MARRIAGE & FAMILY INSTITUTE

Murray Bowen's Systemic Family Therapy

Murray Bowen, MD, was a pioneer in the field of Marriage and Family Therapy because he was one of the first mental health practitioners to become aware that individuals are affected by past situations in their role in the creation of the present situation. Bowen was the oldest child in a large cohesive family from Tennessee. He studied schizophrenia and the mother-child symbiosis and resulting anxious attachment. He moved from dyads to triads later. Bowen's theories lie in the balance/imbalance of two forces, togetherness and individuality which has to do with the presence or absence of chronic anxiety within a marital or family system. Fusion results from togetherness being the stronger force. Unresolved emotional attachment to one's family prevents differentiation. Bowen introduced the following eight interlocking concepts to family theory;

1. Differentiation of Self

2. Emotional Triangles

3. Nuclear Family Emotional System

4. Family Projection Process

5. Multigenerational Transmission Process

6. Sibling Position Profiles

7. Emotional Cutoff

8. Societal Regression

1. Differentiation of Self

Differentiation of self is the ability to separate feeling and thinking. Undifferentiated people can not separate feeling and thinking. Their intellects are flooded with feelings, they can't think rationally, and they can't separate their own from other people's feelings. Differentiation is the process of freeing oneself from one's family, realizing one's own involvement in problematic relationship systems as opposed to blaming others, but being able to be emotionally related to members.

2. Emotional Triangles

Triangles are the basic units of systems. Dyads are inherently unstable as people in dyads vacillate between closeness and distance. When stressed or under high emotion, dyads become distanced and triangulate a third party to decrease anxiety or emotionality, in effect freezing the system in place. The lower the adaptive level of functioning in a system, or ability to cope with stress, the more likely the people in the system will triangulate. The person with the least differentiation of self, the most vulnerable, will be the person most likely to get triangulated into some other dyad.

3. Nuclear Family Emotional System

Nuclear family emotional system (or processes) refers to the emotional patterns that exist in a family over the years that are passed on to each generation. Reactions to this family emotional process include: .reactive emotional distance; physical or emotional dysfunction in one spouse; overt conflict; projection of problems onto one or more children who may then become the “identified patient” or “symptom bearer” for the whole family system.

4. Family Projection Process

The family projection process is the process by which emotional processes are passed on from one generation to the next. The child that receives the projection will have difficulties differentiating, and thus his/her differentiation is stunted. This will effect their interactions with their own spouse and/or children.

5. Multigenerational Transmission Process

Multigenerational transmission process is the process by which family emotional processes are transferred and maintained over three or more generations. Bowen theorized that schizophrenia developed over a number of generations of increasingly fused nuclear family systems.

6. Sibling Position Profiles

Sibling position profiles are important as each child has a certain position in the family, and thus is less or more likely to fit some projection of the family as well as interact with siblings. This is why siblings may have experienced a similar family problem, such as addiction or child abuse, but have often learned to cope with this problem in very different ways.

7. Emotional Cut-Off

Emotional cutoff is separation by emotional or physical distance from the family of origin. The person cut off may look/feel independent from the family but is not. The only thing that hurts Superman is Kryptonite, a piece of his home planet. People who cut off from their original families are more likely to repeat the same patterns in their own relationships

8. Societal Regression

Bowen believed that American culture was regressing into a less differentiated state of fusion which then necessarily impacted all societal subsystems, which then impacted each individual family and all of the members of that marital and family system as well. Societal regression (or emotional process) involves social expectations about races, classes, ethnic groups, gender, sexual orientation and their effect on individual families, various other levels of societal systems, as well as society as a whole.

Family Development

Bowen believed that all families could be placed on a continuum, and there are no particularly different "types" of families, such as "The Schizophrenic Family." He believed that optimal development occurs when members are differentiated, chronic anxiety is necessarily kept at a low level, and parents are in good emotional contact with their families of origin. Well-adjusted or “healthy” families:

1. Are balanced and can adapt to change

2. Can see emotional problems as in the system with components in individual members

3. Are connected across generations

4. Have a minimum amount of fusion and distance

5. Have dyads that can deal with problems and stresses between them

6. Tolerate differences

7. Have differentiated members

8. Are aware of what they get from outside and from within

9. Allow each member to have their own emptiness

10. Preserve a positive emotional climate

11. Have members who think its a pretty good family

12. Have members who use each other for feedback rather than emotional crutches

Emotional and Behavioral Disorders within a Family System

Disorders result from emotional fusion, an increase in the level of emotion and anxiety in the family, or in an upset to a fused relationship that has formerly kept the triad stable. The child with the symptoms is usually the least differentiated and most isolated member of the family. The adult who acts out is most likely in a dysfunctional relationship with a spouse. Problems occur when "vertical" problems passed on from parent to child interact with "horizontal" problems caused by environmental stressors or transition points in the family development. Most people choose a spouse with an equal level of differentiation.

Therapeutic Goals
1. Placing the presenting problem in a multigenerational frame

2. Lowering anxiety

3. Increasing differentiation especially of the marital couples (increasing the parent's ability to control their own anxiety and fortifying parental emotional functioning) by the therapist triangulating with them but staying neutral

4. Forming relationships with the dysfunctional member

5. Opening closed ties and the detriangulation of members

6. Avoiding focusing on symptoms

7. Evaluating progress

8.  Understanding and adjusting he power differential in the couple

Conditions for Behavioral Change

1. Anxiety (which breeds emotional fusion) must be low, and understanding high as understanding (not behavior) is the critical factor in change

2. The therapist must remain neutral and detriangulated

3. Differentiation of single members is often enough to spur differentiation of other family members. Often motivated members are better able to change than families

4. If not the presence, then at least the awareness of the entire family

5. Development of a personal relationships with each of the extended family

6. Return to the family as an adult is often helpful

7. Overlapping triangles occur when dyads pull each available person into the dyad. When all available people are exhausted, the therapist will be used.

Bowenian Techniques

Questioning is the closest thing to a magic bullet in Bowen Family Theory. Bowen didn't like focus on technique. Carter has assigned tasks to the couple to speed up their realizations. She may encourage letter writing to members, visiting mother-in-laws... to speed things up. Guerin accepts the family's opinion of who the i.p. is and works from there with a variety of techniques.

Family Therapy with Couples

1. Keep the emotional tone under control -lively but not too anxiety provoking, otherwise they may feel you are taking sides no matter what

2. Remaining detriangulated. This will be hard when couples and families get emotionally stirred up or are under intense stress, since they will work harder to triangulate

3.  Not allowing open conflict

4. Teaching talking and listening

5. Finding some other and more functional medium to project difficulties onto to deal with anxiety

6.  Addressing concerns about the power deferential in the family.

7.  Descriptive labels like "pursuer-distancer" are often helpful to understand relationships: "Don't follow a distancer, work with the pursuer and his/her emptiness. The distancer will feel safe enough to enter back in."

8.  Coaching, consulting, interrupting arguments and modeling skills.

9.  Using "I-positions" and “I-statements” and teaching clients how to use them as well. Individuals need to be able to state their needs and thoughts without over-reacting. Saying what you feel is better than commenting all the time on what others are doing.

10. Teaching about emotional systems and slowly incorporating family of origin work into the relationship issues