Bowenian family therapy
Family Therapy is an approach to counselling which looks at the problem a client is having as a symptom of dysfunction in the entire family. Family therapy believes that an individual is best understood within the context of his/her family relationships. It does not assign blame on either the individual or the family but attempts to change the faulty pattern in which the family members have been interacting.
Family counsellors look at the entire family as a system. A system is one in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Family therapy says that a family is a living system and change in one member causes changes in all the other parts of the family system. Family therapy has many different approaches and Bowenian Family Therapy is one of the most popular.
Bowen Family Systems Therapy was proposed by Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist working at the Menninger Clinic in the late 1940s. The basic tenet of this theory is that all human relationships are driven by two counterbalancing forces, individuality and togetherness — our contrasting needs for companionship and independence. These opposing forces often lead us through patterns of closeness and distancing from the people in our lives. The degree of success with which we reconcile these two forces depends on the ‘differentiation of self’. Bowen explains differentiation of self as ‘the capacity to think and reflect and not be reactive to internal or external emotional pressures.’
Bowen’s theory focuses on helping clients gain insight about their problems rather than on taking action to solve them directly — in contrast to other family theories. Bowen stresses that our family of origin (the family we were born into) has a big influence on our ability to differentiate. Through his work with schizophrenics, Bowen discovered that there is a sensitive emotional bond between mother and child which causes them to react emotionally to one another. This bond often influences the entire family. Such families hold on so strongly to all their members that many of them do not get any personal freedom. This reactiveness also led to a repetitive pattern of cycles of closeness and distance dependent on the shifts in emotional tension between the mother and child.
Bowen introduced eight interlocking concepts to explain family development and functioning, each described below.
1. Differentiation of Self
The first concept is Differentiation of Self — the ability to separate feelings and thoughts. Undifferentiated people cannot separate feelings from thoughts and often have difficulty separating their own feelings from those of others. They look to their family to define how they think about issues, feel about people, and interpret their experiences. Differentiation is the process of freeing yourself from your family’s emotional processes to define yourself. This means being able to hold different opinions and values than your family members while still staying emotionally connected to them — being able to calmly reflect on a conflicted interaction afterward, recognise your own role in it, and choose a different response for the future. For example, Swapna might repeatedly fight with her mother Kanchana, saying her mother is too critical, while Kanchana says her daughter is too sensitive. Swapna gets upset and the cycle repeats. She has not achieved differentiation.
2. Triangles
Two people in a relationship might vacillate between closeness and distance. When distressed or feeling intense emotions, they will seek a third person to triangulate — to ease the tension between them. For example, Shilpa and Arun are a married couple who are constantly fighting. Arun calls his mother or best friend to talk about the fight. His mother might help reduce anxiety and encourage reflection, or she might make the conflict worse by becoming the third wheel in their relationship. People who are more undifferentiated are more likely to triangulate others and be triangulated themselves.
3. The Nuclear Family Emotional Process
These are the emotional patterns in a family that continue over generations. A parent can pass on an emotional view of the world — the emotional process — which is taught from parent to child in each generation. Reactions can range from open conflict, to physical or emotional problems in one family member, to reactive distancing. Problems may include substance abuse, irresponsibility, or depression. For example, Shridhar’s parents see their environment as hostile and always trying to make them suffer — and Shridhar has grown up to look at the world the same way.
4. The Family Projection Process
This is an extension of the Nuclear Family Emotional Process. The family member who “has” the problem is triangulated and serves to stabilise an unstable relationship between two other people in the family. For example, Bharath rejects his mother’s pessimistic views and finds that his mother and sister have become closer — united in agreeing that he is immature and irresponsible. The more they reinforce this view, the more excluded Bharath feels, and the more it shapes how he sees himself. He may act in accord with this view and behave increasingly irresponsibly, or he may constantly try to prove his maturity, but never gain his family’s approval because they do not attribute his successes to his own abilities.
The family member who serves as the “screen” upon which the family projects this story will have great trouble differentiating. It will be hard for Bharath to hold his own opinions and values, maintain emotional strength, and make his own choices freely despite the family’s view of him.
5. The Multigenerational Transmission Process
This concept describes how family emotional processes are transferred and maintained across generations. It captures how the whole family reinforces the Family Projection Process over time — referring back to previous generations to justify current patterns: “He’s just like his Uncle Bhushan — he was always irresponsible too.”
6. Sibling Position
Bowen stressed birth order, believing that each child occupies a particular place in the family hierarchy and is therefore more or less likely to absorb certain projections. The oldest sibling is more likely to be seen as overly responsible and dominating, while the youngest is often viewed as irresponsible or immature — or conversely, more open to new experiences because they had to carve out their own place in the family.
7. Emotional Cutoff
This refers to an extreme response to the Family Projection Process — a complete or near-complete separation from the family, with little to no contact. The person may appear entirely independent from the family, but people who cut off are actually more likely to repeat the emotional and behavioural patterns they were taught. Without another internal model for how families function, it is very hard to do things differently. Bowen believed that people tend to seek out partners at about the same level of differentiation. For example, Ramya says: “I am so glad I moved abroad and stopped keeping in touch with my parents. Now they can never make me unhappy again.” Ramya is cut off from her family emotionally and physically — but she is not differentiated.
8. Societal Emotional Processes
These processes encompass social expectations about racial and class groups, gender roles, and sexual orientation — and their effect on the family. Families that deal with prejudice, discrimination, and persecution must pass on to their children the ways they learned to survive. The coping practices of parents and extended family may lead to more or less adaptive emotional health across the family system.
Bowen believed that optimal family development occurs when family members are differentiated, feel little anxiety within the family, and maintain rewarding and healthy emotional contact with each other.
If what you have read about Bowenian Family Therapy interests you and you would like to know more, we can help. At TalkItOver, we provide family counselling using different family therapy approaches including Bowenian Therapy. If you feel this approach could benefit you and your family, please get in touch.
