Bowen's Family Systems Approach

Question 1

Coaching:

Answer 1

Multigenerational/Bowen: Bowen used this term to identify what he believed his role to be with clients as he coached them through the process of differentiation of self. He used the metaphor of “coach” to exemplify that he is responsible for getting the process started, but that the actual work must be done by the client.

Question 2

Displacement Stories:

Answer 2

Multigenerational/Bowen: Guerin’s intervention meant to assist individuals in creating distance between themselves and their problems and encourage rationality by having them reflect on another couple’s conflict as opposed to their own.

Question 3

Family Projection Process:

Answer 3

Multigenerational/Bowen: This concept identifies that individuals with limited emotional resources are likely to project their needs onto others in the family. For example, a mother who was neglected as a child (too much individuality, not enough togetherness), and as a result, emotionally cut-off from her parents, may become over-involved (too much togetherness, not enough individuality) with her children.

Question 4

Detriangulation:

Answer 4

Multigenerational/Bowen: Bowen believed that families will automatically attempt to triangulate the therapist into their conflict—and if they are successful in doing so, therapy will become ineffective. The therapist detriangulates the family’s emotional process by remaining neutral and differentiated, thereby decreasing emotionality across the family and making room for constructively resolving conflict.

Question 5

Differentiation of Self:

Answer 5

Multigenerational/Bowen: This concept refers to an individual’s capacity to balance thinking with feeling—and thereby, balance individuality with togetherness. Highly differentiated individuals are able to act rationally in the midst of anxiety. Individual’s with low levels of differentiation are highly reactive and easily driven to emotionality.

Question 6

Going Home Again:

Answer 6

Multigenerational/Bowen: This was an intervention used to encourage adult individual clients to go home and repair any conflicted relationships.

Question 7

Emotional Cutoff:

Answer 7

Multigenerational/Bowen: A problematic manner in which individuals deal with unresolved attachment issues through a process of separation, isolation, withdrawal, running away, or denying the importance of one’s parental family.

Question 8

Genograms (Guerin) / Family Diagrams (Bowen):

Answer 8

Multigenerational/Bowen: Genograms gather a rich family history through the creation of a diagram resembling a family tree with various symbols used to identify gender and the degree of conflict, fusion, emotional cut-off, or health between individuals. It identifies the multigenerational transmission process and triangles among many other dynamics.

Question 9

Individuality & Togetherness:

Answer 9

Multigenerational/Bowen: The two counterbalancing forces that drive human relationships. Bowen believed that each individual needs companionship and independence, and that anxiety is experienced when these two needs polarize the individual. Balance is achieved in relation to the extent that the individual has learned to manage emotionality—that is, the individual’s level of self-differentiation.

Question 10

Multigenerational Transmission Process:

Answer 10

Multigenerational/Bowen: This term refers to the emotional forces in families that continue over the years in interconnected patterns, transmitting down from one generation to the next.

Question 11

Nonanxious Presence:

Answer 11

Multigenerational/Bowen: Bowen emphasized the importance of the therapist remaining differentiated and providing a non-anxious presence throughout the session, influencing the family members to become less reactive and access rationality. This intervention served to promote higher levels of differentiation for each family member through modeling.

Question 12

Nuclear Family Emotional System:

Answer 12

Multigenerational/Bowen: This concept refers to the emotional forces in a nuclear family that are expressed through recurrent patterns of individual behavior and interpersonal connectedness.

Question 13

Process Questions:

Answer 13

Multigenerational/Bowen: These questions aim to slow individuals down, thereby decreasing emotionality and increasing rationality as the individual becomes more aware of how stress and anxiety influence behavior.

Question 14

Relationship Experiments:

Answer 14

Multigenerational/Bowen: These were used to help clients become aware of systemic processes within their relationship through understanding how their behaviors impact others. These were directive in nature and instructed clients to experiment with different ways of behaving and responding to one another.

Question 15

Person-to-Person Relationships:

Answer 15

Multigenerational/Bowen: This type of relationship defines two family members that are able to relate to one another openly and freely without the need to triangulate in a 3rd party. Here, individuals tell each other how they are feeling—typically through the use of taking an “I” position—with a sense of wisdom and rationality.

Question 16

Sibling Position:

Answer 16

Multigenerational/Bowen: Bowen endorsed that an individual’s personality development is highly influenced by his or her position in the sibling birth order. This also plays a role in how children are chosen as the object for the family projection process.

Question 17

Bowenian Family Systems Approach (Multigenerational Family Therapy)
Audio File 6

Answer 17

Transgerneational Model to Family Therapy

~ Family Diagrams (genograms later) very imp to Bowen
~ goal is Differentiation and less anxiety (the person who was better differentiated would have less anxiety and reactivity) ones ability to act on their own
~ had highly reactive couples speak only through Bowen
~birth order very imp
~ long term therapy, very long assessment plan with an in depth genograms
~didn’t require all of fam to be there. Assumed that if mom and dad or part of family became more differentiated that the rest of the family would become healthier as well.

Main Contributers:

Murray Bowen.

Phillip Guerin

Thomas Fogarty

Monica McGoldrick

Betty Carter

Key Terms : 
Differentiations of Self:
Emotional Cutoff: 
Family Projection Process:  
Individuality & Togetherness: 
Multigenerational Transmission Person-to-Person Relationships: Process:  
Nuclear Family Emotional System:  
Sibling Position: 
Societal Emotional Process: 
Triangles: 
Undifferentiated Family Ego Mass (now referred to as the Nuclear Family Emotional System): 

Primary Interventions:
Coaching:
Detriangulation:  
Displacement Stories: 
Process Questions:
Using I Statements:
Relationship Experiments:  
Genograms (Guerin) / Family Diagrams (Bowen):  
Going Home Again:  
Nonanxious Presence: 
The “I” Position:

Question 18

The “I” Position:

Answer 18

Multigenerational/Bowen: This was an intervention used to encourage clients to learn more effective ways of expressing what/how they are feeling through ownership and not blame. For example, a client would be redirected from saying “you’re so cold-hearted” to “I wish you would tend to my emotional pain more genuinely.” This would break cycles of emotional reactivity and promote “person-to-person” relationships.

Question 19

Societal Emotional Process:

Answer 19

Multigenerational/Bowen: This term refers to the impact of social influences on family functioning. Individuals (families) with higher levels of self-differentiation are less vulnerable to destructive societal influences, such as sexism and discrimination.

Question 20

Undifferentiated Family Ego Mass (now referred to as the Nuclear Family Emotional System):

Answer 20

Multigenerational/Bowen: This term is used to identify an excess of emotional reactivity, anxiety, and fusion within a family system.

Question 21

Triangles:

Answer 21

Multigenerational/Bowen: Triangles are created when an individual in a relationship pulls in a 3rd party (i.e. another person, a hobby, a substance, etc.) to create the illusion of emotional closeness that they are not receiving from the other individual in the relationship. The 3rd party then creates a triangle, decreasing the anxiety between the two individuals by spreading it across a third.