Foa, Edna B.

Early Influences and Education History

I was drawn to psychology as an adolescent, when I discovered the writings of Sigmund Freud and became fascinated with psychoanalysis. After graduating from high school, I went to a Normal School to train to work with delinquent children. My teacher of psychology there was a trained psychoanalyst who encouraged me to write my final thesis on the Freudian explanation of childhood delinquency.

After working 2 years in a boarding school for delinquent children, I continued to study psychology at Bar Ilan University, where I received my BA in 1962. At Bar Ilan, my clinical psychology teachers all represented psychoanalytical or psychodynamic orientations; none of them thought that psychotherapy can or should be studied empirically. However, in Bar Ilan, I was also exposed to research in experimental and social psychology and became extremely interested both in the science of psychology and in empirical research. This interest was fostered by my late husband, Uriel G. Foa, who was then the chair of the department of psychology and a distinguished researcher in social psychology.

My first contact with behavior therapy and behavior modification occurred at the University of Illinois, where I received my MA in 1970, under the supervision of O. H. Mowrer. In the 60s, the clinical program in the Department of Psychology at Urbana was one of the strongholds of behavior therapy and modification; their faculty included Leonard Ullmann, Leonard Krazner, and Gordon Paul, to name only a few. There, I first become acquainted with the work of Joseph Wolpe and with the integration of experimental psychology concepts into psychopathology and treatment. The educational experience at the University of Illinois together with Uriel Foa's mentoring in research methodology marked the beginning of my professional career.

After completing my PhD in 1970, at the University of Missouri at Columbia, I was awarded a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) postdoctoral fellowship to work with Wolpe at Temple University, the mecca of behavior therapy at the time. There, I had the opportunity to meet leaders in the field, many of whom influenced my conceptual and empirical work. Of particular importance for me was the influence of Peter Lang and Stanley Rachman.

Professional Models

At the University of Illinois, I was introduced not only to behavior modification and behavior therapy but also to the clinician-researcher model; and it is this model that is reflected in the development of my own career. I began my research examining the efficacy of behavioral treatments for anxiety disorders and identifying the active processes involved in these treatments. I soon discovered the limitations of behavior therapy: Not all patients were helped, and many remain quite symptomatic. This realization motivated me to examine the failures more carefully. Consequently, I embarked on an inquiry into treatment processes that distinguish patients who benefit from behavior therapy from those who do not. This led me to editing a book titled Failures in Behavior Therapy (1983), designed to draw attention to exploring variables that predict success and failure in behavior therapy.

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