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Human Relationships are driven by two counter-balancing forces

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Individuality and Togetherness - such needs tend to polarize individuals. When one partner presses for connection, the other may feel crowded and pull away. The pursuit of one and withdrawal of the other drives the pair through cycles of closeness and distance. We need companionship and independence

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Differentiation of self

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The capacity to think and reflect, to not respond automatically to emotional pressures. ~The ability to be flexible and act wisely, even in the face of anxiety. The ability to remain oneself in the face of external influences, especially the pressures of family life. How successfully people reconcile individuality and togetherness depends on the extent to which they have learned to manage emotionality

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Philip Guerin

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Student of Bowen's Developed a sophisticated clinical approach to treating problems of children, adolescents, couples, individuals and adults. - His model outlined goals that emphasized the multigenerational context of families, working to calm the emotional level of family members and defining specific patterns of relationships within family's. Approach is designed to measure the severity of conflict and identify specific areas in need of improvement.

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The most important unfinished business of our lives:

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Unresolved emotional reactivity to our parents

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Symbiosis

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Exquisite emotional sensitivity between patients and their mothers; thought of as a mutation. Bowen saw it as an exaggeration of a natural process, a more intense version of the tendency to react emotionally that exists in all relationships

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Anxious Attachment

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Pathological form of closeness driven by anxiety. In Troubled families people were emotional prisoners of the way others behaved.

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Fused Relationships

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Lack of personal autonomy.

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No discontinuity between normal and disturbed famileis

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Believed that all families vary along a continuum from emotional fusion to differentiation.

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Murray Bowen

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Pioneer of family therapy - emphasized theory as opposed to technique. Goal of Bowen Family Systems therapy is differentiation of self - the ability to remain oneself in the face of external influences especially the pressures of family life. - Considers the thoughts and feelings of each family member as well as the larger network of family relationships that shapes the life of the family.

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The Basic Model

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According to Bowen we have less autonomy in our emotional lives than we like to think. Theory describes how the family as a multigenerational network of relationships shapes the interplay of individuality and togetherness using five interlocking concepts: ~Differentiation of self ~Triangles ~Multigenerational Emotional Processes ~Emotional Cutoff ~Societal Emotional Process

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Undifferentiated Person

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Easily moved to emotionality. Lives are ruled by reactivity to those around them React submissively or defiantly towards others. Find it difficult to maintain their own autonomy, especially around anxious issues. ~Example: Asked what they think, they say what they feel; asked what they believe, they repeat what they have heard. They agree with whatever you say or argue with everything.

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Differentiated Person

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Ability to balance thinking and feeling; capable of strong emotion and spontaneity, while processing the self restraint that comes with the ability to resist the pull of emotionality. ~Able to take stands on issues because they are able to think things through, decide what they believe and act on those beliefs.

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Emotional Triangles

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Virtually all relationships are shadowed by third parties - relatives, friends, memories. Anxiety drives the triangle. As anxiety increases, people experience a greater need for emotional closeness - or (to avoid pressure) a greater need for distance. The more people are driven by anxiety the less tolerant they are of one another and the more they are polarized by the differences.

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3rd Parties

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The involvement of a third party decreases anxiety in a relationship between two people, by spreading it through three relationships: ~Example: A wife is upset with her husband's distance may increase her involvement with one of her children. The energy that would normally go into the marriage is diverted. Although the wife is spending more time with one child, the pressure is taken off the husband but it undermines the child's independence. Each person's interaction is tied to the behavior of the third person; each person is driven by reactive behavior and none can take a position without feeling the need to change the other two.

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I-Positions

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A healthy threesome, each pair can interact independently, and has options for his or her own behavior. Therapist - Making nonreactive observations and statements of opinion. Refusing to take sides or take over, the easier it is for family members to define themselves to each other. Gradually family members learn to state their own beliefs and to act on them without attaching others or becoming overly upset by their responses.

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Triangulation

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Releases frustration but freezes the conflict in place.

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Undifferentiated Family Ego Mass

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Excess of emotional Reactivity or Fusion in families

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Lack of differentiation in a family produces?

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Reactive children; can manifest as emotional over involvement or emotional cutoff from the parents, leading to fusion in new relationships - because people with limited emotional resources tend to project all of their needs onto each other.

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Unstable Fusion can produce?

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Emotional Distance Physical or emotional dysfunction in one partner Overt conflict Projection of discord onto children

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Emotional Cutoff

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Describes how some people manage anxiety in relationships. ~The greater the emotional fusion between parents and children, the greater the likelihood of cutoff.

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Society Emotional Process

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Social influence on how families function Example: Ignoring gender equalities helps perpetuate the forces that keep men and women trapped in inflexible roles/ High stressful environments ; crime rates

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Normal Family Development

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Optimal development takes place when family members are differentiated, anxiety is low, and partners are in good emotional contact with their own families.

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Family of Origin

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Emotional attachment between intimate partners comes to resemble that which each had in his or family of origin. Differentiation of autonomous personalities, accomplished primarily in the family of origin is normal development and a prescription for therapeutic processes.

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Family Life Cycle

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Process of expansion, contraction and realignment of the relationship system to support the entry, exit and development of family members. ~ 7 parts of the cycle: leaving home stage; joining of families through marriage state; families with young children; adolescence; launching of children and moving on stage; midlife crisis; families in later life ; (Divorce)

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Leaving Home Stage

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Primary task for young adults is to separate from their families without cutting off or fleeing to an emotional substitute. The time to develop an autonomous self before pairing off and forming a new union.

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Joining of families through marriage

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Primary task is commitment to the new couple. Transformation of two entire systems. Formation of an intimate partnership requires partners to shift their primary emotional attachments to their parents and friends to their mates.

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Families with young children

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Stage for highest divorce rates Must make adjustments to for new additions, child rearing, keep marriage from being submerged int parenting and realign relationships with the extended family.

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Adolescence

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Children no longer want to be like mommy and daddy, they want to be themselves. ~Struggle to become autonomous individuals and to open family boundaries Parents who insist on controlling their teenagers may evoke escalations of rebelliousness.

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Launching of children and moving on Stage

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Parents must let their children go and take hold of their own lives

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During the launching of children and moving on stage

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Can be a time of midlife crisis. Parents not only deal with changes in their children's and own lives but also with changes in their relationship with aging parents who may need increasing support or do not want to act like parents anymore

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Families in Later Life

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Adjust to retirement - not only with the loss of a vocation but increased proximities.

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Divorce

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It is no longer considered abnormal in the life cycle.

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The ability to handle stress is a function of differentation

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The more well differentiated people are, the more resilient they will be and the more flexible and sustaining their relationships. In less well-differentiated people, it takes less stress to produce says potions.

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Functional level of differentiation

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Included by the quality of current relationships

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Development of Behavior Disorders

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Symptoms develop when the level of anxiety exceed the systems ability to handle it

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Genesis of psychological problems

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Emotional fusion, passed down from one generation to another. The greater the fusion the more one is programmed by the primitive emotional forces and the more vulnerable to the emotionality of others

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Emotional Fusion

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Based on anxious attachment, which can manifest as dependency or isolation. Both the overly dependent and emotionally isolated person respond to stress with emotional reactivity.

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How Therapy Works

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The opportunity for people to learn about themselves and their relationships so they can assume responsibility for their own problems. Bowenian therapy is a process of active inquiry in which the therapist, guided by the most comprehensive theory in family therapy, helps family members get past blaming and explore their own roles in family problems.

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Process

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Patterns of emotional reactivity

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Structure

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Interlocking networks of triangles

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Changing a system

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Modification must take place in the most important triangle in the family - the one involving the marital couple.

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Detriangulation

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Effects they entire family system. Clinical methodology tied to this formulation calls for: ~Increasing parents ability to manage their own anxiety and becoming better able to handle children's behavior ~fortifying the couples emotional functioning by increasing their ability to operate with less anxiety in their families of origin

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Assessment

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Genograms: schematic diagrams showing family members and their relationships - includes family's history of conflicts, cutoffs and triangles

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Process Questions (Therapeutic Technique)

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Designed to slow people down, diminish their anxiety, start them thinking not just about how others are upsetting them but how they participate in interpersonal problems.

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Relationship Experiment (Therapeutic Technique)

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Designed to help clients try something different from their usual emotionally driven responses. Primary purpose is to help clients resist being driven by their emotions

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Pursuer-distances dynamic

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The more one presses for communication and togetherness, the more the other distances

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Managing Countertransference

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Therapist emphasizes the neutrality required to avoid triangulation.

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Cross-generational Triangle

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Mom-Dad-Child

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Multigenerational Transmission Process

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Parents and children's believes are highly correlated; violence, divorce, marital quality, eating disorders, depression and alcoholism are transmitted from one generation to the next.

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