Transcription
Welcome to a brief overview of Bowen family systems theory, as presented by the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family and by Goldberg and Goldberg's book, Family Therapy: An Overview.
Bowen family systems theory is a theory of human behavior that views the family as an emotional unit and uses systems-thinking to describe the complex interactions in this unit. It is the nature of a family that its members are intensely connected emotionally. Families so profoundly affect their members' thoughts, feelings, and actions that it often seems as if people are living under the same emotional skin. People solicit each other's attention, approval, and support, and react to each other's needs, expectations, and upsets.
Connectedness and reactivity make the functioning of family members interdependent. A change in one person's functioning is predictably followed by reciprocal changes in the functioning of others. The emotional interdependence presumably evolved to promote the cohesiveness and cooperation families required to protect, shelter, and feed their members.
Heightened tension, however, can intensify these processes that promote unity and teamwork, and this can lead to problems. When family members get anxious, the anxiety can escalate by spreading infectiously among them. As anxiety goes up, the emotional connectedness of the family members becomes more stressful than comforting. The individual who does the most accommodating literally absorbs system anxiety and thus is the family member most vulnerable to problems such as depression, alcoholism, affairs, or physical illness.
The emotional system affects most human activity and is the principal driving force in the development of clinical problems. Knowledge of how the emotional system operates in one's family, work, and social systems reveals new and more effective options for solving problems in each of these areas.
The eight core concepts of Bowen family systems theory are: emotional triangles, differentiation of self, nuclear family systems, family projective process, multi-generational transmission process, emotional cutoff, sibling position, and societal emotional process.
A triangle is a three-person relationship system. It is considered the building block of larger emotional systems because the triangle is the smallest stable relationship system. A two-person system is unstable because it tolerates little tension before involving a third person. A triangle can contain much more tension without involving another person because the tension can shift around three relationships. If the tension is too high for one triangle to contain, it spreads to a series of interlocking triangles. Spreading the tension can stabilize the system, but nothing gets resolved.
The patterns in a triangle change with increasing tension. In a calm period, two people are comfortably close insiders, and a third person is an uncomfortable outsider. The insiders actively exclude the outsider, and the outsider works to get closer to one of them. Someone is always uncomfortable in a triangle and pushing for change.
Differentiation of self: The basic building blocks of the self are inborn, but in individuals, family relationships during childhood and adolescence primarily determine how much self they develop. Once established, the level of self rarely changes unless a person makes a structured and long-term effort to change. People with a poorly differentiated self depend so heavily on the acceptance and approval of others that they quickly adjust to what they think, say, and do to please others, or they dogmatically proclaim what others should be like and pressure them to conform.
The concept of the nuclear family emotional system describes four basic relationship patterns that govern where problems develop in the family. People's attitudes and beliefs about relationships play a role in the patterns, but the forces primarily driving them are part of the emotional system. The four basic relationship patterns are: marital conflict, dysfunction in one spouse, parent of one or more children, and emotional distance.
The family projection process describes the primary way parents transmit their emotional problems to a child. The projection process can impair the functioning of one or more children and increase their vulnerability to clinical symptoms. Children then inherit many types of problems, as well as strengths, through the relationships with their parents. The problems children inherit that most affect their lives are relationship sensitivities, such as a heightened need for attention and approval, difficulty dealing with expectations, the tendency to blame oneself or others, and feeling responsible for the happiness of others or that others are responsible for their own happiness.
The concept of the multi-generational transmission process describes how small differences in the levels of differentiation between parents and their offspring lead, over many generations, to marked differences in differentiation among the members of the multi-generational family. The information creating these differences is transmitted across generations through relationships. The transmission occurs on several interconnected levels, ranging from the conscious teaching and learning of information to automatic and unconscious programming of emotional reactions and behaviors.
The concept of emotional cutoff describes people managing their unresolved emotional issues with parents, siblings, and other family members by reducing or totally cutting off emotional contact with them. Emotional contact can be reduced by people moving away from their families and really going home, or it can be reduced by people staying in physical contact with their families but avoiding sensitive issues. Relationships may look better if people cut off to manage them, but the problems are dormant and unresolved.
People who grow up in the same sibling position predictably have important common characteristics. The characteristics of one position are not better than those of another, but rather are complimentary.
Each concept in Bowen theory applies to non-family groups, such as and social organizations. The concept of societal emotional process describes how the emotional system governs behavior on a societal level, promoting both progressive and regressive periods in society.
Goals of treatment include understanding the family emotional system, observing and recognizing family patterns, reducing anxiety and relieving symptoms, restoring trust and fairness, increasing differentiation, and demonstrating intergenerational patterns. Some interventions include teaching differentiation, focusing on thinking more than feeling, de-triangulating by reducing dyadic interactions, encouraging "I" statements, reopening cut-off relations, and guiding families to identify triggers for reactivity.
That's the end of our brief overview for Bowen family systems therapy. Thanks for watching.