“After my early family therapy training, which had left me with various unrelated concepts floating loose in my brain, I was immediately attracted to the intelligently constructed, elaborate yet flexible framework of family systems ideas presented in Bowen’s theory.” Betty Carter.

This workshop will provide opportunity for an exploration of this meta model. It will present Bowen’s core theoretical concepts and show their links to an understanding of self and human systems. Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory was one of the first comprehensive theories of family systems functioning. In any family the connectedness and reactivity make the functioning of members interdependent. A change in one persons functioning is predictably followed by reciprocal changes in functioning of others. Bowen's 8 interlocking concepts were derived from his years of family research and his knowledge of evolutionary processes.

Demystifying Family Systems Theory Part 1

• How did Bowen develop his theory? From  psychoanalytic training to family research.
• Understanding anxiety systemically. Chronic and acute anxiety.
• The tension of the togetherness and separateness force
• The concept of Fusion and Emotional cut-off.
• Differentiation of self
• Relationship Triangles and the Nuclear Family Emotional System. Where symptoms appear: Couple conflict, symptoms in one spouse and symptoms in a child.
• Sibling position, Family Projection and Multi generational Transmission Processes:  How anxious projection is absorbed in the next generation.
• Working on self  through understanding previous generations.
• The Societal Emotional Process. How far reaching are the applications of Bowen’s model?

 From Thinking to Doing Part 2

This workshop provides a framework for application of Bowen’s family systems concepts to client assessments, and outlines the central interventions of creating a research approach, detriangling, questions that invite differentiation and focusing on emotional process.

• Review of theory—Thinking Systems.
• Setting goals for therapy
• Assessment: Using tools for family systems diagnosis and evaluation and the place of hypothesising
• Application: Calming the system and achieving more objectivity
• therapist self- regulation and avoiding therapist over responsibility
• Nuclear family issues: Facilitating learning about self in the system through the research attitude
• Maintaining collaboration & inviting differentiation.
• De-triangling—as a way of thinking
• Use of questions and displacement stories to increase client systems awareness
• Exploring emotional process over problem content
• Encouraging I messages and taking an I position
• Expanding the view to previous generations: via the use of the family diagram in therapy
• The clients choice to focus on their family of origin

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