The training is in there.” Edna was a fine clinician too, and thus read well my horrified expression, then offered, “But don’t worry: we’ll help you.” True to her word, she did exactly that.

Edna’s influence on the field broadly speaking, on the development and expansion of cognitive-behavioral theory, on using clinical science to alleviate human suffering, and in pushing the proverbial envelope, has been chronicled elsewhere and cannot ever be overstated. Edna was one of the true pillars of clinical psychology, and the effects of her work will live on in perpetuity, of that I have little doubt. What was less well known except for those of us fortunate enough to have been mentored by Edna was the incredible amount of time and emotional investment she made in seeding the field with the next generation of theorists, scholars, and clinicians who would carry that work forward in the years to come. I count myself in that incredibly lucky group, all of whom were blessed by her personal investment in our training and careers. Edna had exacting standards for herself and for us, and fully expected that same level of investment and intensity on our part. Vigorous debate was just part of the process, where occasionally the fur would fly. But Edna also knew us well enough to understand what each of us needed in order to help us make the commitment needed to join her in the vanguard. In one of our many career development conversations back in the mid 1990s, likely in her East Falls office well after 8 pm, I was fretting about the “soft money” environment of academic psychiatry, and openly wondering if it was time to pivot to hard-line academic psychology or even to private practice. Edna stopped my rumination dead in its tracks, looked into the depths of my soul (which she did regularly), and said, “It’s only soft money if you can’t get it…and I know you can get it. Plus, academia is a really fun way to make a living, and a life.” Edna Foa believed in me:  it was about damn time to believe in myself as well, and to make the commitment required to honor that belief. And to always keep pushing to get better at the work, which is truly a never-ending process.

Sitting in this airport now, on my way to give another set of talks on topics I have come to know very well and continue to pursue with the passion that comes from also believing that this work is vital, I concur with Edna’s assessment of academia, and am truly grateful that I listened. Thank you, Edna, for illuminating a path forward for me, as I know you did for countless others. You were unforgettable, and your work will continue on in the hands of those you mentored and trained to carry on the legacy.