Friedlander, Myrna L. (1947-)

Career

Reflecting upon her career, Friedlander characterizes it as more serendipitous than planned. She credits the course her professional life has taken to her interest in language, her relationships with supportive mentors and colleagues, and the impetus of the women's movement. Her academic career began at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she earned a B.A. in French. She taught French to low-income at-risk children in inner-city Boston, when after 5 years she concluded that she was having a greater impact on her students by talking with them about their problems than by teaching them French.

A chance meeting with a high school friend who was enrolled in a master's degree program in crisis resource teaching prompted her to consider a graduate degree in a helping profession. Friedlander decided to move to Washington, D.C., where she enrolled in George Washington University (GWU). Once again, a chance meeting, this time with the dean of GWU's college of education, led her to enroll in a graduate counseling course to try it out. Finding counseling a good match with her interests, she decided to pursue a master's degree in counseling. It was at GWU that Friedlander met her first mentor, Janet Heddesheimer.

As a new doctoral student at Ohio State University (OSU), Friedlander was assigned Ted Kaul as her advisor. Initially skeptical about the “science” of psychotherapy, Friedlander questioned how one could “study” psychotherapy, an “art” that was traditionally the domain of women (i.e., helping people with emotional problems) until a man (Freud) came along and “legitimized” the therapeutic process by calling it a scientific endeavor. These inquisitive thoughts set the stage for an article she would write in 1992, “Psychotherapeutic Processes: About the Art, About the Science.” Ironically, Friedlander has now been studying the “science” of psychotherapy for over 25 years, trying to show that the “art” can be identified, understood, and taught to students.

In graduate school, Friedlander was initially attracted to Stanley Strong's concept of psychotherapy as a social system, in which change is brought about by specific processes of interpersonal persuasion. She was particularly influenced by sociolinguistic applications to the study of therapy by Harold Pepinsky, a distinguished faculty member at OSU. When Friedlander began her dissertation in 1979, several OSU faculty (including Lyle Schmidt, Ted Kaul, and Don Dell) had concluded that Strong's theoretical model needed experimental validation with actual clients in treatment. This conclusion led to her decision to pursue a dissertation using role induction as a persuasive method of enhancing therapeutic effectiveness.

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