Commentary: Separations: A Personal Account of Bowen Family Systems Theory

Abstract

Family of origin investigation has been a core part of training in Bowen family systems theory since the 1970s. Bowen observed that his trainees, who worked to research and understand their multigenerational family, made more progress in managing themselves in their clinical work and life than did trainees who attended regular psychotherapy dealing with family/couple issues in the here and now (Bowen, 1978). The premise is that if one can gain a broader more objective view of previous generations of one's family, and in turn make more mature connections with extended family, one is better able to manage one's reactivity in here and now relationships. For a therapist this allows a way to go past cause and effect thinking about client presentations and to see the interconnectedness of all family members in contributing to the how, who, what, and where of symptoms that are presented by the client.A few papers have been published in recent times about the application of family of origin work to the professional development of the clinician (Donnelly & Gosbee, 2009;Renshaw, Rhodes, Brown, Donnelly, Gosbee, & Wainer, 2013). This new paper by Martina Palombi goes beyond qualitatively exploring the effects of this work to describing the personal journey of her family of origin research. The report integrates her work in a year-long family of origin research group held at the Family Systems Institute (FSI) as well as her individual supervision, which addresses the links between her sensitivity to ending a therapy relationship and her lens about her separation experience in her family of origin. The FSI website describes the purpose of this professional development:These groups assist the participant to be a researcher in their own family of origin system and to understand their position and those of other family members, in the pattern of relationships. With the use of a family diagram participants research and present the facts of previous generations. This provides the basis for learning about systems patterns and the variations in functioning of different family lines and family members (FSI, 2016).The efficacy of exploring family of origin in the context of clinical supervision is considered to be of great value for managing the self of the therapist in relation to the family scenarios that their clients present:A focus of Bowen coaching is on understanding the theory as it relates to the therapist's self with the goal of increasing the therapist's level of differentiation and their ability to de-triangle from client families. He stressed that the position a therapist plays in relation to the client family will be similar to the position that the therapist plays in their own family (Gosbee et al., 2009, p. 302).

The Relationship between Differentiation of Self and Psychological Adjustment to Separation

“…Finally, Fusion with others (FO) describes emotional enmeshment within a family system [ 17 ]. It has been evidenced that these dimensions predict increments of the ability to cope with separation anxiety, with the I-position associated with higher levels of psychological adjustment as compared to the other three [ 21 , 28 , 29 ]…”