The Origin of Bowen Theory
Murray Bowen (1913 - 1990) was the first and only psychiatrist to describe a theory explaining human behavior. He trained at Menninger and in 1954, Bowen became the first director of the Family Division at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). His research record and theory are well known.
Who was Murray Bowen, M.D.?
Photos shown of Dr. Bowen were taken by Andrea Schara
Dr. Bowen grew up in a small town, Waverly, Tennessee. The oldest of two younger brothers and two sisters, he was a clear, responsible oldest child from an early age. His father was the mayor of the town. Dr. Bowen often spoke of how his father would observe people and point out how the way people walked and talked told you something about them. His parents lived on a farm during his youth and Dr. Bowen developed a strong connection to nature. His father owned the local funeral home and several stores in town. As a young man Dr. Bowen would ride in the ambulance and help out with the funerals.
One can guess that perhaps even early on Bowen could see the differences in how individuals and families functioned. Certainly early on he was provided with a window to observe who was able to deal more effectively with the most difficult fact of life, death.
Following medical training, Dr. Bowen served five years of active duty with the Army during World War II, 1941 - 1946. He served in the United States and Europe, rising from the rank of Lieutenant to Major. He had been accepted for a fellowship in surgery at the Mayo Clinic to begin after military service, but Bowen’s wartime experiences resulted in a change of interest from surgery to psychiatry. During his study of psychiatry at The Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, from 1946 -1954, Bowen read extensively in biology and the study of evolution. His changing view of human functioning led to development of a research project at the National Institute of Mental Health in which 18 families with a schizophrenic member were studied over a five-year period. Later he went to Georgetown University where he developed Bowen Family Systems Theory.
Photos shown of Dr. Bowen were taken by Andrea Schara
Bowen was gifted at observing the human behavior in relationships
Dr. Bowen was a master clinician while at Menninger. It is there he began experimenting with bringing the family into contact with the patient. He also began to experiment with having para-professionals spend time with patients in an effort to modify relationships. Many times Bowen stated that he learned the most from dealing with people who were labeled schizophrenic. In making sense of the challenges these people faced, Bowen learned to be a master of paradox.
Eventually, Bowen saw that he could invite the family in and become more of an observer of the confusion in the family. From this position, outside the relationship field, Bowen could be more of a researcher. In doing this, he saw that he was more useful to people. Clearly Bowen had altered the psychoanalytic relationship to one of coaching, where family members were willing to work on changing self in important relationships. He found it was usually not the patient, but rather an important family member willing to do so, and that marked the beginning of the ideas which lead to the development of family psychotherapy.
Bowen’s willingness to change his position in his extended family and to present that at a professional meeting altered the way people thought about family psychotherapy and the importance of Family System Theory. His paper, entitled The Anonymous Paper, detailed how he unearthed the emotional process in his own family. It was first presented to a shocked audience of psychotherapist in 1967. This marked a new beginning for the emerging field known as family psychotherapy. The observations and theoretical reason for his actions are outlined in his book Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. By clarifying his understanding of the emotional processes in his own family, he separated himself from all other professionals. Few people really understood what he accomplished by studying his own family and then placing his theory in the midst of evolutionary biology.
By using his power of observation, he was able to conceptualize a totally different view of human behavior. Instead of mental illness in one person, Bowen was able to see how one person was a part of an emotional system. People were influenced by relationships and were usually totally unaware of this. Human social systems were following lawful rules. By observing how the parts of the system interacted, one could predict the systems’ rules. If people are able to observe their reaction in social systems they have choice to alter their automatic behavior.
Bowen’s effort was to observe human behavior from a systematic orientation—a stark contrast to Freud’s focus on the internal mechanisms in the minds of individuals. As Bowen saw it, psychoanalysis did not meet scientific criteria.
Bowen’s theory uses biological terms to explain human behavior. This is an effort to allow for the exchange of information with all other areas of knowledge. There are many specialties from anthropology to sociobiology, which are interested in the growth and development of individuals who are a part of social systems.
Bowen spent his life developing his theory, which details the “rules” of the human emotional system. He understood that few people could see how they were influenced by three or four generations of an emotionally interconnected family system.
Bowen Family Systems Theory
Bowen theory describes the family emotional process over generations and the way it influences how individuals can function as part of the family unit. Some individuals are freer of the sensitivity to others and are freer to go in his or her own self determined direction. Others do not fit well with the needs and expectation of the family and may be focused in a negative or an unrealistic positive way and thereby absorb more anxiety than is their fair share. Families are not perfect, they are organized to produce diversity in functioning to adapt to various circumstances. If all people were the same there would not be the variation in the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Any motivated family member can alter the family emotional process if they are willing to work on self and relate well to others, without asking them to change.
The Eight basic concepts of Bowen’s Family Systems Theory:
Photos shown of Dr. Bowen were taken by Andrea Schara
1. Levels of differentiation of self. Families and social groups affect how people think, feel, and act, but individuals vary in their susceptibility to “group think”. Also, groups vary in the amount of pressure they exert for conformity. The less developed a person’s “self,” the more impact others have on his functioning and the more he tries to control the functioning of others. Bowen developed a scale to measure differentiation of self.
2. The nuclear family. This concept describes four relationship patterns that manage anxiety, marital conflict, dysfunction in one’s spouse, impairment of one or more children, and emotional distance that governs where problems develop in a family.
3. Family projection process. This concept describes the way parents transmit their emotional problems to a child. Some parents have great trouble separating from the child. They imagine how the child is, rather than having a realistic appraisal of the child. Relationship problems that most negatively affect a child’s life are a heightened need for attention and approval, difficulty dealing with expectations, the tendency to blame oneself or others, feeling responsible for other’s happiness, and acting impulsively to relieve the anxiety of the moment, rather than tolerating anxiety and acting thoughtfully.
4. Multigenerational transmission process. This concept 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 a multigenerational family. The way people relate to one another creates differences which are transmitted across generations. People are sensitive and react to the absence or presence of relationships, to information about this moment, the future and or the past, and this, along with our basic genetic inheritance, interacts to shape an individual’s “self.”
5. Sibling position. Bowen Theory incorporates psychologist Walter Toman’s work relating to sibling position. People who grow up in the same sibling position have important common characteristics. For example, oldest children tend to gravitate to leadership positions while youngest children often prefer to be followers, unless the parents disappointed them. Toman’s research showed that spouses’ sibling positions, when mismatched, often affect the chance of divorce.
6. Triangles. A triangle is a three-person relationship system. Being the smallest stable relationship system, it is considered to be the “molecule” of larger emotional systems. A triangle can manage more tension than a two-person relationship as tension shifts among the three. Triangles can exert social control by shifting one person to the outside or bringing in an outsider when tension escalates between two parties. Increasing the number of triangles can also stabilize the spread of tension. Marital therapy uses the triangle to provide a neutral third party capable of relating well to both sides of a conflict.
7. Emotional cut off. People sometimes manage their unresolved emotional issues with parents, siblings, and other family members by reducing or totally cutting off emotional contact with them. This resolves nothing and risks making new relationships too important.
8. Societal emotional process. This concept describes how the emotional system governs behavior on a societal level, similar to that within a family, which promotes both progressive and regressive periods in a society.