Franz Epting:
NAPCN at New Paltz Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
By Robert Hadden Mole
Vol. 4, Issue 2 (Fall 2000)
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This year, NAPCN celebrates the career of Dr. Franz Epting by presenting him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.  Franz has been active with personal construct psychology for over 35 years.  An outstanding mentor, scholar, and friend to many, Franz graciously accepted his award at the gala banquet of the NAPCN at SUNY New Paltz, this July.

Franz R. Epting grew up in Forest, Mississippi, a small town lying between Jackson and Meridian.  Franz’s family valued education, and when it came time to go to college, Franz chose Millsaps College in Jackson where he began an undergraduate major in chemistry.   Millsaps was liberal college—a place where Franz found himself infected with a love of learning.  He took an active interest in the theatre, and he also changed his major to psychology.  Upon graduation in 1959, Franz was given an opportunity to teach high school french and biology at a military academy in Port Gibson, MS.  However, he had been encouraged by a Millsaps professor, who was an Ohio State University alumnus, to apply for graduate study in psychology.  In a move that would have untold implications for constructivist psychology years later, Franz applied and was accepted to Ohio State. He undertook an M.A. in counseling psychology, and his high school teaching plans were put on hold.

Franz began his M.A. in 1959, with Maude Stewart as his advisor. To finance his graduate education, he took work as a counselor and residence hall director.  Franz also began working as a teaching assistant with Dr. Emily Stogdill, a clinical professor at OSU.  Working with Dr. Stogdill, Franz would meet other clinical students, and began to associate with them regularly.  A certain group of students, working with Professor George Kelly, were of particular interest to Franz.  With strong Humanistic sensibilities and a belief that other theories were so “dreadful”, Franz was increasingly drawn to Dr. Kelly’s personal construct psychology, which appealed to his Humanistic side while at the same time possessed scientific rigor.  He also found the constructivist fixed-role therapy appealing, perhaps because of the appreciation for role-playing he had learned during his theatre years at Millsaps.  Franz soon learned that Kelly was an exciting person to be around, and was delighted when he was asked to take part in the weekly meetings held at Kelly’s house.  Inspired by the theory and the weekly meetings at the Kelly residence, Franz undertook a study of cognitive complexity for his PhD in personality at Ohio State, altering his focus slightly from counseling.

Although Kelly left Ohio State to teach at Brandeis in 1965, a certain connection had set between him and this graduate student from Mississippi.  As he neared the end of his doctoral degree in 1967, Franz discovered that Kelly had called back to Ohio State to find out if he had found any promising work in the field.  Nineteen sixty-seven was also the year of Kelly’s untimely death, which led to a profound experience for Franz.  Following his passing, Kelly’s body was brought back to Columbus, Ohio for burial.  Of the many Ohio State people in attendance, Franz was one of the students asked to serve as  a pallbearer.  Occurring at a time when he was just completing his Kelly-inspired dissertation, the funeral moved him greatly.  He felt unprepared for it.  In a symbolic sense, carrying the torch for his mentor was not something he had planned to do so soon.
Following graduation from Ohio State, Franz moved on to the Department of Psychology at the University of Florida, starting as an assistant professor.  Early on at Florida, Franz was also given an affiliate appointment in the counseling center at the university, starting out as an Assistant Counseling Psychologist.  In 1977, he became a full Professor.  And from 1984 to 1990, he also served as the Director of Training for the counseling psychology program.

During his years at Florida, Franz maintained several research interests.  He started off doing research on cognitive structure using the repertory grid.  When one of his students, Seth Krieger, approached him with a dissertation proposal on meanings of death, Franz was at first turned off by the idea.  However, he eventually agreed to supervise, and the project took off, “once I got over being disgusted over studying death”.  Out of this research came what may be today’s most validated measure of death orientation, the Death Threat Index.
Over the course of his academic research, Franz has authored or co-authored over 80 published articles and over 60 presentations.  He has also authored or co-authored four books: Personal Construct Counseling and Psychotherapy (1984), Personal Meanings of Death (1984, with Robert Neimeyer), Anticipating Personal Construct Psychology (1985, with Al Landfield), and Personal Construct Psychology: Clinical and Personality Assessment (1987, also with Al Landfield).  Franz counts encouragement from colleagues such as Fay Fransella, Phil Salmon, Dorothy Rowe, Jack Adams-Webber, Al Landfield, and many others.

Thriving on the encouragement of others, Franz has in turn passed on his own special encouragement.  He has, over the years, mentored many students of constructivist psychology.  The list of his former students is impressive.  Constructivist figures such as Larry Leitner, Robert Neimeyer, Greg Neimeyer, April Metzler, and Jon Raskin all benefited from Franz’s tutelage.  When one considers all the students these constructivist people have gone on to mentor themselves, the legacy of Franz Epting for constructivist psychology is indeed impressive.  Despite such a terrific mentoring record, Franz humbly suggests that throughout his career he has, very simply, “enjoyed teaching”.

Franz’s enthusiastic leadership in personal construct psychology is enough of a phenomenon to warrant mention in published works.  Writing in Creativity and Moral Vision in Psychology (1998), Elizabeth Altmaier, describes her early career in psychology at the University of Florida: “It would be hard to be a student or faculty member at Florida within the reach of Franz Epting’s contagious enthusiasm for Kelley [sic] without at least thinking of personal construct applications, whatever one’s interest area.”

Franz’s research interests have turned now to a construct approach to gender and sexual identity.  He sees the future of personal construct psychology as very bright, and believes it can occupy an important place in this post-modern world.  Franz urges all constructivists to be vocal in our support and promotion of the theory and its applications. “We mustn’t be fainted-hearted about PCP’s place as a psychological theory in this post-modern world.”

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