Family School Theory
It would be odd, and likely misguided, to introduce the framework of Bowen Theory without first referring to Murray Bowen’s seminal work, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, published in 1978 after almost 30 years of research on thousands of families. The volume, which Bowen described as a collection of his most important papers from 1957-1977 (Bowen, 1978), chronicles his “disciplined effort to select consistent theoretical concepts that might someday conceptualize emotional illness as a product of that part of man he shares with the lower forms of life” (p. xiv). His intent was to use a “minimal number of congruent pieces from the total bank of human knowledge that fit together to tell a simple story about the nature of man” (p. xiii). He believed that the profession had a responsibility to make “psychotherapy as scientific and predictable as possible” (p. 470).
Bowen’s theory broke with the conventional theory of his day which placed pathology within the individual from the lens of cause-and-effect (Bowen, 1978; Bowen & Kerr, 1988; Papero, et al., 2018). His work with families at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1950-1954, however, along with his reading in biology and the natural sciences, led Bowen to see patients as part of family systems, in which each member contributes a part in the functioning, or lack thereof, of the whole. Over time, his thinking evolved and coalesced into a theory of eight interlocking concepts that Bowen laid out in his seminal volume.
Bowen took issue with the vernacular use of the word theory: “It is common for people to say ‘I have a theory’ when it would be accurate to say ‘I have an idea’ or ‘a wild guess,’” he said (1978, p. xiv). A theory, however, is not merely a wild guess, but a collection of concepts which are an abstracted version of real life situations that have predictive value for similar situations and which accounts for discrepancies. Bowen’s theory names some overall characteristics of human families, identifies patterns of functioning within the nuclear family system, names the way emotional problems are transmitted to the next generation, over multiple generations, and into society (Bowen, 1978).
It does this via eight interlocking concepts that were based on Bowen’s notions about human nature: that Homo sapiens is the most complex form of life evolved from lower life forms, and that the most basic difference is the development and complexity of the cerebral cortex, with its ability to think and reason, rather than to rely solely on instinct. For Bowen, anything not governed by the cerebral cortex was defined as emotional functioning, including: reproduction, autonomic nervous system activity, subjective emotional and feeling states, and the forces that govern relationship systems (Bowen, 1978, 1997; Noone, 2016; Papero, et al., 2018). It follows, then, that Bowen understood emotional illness to be a dysfunction of the emotional system, depending on how separate (differentiated) or how attached (fused) the emotional and intellectual systems were, both within and between individuals (Bowen, 1978). The more fused the intellectual and emotional systems, the higher the level of emotional reactivity, anxiety or stress. Bowen Theory directly addressed the variable of anxiety, with the goal of helping an individual or family reduce it, so that they could function with more flexibility.
The cornerstone of Bowen Theory, the first of his eight theoretical concepts, was what he called differentiation—the measure of a person’s or family’s capacity to differentiate between their intellectual and emotional functions. In a nutshell, people who are highly differentiated are “resourceful people who engage difficult challenges with a view to solving problems and achieving goals” (Papero, 2018, p. 133). Such people have less anxiety and more capacity to bring their intellect to bear when emotions run high.
The second concept of Bowen theory refers to what people tend to do when anxiety between two people gets too intense: they syphon off some of their tension onto a third party, forming a triangle. Triangles occur as a result of undifferentiation—when two people can’t find a way to resolve the tension between them. “In an extremely well differentiated system, people can maintain their emotional separateness even when highly stressed. If people can maintain their emotional autonomy, triangling is minimal, and the system’s stability does not depend on it” (Bowen & Kerr, 1988, p. 139). As people come to understand how the triangles operate in their family, they are able to predict the movement of tension within their system and the function that various triangles play. Richardson (2011) goes so far as to say: “Unless you can anticipate the power of triangles and understand their functioning in your own family, your attempts to change will be defeated” (p. 52).
Bowen’s third theoretical concept, the nuclear family emotional system, described families’ patterns of emotional functioning within one generation, led by the dynamics between the spouses. Depending on their level of differentiation, partners use some combination of the following ways to manage overly tense dynamics between them: emotional distance, conflict, sickness or dysfunction (social emotional or physical) in one spouse, and projection of problems onto the child(ren) (Bowen, 1978).
This last strategy to manage tension was so common that it became Bowen’s fourth theoretical concept—the nuclear family projection process—by which parental undifferentiation in the father-mother-child triangle impairs one or more children, as they inadvertently project their emotional immaturity onto a child, a target outside of themselves. Bowen posited that this process occurs to some degree in all families, but to a lesser degree—with less impairment—in families with a greater degree of differentiation (Bowen, 1978).
Without understanding how this process occurred in their own families of origin, parents are more likely to live out their unresolved attachments from their own father-mother-child triangle in their nuclear families. This process represents Bowen’s fifth concept, the multiple generation transmission process, which describes the cross-generational pattern of how one child becomes more involved in the projection process than another and then inadvertently repeats that process in the following generation, and so on.
As Bowen worked with families and documented the patterns that he observed, he noticed that sibling position often played a role in how parents unconsciously “selected” a child for the focus of most of their projections. With this theoretical concept, Bowen posited that where a child fell in the sibling line-up provided important clues for predicting areas of family strength and weakness in family therapy.
When children grow up, they then live out the degree of projection they bore by applying an equivalent degree of emotional cutoff, Bowen’s next theoretical concept, from their parents. Adult children who were most projected upon are more likely than their less projected upon siblings to invoke a greater emotional and/or physical distance from their parents. This is a common way that adult children unconsciously try to carry less of the family’s anxiety and emotional fusion. More differentiated parents will encourage their children to separate from them in an orderly fashion so that they can start their own adult lives without feeling compelled to cut off from previous generations.
Finally, Bowen postulated that society operates by the same principles and patterns of the smaller emotional systems of which it is comprised. Just as a family subjected to chronic, sustained anxiety begins to lose contact with its intellectually determined principles and resorts to more and more emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment, so society reacts with emotionally driven decisions, including Band Aid legislation, to address social issues (Bowen, 1978; Papero, et al., 2018). In time, this concept became known as the societal emotional process.
Without using Bowen terminology, parents often express concern about their level of differentiation. I’ve heard many say things like, “Kids need a license to drive, and they have to be a certain age to drink, but there are no classes to teach a parent how to be one, and you can become one even before you can vote.” Family School provides family leaders with useful information so that they can be more differentiated and self-assured in rearing their children. Just a little bit of empowering information about healthy family systems can go a long way.
References:
Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. New York, NY: Jason Aronson.
Bowen, M. (1997). Subjectivity, Homo sapiens and science. In R.R Sagar (Ed.), Bowen theory & practice: Feature articles from the family center report, 1979-1996. Washington, DC: Georgetown Family Center.
Bowen, M., & Kerr, M. E. (1988). Family evaluation. New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.
Noone, R. J. (2016). Family, self, and the intermix of emotional and intellectual functioning. Family Systems: A Journal of Natural Systems Thinking in Psychiatry & the Sciences, 12(1), 26-49. Retrieved from http://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=126004602&site=eds-live
Papero, D., Frost, R., Havstad, L., & Noone, R. (2018). Natural systems thinking and the human family. Systems, 6(2), N.PAG. Retrieved from http://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=130967092&site=eds-live
Richardson, R. W. (2011). Family ties that bind: A self-help guide to change through family of origin therapy, 4th edition. Bellingham, WA: Self-Counsel Press.
Bowen’s theory broke with the conventional theory of his day which placed pathology within the individual from the lens of cause-and-effect (Bowen, 1978; Bowen & Kerr, 1988; Papero, et al., 2018). His work with families at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1950-1954, however, along with his reading in biology and the natural sciences, led Bowen to see patients as part of family systems, in which each member contributes a part in the functioning, or lack thereof, of the whole. Over time, his thinking evolved and coalesced into a theory of eight interlocking concepts that Bowen laid out in his seminal volume.
Bowen took issue with the vernacular use of the word theory: “It is common for people to say ‘I have a theory’ when it would be accurate to say ‘I have an idea’ or ‘a wild guess,’” he said (1978, p. xiv). A theory, however, is not merely a wild guess, but a collection of concepts which are an abstracted version of real life situations that have predictive value for similar situations and which accounts for discrepancies. Bowen’s theory names some overall characteristics of human families, identifies patterns of functioning within the nuclear family system, names the way emotional problems are transmitted to the next generation, over multiple generations, and into society (Bowen, 1978).
It does this via eight interlocking concepts that were based on Bowen’s notions about human nature: that Homo sapiens is the most complex form of life evolved from lower life forms, and that the most basic difference is the development and complexity of the cerebral cortex, with its ability to think and reason, rather than to rely solely on instinct. For Bowen, anything not governed by the cerebral cortex was defined as emotional functioning, including: reproduction, autonomic nervous system activity, subjective emotional and feeling states, and the forces that govern relationship systems (Bowen, 1978, 1997; Noone, 2016; Papero, et al., 2018). It follows, then, that Bowen understood emotional illness to be a dysfunction of the emotional system, depending on how separate (differentiated) or how attached (fused) the emotional and intellectual systems were, both within and between individuals (Bowen, 1978). The more fused the intellectual and emotional systems, the higher the level of emotional reactivity, anxiety or stress. Bowen Theory directly addressed the variable of anxiety, with the goal of helping an individual or family reduce it, so that they could function with more flexibility.
The cornerstone of Bowen Theory, the first of his eight theoretical concepts, was what he called differentiation—the measure of a person’s or family’s capacity to differentiate between their intellectual and emotional functions. In a nutshell, people who are highly differentiated are “resourceful people who engage difficult challenges with a view to solving problems and achieving goals” (Papero, 2018, p. 133). Such people have less anxiety and more capacity to bring their intellect to bear when emotions run high.
The second concept of Bowen theory refers to what people tend to do when anxiety between two people gets too intense: they syphon off some of their tension onto a third party, forming a triangle. Triangles occur as a result of undifferentiation—when two people can’t find a way to resolve the tension between them. “In an extremely well differentiated system, people can maintain their emotional separateness even when highly stressed. If people can maintain their emotional autonomy, triangling is minimal, and the system’s stability does not depend on it” (Bowen & Kerr, 1988, p. 139). As people come to understand how the triangles operate in their family, they are able to predict the movement of tension within their system and the function that various triangles play. Richardson (2011) goes so far as to say: “Unless you can anticipate the power of triangles and understand their functioning in your own family, your attempts to change will be defeated” (p. 52).
Bowen’s third theoretical concept, the nuclear family emotional system, described families’ patterns of emotional functioning within one generation, led by the dynamics between the spouses. Depending on their level of differentiation, partners use some combination of the following ways to manage overly tense dynamics between them: emotional distance, conflict, sickness or dysfunction (social emotional or physical) in one spouse, and projection of problems onto the child(ren) (Bowen, 1978).
This last strategy to manage tension was so common that it became Bowen’s fourth theoretical concept—the nuclear family projection process—by which parental undifferentiation in the father-mother-child triangle impairs one or more children, as they inadvertently project their emotional immaturity onto a child, a target outside of themselves. Bowen posited that this process occurs to some degree in all families, but to a lesser degree—with less impairment—in families with a greater degree of differentiation (Bowen, 1978).
Without understanding how this process occurred in their own families of origin, parents are more likely to live out their unresolved attachments from their own father-mother-child triangle in their nuclear families. This process represents Bowen’s fifth concept, the multiple generation transmission process, which describes the cross-generational pattern of how one child becomes more involved in the projection process than another and then inadvertently repeats that process in the following generation, and so on.
As Bowen worked with families and documented the patterns that he observed, he noticed that sibling position often played a role in how parents unconsciously “selected” a child for the focus of most of their projections. With this theoretical concept, Bowen posited that where a child fell in the sibling line-up provided important clues for predicting areas of family strength and weakness in family therapy.
When children grow up, they then live out the degree of projection they bore by applying an equivalent degree of emotional cutoff, Bowen’s next theoretical concept, from their parents. Adult children who were most projected upon are more likely than their less projected upon siblings to invoke a greater emotional and/or physical distance from their parents. This is a common way that adult children unconsciously try to carry less of the family’s anxiety and emotional fusion. More differentiated parents will encourage their children to separate from them in an orderly fashion so that they can start their own adult lives without feeling compelled to cut off from previous generations.
Finally, Bowen postulated that society operates by the same principles and patterns of the smaller emotional systems of which it is comprised. Just as a family subjected to chronic, sustained anxiety begins to lose contact with its intellectually determined principles and resorts to more and more emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment, so society reacts with emotionally driven decisions, including Band Aid legislation, to address social issues (Bowen, 1978; Papero, et al., 2018). In time, this concept became known as the societal emotional process.
Without using Bowen terminology, parents often express concern about their level of differentiation. I’ve heard many say things like, “Kids need a license to drive, and they have to be a certain age to drink, but there are no classes to teach a parent how to be one, and you can become one even before you can vote.” Family School provides family leaders with useful information so that they can be more differentiated and self-assured in rearing their children. Just a little bit of empowering information about healthy family systems can go a long way.
References:
Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. New York, NY: Jason Aronson.
Bowen, M. (1997). Subjectivity, Homo sapiens and science. In R.R Sagar (Ed.), Bowen theory & practice: Feature articles from the family center report, 1979-1996. Washington, DC: Georgetown Family Center.
Bowen, M., & Kerr, M. E. (1988). Family evaluation. New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.
Noone, R. J. (2016). Family, self, and the intermix of emotional and intellectual functioning. Family Systems: A Journal of Natural Systems Thinking in Psychiatry & the Sciences, 12(1), 26-49. Retrieved from http://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=126004602&site=eds-live
Papero, D., Frost, R., Havstad, L., & Noone, R. (2018). Natural systems thinking and the human family. Systems, 6(2), N.PAG. Retrieved from http://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=130967092&site=eds-live
Richardson, R. W. (2011). Family ties that bind: A self-help guide to change through family of origin therapy, 4th edition. Bellingham, WA: Self-Counsel Press.
