Basic Concepts of Bowen Family Therapy

Psychology -- Counseling -- Bowen Family Therapy

Bowen Family Therapy is a system-based treatment. Rather than treating the individual as a completely separate person, Bowen places the person in the context of his/her family. By examining at least three generations of an index person's family, the therapist can develop a strong understanding of the factors that formed and still influence the patient/client. In addition, the system-based intervention for treating an issue helps the individual grasp the underlying issues affecting his/her life and change his/her individual approach or the entire group dynamic to deal with the issue.

Family Genogram

Created with (de Boer, 2014).

Overview of Major Experiences, Patterns of Interaction for Family and Effects of Diversity Issues

My family is boring as genograms go. My father's biological parents were Caucasian, Italian, Roman Catholic, working class, lived in New York State and had one child, my father. My paternal grandfather was a foreman in an aluminum plant and my paternal grandmother was a housewife. My mother's biological parents were Caucasian, Italian, Roman Catholic, working class, lived in Indiana and had two children, my mother and my Aunt Elizabeth. My maternal grandfather was a shoemaker and my maternal grandmother was a factory worker at shoe plant. My Aunt Elizabeth never married and had no children. My parents were married only to each other and had four biological children: Julie, Paul, Katherine and Francis. My father was the traffic and shipping supervisor for the same aluminum plant and my mother was a housewife. There were no divorces, affairs (that I know of), illegitimate children (that I know of), mental illnesses (that I know of), or major physical illnesses until my paternal grandfather's fatal pneumonia, my paternal grandmother's terminal colon cancer, my maternal grandfather's fatal congestive heart failure, my maternal grandmother's terminal cirrhosis of the bile ducts, my father's fatal heart attack and my mother's terminal colon cancer. There have been no major illnesses among my brothers, sister or me. Diversity in the classic sense is a non-issue in my family.

3. Family Description in Terms of Major Concepts of Bowen Approach With Definitions and Illustrations

i. Triangles/Triangulation

A triangle is a three-individual relationship structure. It is deemed the building block or "molecule" of bigger emotional structures because a triangle is the smallest stable relationship structure. A two-person system is unstable because it tolerates little tension before involving a third person. A triangle can have tension without another person because the tension can move among three relationships (Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, 2016). The closest my family had to a triangle was among my father, mother and me. My father was very involved with his work and worked very long hours or went golfing with his friends, so my mother focused a lot of her attention on me. We were very close and there were times that my father acted as though he disliked it.

ii. Differentiation of Self

Differentiation of the self is an individual's developed level of functioning independently vs. dependently on the group. The simple elements of a "self" are innate, but family relationships during childhood and adolescence mainly define how much of a separate "self" that individual becomes. Someone with weak differentiation depends heavily on other people for acceptance and/or dictates how others should act to be acceptable. Someone with strong differentiation has a healthy dependence on others but is strong enough in his/her self to withstand struggle, disapproval and rejection (Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, 2016). Although my mother and I were particularly close, I was always an independent thinker and remember disagreeing with my parents from the time I was very young without worrying about being rejected. I am like that to this day with my friends and colleagues, so I apparently have a reasonably strong differentiation of self.

iii. Nuclear Family Emotional System

The nuclear family emotional system involves four relationship patterns where problems can develop in the immediate family. Those four relationship patterns are: marital conflict, where anxious partners externalize their anxiety, focuses on what is wrong with his/her spouse, tries to control the spouse and resists control; dysfunction in one spouse, where one partner pressures the other spouse to act/think in certain ways to give in to pressure; impairment of one or more children, where one spouse focuses his/her anxieties a child, negatively or positively, and the child focuses on the parent, reacting more than the other children to what that parent needs, wants and expects; and emotional distance, in which someone in the family emotionally distances himself/herself from someone else in the family to reduce the power of the relationship but could become too isolated (Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, 2016). I distanced myself a great deal from my father as I grew up because he was such a disapproving, yelling person who tended to pit my brothers and sister and I against each other. I could feel the anxiety in me reduce and eventually prized that so much that by the time of my father's death, I had very little to do with him. I was the most distant from my father among all the children; they sought his approval but I wanted his absence.

iv. Family Projection Process

Family projection process is the way parents transfer their problems to their children (Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, 2016). The closest I can think of to family projection process is my father's treatment of my older brother, Paul. My father decided very early on that Paul was somehow unworthy or something. He was too tough on Paul, I thought, acting as though something was really wrong with Paul from the time he was very little. He constantly yelled at Paul and criticized him. This was supposed to be a father toughening up his son, I guess, but it went beyond that: he acted like he was trying to crush Paul's self-confidence or something. I decided early on that something was really wrong with my father in that regard; not with Paul. The odd thing is, once Paul became a big success in his professional life, both my father and Paul claimed that it never happened. But I know it constantly did. My father once said, "I never called Paul stupid." I said, "Are you kidding? 'Stupid' was the nicest thing you called him." Neither of them said anything in reply.

v. Multigenerational Transmission Process

Multigenerational transmission process is the progression whereby small differences in differentiation between parents and children become stronger in subsequent generations. The closest example that occurs to me involves Paul. He was very intent on pleasing my disapproving father. Paul married a woman who is very dependent on him and they had four children who now have their own families. All those families form such an inbred system of approval and disapproval that they are very emotionally distant from the rest of us.

vi. Emotional Cutoff

Emotional cutoff is management of unresolved issues with one or more family members by curtailing or completely cutting off emotional contact (Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, 2016). This certainly describes my approach to my father: I removed myself from him emotionally because he was too disapproving, yelling and set up weird competitiveness among my siblings and myself from a very early age. The downside is that unresolved issues stay unresolved; however, I was far more interested in having peace than in resolving issues with my father. From my perspective, he was just impossible to deal with, so I didn't deal with him.

vii. Sibling Position

Sibling position means that a sibling's order -- the sense of birth order, for example, tends to influence his/her characteristics (Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, 2016); older children tend to be leaders; younger children tend to be followers; and siblings who are close to each other in order tend to have a lot of the same characteristics. Markowtiz' article discusses our siblings fit into our lives and shape us as children and eventually as adults (Markowitz, 1994). Referring to the general idea that sibling placement affects behaviors, in some ways this is true in my family; in other ways, it is completely untrue. My older sister, Julie, has always acted as the emotional leader of the siblings when we act as a unit; however, we don't act as a unit very often. I am my own leader and have been from a very young age, though I will defer to Julie when we act as a unit because it means so much to her.

viii. Societal Emotional Process

Societal emotional process is somewhat parallel to the family emotional process. It deals with the way emotional systems influence a society's behavior (Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, 2016). Societies experience periods of progression and regression. Bowen believes we are in regression now, probably due to increased population, decreased natural resources, and a sense that our frontiers are diminishing. He also predicts that sometime before the middle of the 21st Century, society will begin to adjust to those factors rather than try to ignore them and it will live more environmentally. We can see this beginning to happen now, with the rise of environmentalism and focus on the long-term effects of wasting natural resources, for example.

4. Two Specific Examples Illustrating that Bowen Family Therapy is Systems-Based Approach to Treatment

Bowen family therapy is clearly system-based. The use of the Nuclear Family Emotional System, for example, Bowen does not merely look at the individual -- the patient/client -- as a separate self. He looks at the patient/client in the context of family to gain a deeper understanding of why and how that person developed as the person he/she is. Consequently, in counseling a patient/client, the therapist assembles a genogram placing the individual firmly in context to understand a number of factors influencing that person's life. Some of those factors even exist before the patient/client is born and carry through his/her immediate family (Gehart, 2014). Another example of the system-based nature of Bowen Family Therapy is the use of process questions by the therapist, put to the patient/client, to help him/her to see how currently experienced conflicts are strongly related to patterns the patient/client observed in his/her early family life (Western Pennsylvania Family Center, 2016). In that way, the patient/client gains a far deeper understanding of why he/she is feeling anxiety, depression or other emotions in a current situation and can better grasp and deal with the underlying triggers or emotional systems that are causing his/her experiences today (Gehart, 2014).

5. Problem Involving Me, Intervention Plan and How it Would Affect Family Dynamics

I have a problem with my brother, Francis. Though I love him as my little brother, he is quite a bit like my father was during his life. Sometimes when he speaks to me, I hear my father's disapproval, yelling and competitiveness, and I react to that rather than to whatever he is currently saying. My parents and grandparents are all dead, so an intervention plan would involve me, Francis and probably my other brother and sister. Counselors have already asked me process questions about my reactions to Francis, which helped me to understand my sometimes inappropriately strong reactions to his words and actions. Their sessions with me would already form part of the intervention plan. Another part would be getting Francis' participation in counseling with me in order for us both to understand why we feel and act as we do toward each other. Ideally, my brother and sister would also be involved in the counseling, as they could shed additional light on our earlier family dynamics as well as our current family dynamics. All my siblings would engage in dual/group therapy sessions if I asked them to do so. The effect on my family dynamics would be striking, I think. To date, we do not discuss my deliberate emotional distance from my father or any reasons for it. It would cause us to discuss those dynamics. Also, because my siblings tend to be smart, caring persons, opening that situation up to discussion would cause them and me to have a stronger sense of wanting to change those dynamics and work through my troubled relationship with my father.

C. Conclusion