Family System Theory

• Family Systems & Murray Bowen Theory


  One of several family models developed by mental health pioneers in the decade or so following the Second World War
• For a short postwar period of time, drug therapy was not yet effective and parents were still implicated in their child's behavior
• Pharmacological treatment began to take hold after the introduction of Thorazine to the U.S.A., in 1957
• In 1983, E. Fuller Torrey published the first edition of his book, Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients, and Providers, which absolved parents and condemned Bowen
• In spite of its roots in schizophrenia research, elements of Murray Bowen's theory have been included by corporate, church, community, and coaching programs for their organizational personnel training
• Bowenian ideas have been found useful for understanding volunteer, religious, and business organizations and the people who work for them
• These parapsychological coverages often tend to truncate the richness of his work
• Family therapy movement


  Therapists began to explore the dynamics of family life after World War II
• Prior to the family therapy movement


  Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts focused on the patient's already developed psyche and downplayed current outside detractors
• Family therapists


  Expanded the beneficial and toxic influences on the patient to include relatives with whom the patient interacted
• The relationship with others, not just intrapsychic forces, was considered the primary basis for emotional states
• The importance of an individual's constitution was de-emphasized by family therapists
• Family therapy was a new and different approach to understanding psychopathology
• Schools of psychology tend to be somewhat mutually exclusive and parochial
• With family therapies the family became the primary focus and de-emphasized individual factors
• The cause of the problem "seen" by the therapist was no longer the "identified patient" but the dysfunctional family system
• Different belief camps become polarized and exclude other beliefs
• Bowen (1984, Ch. 4): 'Used the analogy of John Godfrey Saxe's poem (cir. 1850) about the blind men and the elephant to describe practitioners' limited views'
• As interest in family therapy proliferated, its findings needed to be communicated and categorized
• Nathan W. Ackerman and Don D. Jackson, two directors of institutes that dominated the field in the late 1950's, founded the Family Process journal in 1962
• Numerous journals and publications were founded in the ensuing 25 years to deal with family therapy
• The information surge and the need to compare approaches led to classification schemes
• Four major schools of family therapy


  • Psychoanalytic and objects relations approaches
  • Intergenerational approaches
  • Systems theory approaches
  • Behavioral approaches
• Five general classification schemes for family therapy


  • Psychodynamic paradigm
  • Family system paradigm
  • General systems paradigm
  • Cybernetic paradigm
  • Ecological systems paradigm
• Murray Bowen stood out among the pioneers and developed a theory that not only informed psychotherapists but has been adopted by many organizations outside the mental health field to explain how people perform in groups
• Murray Bowen


  Began his early work with schizophrenics at the Menninger Clinic, from 1946 to 1954
• Murray Bowen


  Moved to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where he resided from 1954 to 1959
• Murray Bowen


  Moved to Georgetown University, where he remained until his death on October 10, 1990, of lung cancer
• In 1978 Murray Bowen published his only book, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, coalescing his work of the prior 20 years, 1957 to 1977
• C. Margaret Hall


  Published The Bowen Family Theory and It's Uses, in 1981
• Philip Guerin's Family Therapy: Theory and Practice (1976), Chapter 4, which was written by Murray Bowen, is concise and very readable, and in the founder's own words
• Excellent handbooks, textbooks and summaries have been published in the 1980's, explaining Murray Bowen's and the other family therapies
• Murray Bowen's working concepts


  • Triangles
  • Differentiation of self
  • Nuclear family emotional process
  • Family projection process
  • Multi generational transmission processes
  • Sibling position
  • Emotional cutoff
  • Emotional processes in society (societal regression)
• Work on a ninth concept, involving the functional aspect of human spirituality, is referred to in a footnote in Wolman and Stricker (1983, p. 139)
• Family Projection Process


  • Child focus or triangle child
  • Identified or designated patient
• Multi Generational Transmission Processes


  • Compounding effects
  • Schizophrenia
• Sibling Position


  Toman's Family Constellation
• Emotional Cutoff


  Family of origin
• Work on a ninth concept, involving the functional aspect of human spirituality, is referred to in a footnote in Wolman and Stricker (1983, p. 139). No publications were found describing Murray Bowen's further development of a spiritual concept.
• The first five concepts are part of Bowan's original working concepts. The sixth was based on the publication of Walter Toman's first edition of Family Constellation: It's Effect on Personality and Social Behavior, published in 1961, and which is now in the fourth edition. Two concepts, seven and eight, were added in 1975 (Bowen, 1976).