We present a comparison between Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal to test the cross‐cultural validity of the Differentiation of Self Inventory Revised (DSI‐R) Scales of emotional cut‐off (EC) and emotional reactivity (ER). Our study focuses on the importance of in‐depth analyses of the differentiation of self‐constructs from a cross‐cultural perspective and reflects on the possibility of conceptualising the universality of Bowen theory in southern European countries. The study involved 1,807 healthy individuals. All participants completed the DSI‐R (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003). It was found that the measurement models had a suitable fit for each country group. Nevertheless, in our study, the two DSI‐R subscales, ER and EC, highlighted a weak invariance, specifically demonstrating only the invariance of the pattern factor loadings and the magnitude of factor loadings in the four samples. The empirical and clinical implications of these data are discussed.

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Arguably, the medical model's narrative achieved an iconic mental health status eulogized within our evidence‐based era. Despite Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' atheoretical pretensions, we attempt to shed light and critically challenge its dogmatic mental health presumptions through a family systems perspective. Specifically, our critical study of a fictitious vignette attempts to expose how the medical model's systematic de‐emphasis of familial environments directs clinicians away from the true source of triangulated children's distress, an attention shift that may result in unintentionally perpetuating children's psychological turmoil. Alternatively, we attempt to delineate how the system paradigm may holistically account for children's familial emotional environments, thereby potentially attributing their psychological distress to its true, yet concealed, familial dysfunction. In essence, we argue that the medical model seems to operate within a decontextualized restricted disease‐carrier‐child mind frame, hence potentially ascribing faux diagnoses and false medical treatments to healthy children.

A critical co-sleeping literature review revealed individualistic and dyadic guided approaches taken insofar, ridden by conflicting results. Thereby, we situated our approach beyond the individual and dyad area where we developed anew a systemic co-sleeping paradigm, resulting in theoretical and preliminary empirical findings. Initial cross-gender analyses associated significantly cosleeping with Bowen Family Systems Theory's cornerstone constructs. However, once the moderating effect of gender was examined, significance disappeared across the board for females yet persisted for males. Specifically, male-children time-persistent co-sleeping was associated negatively with differentiation and positively with chronic anxiety and other hypothesized maladjustment effects (guilty feelings and abandonment feelings if moved away from parents). Effects drew attention to Bowen's systemic construct of intergenerational emotional fusion. Guided by the empirical associations, we focused on gender development differences literature. We suggest that triangulation processes dynamically embed co-sleeping within the family systems paradigm, with the embedment appearing to be significantly gendered.

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