How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching Families

Bowen’s Strategic Family Therapy Contents               Introduction Differentiation of Self Triangles The Nuclear Family Emotional Processes The Family Projection Process The Multigenerational Transmission Process Sibling Position Emotional Cutoff Societal Emotional Processes Normal Family Development Family Disorders Goals of Therapy Techniques Family Therapy with One Person Introduction The pioneers of family therapy recognized that current social and cultural forces shape our values about ourselves and our families, our thoughts about what is "normal" and "healthy," and our expectations about how the world works. However, Bowen was the first to realize that the history of our family creates a template which shapes the values, thoughts, and experiences of each generation, as well as how that generation passes down these things to the next generation. Bowen was a medical doctor and the oldest child in a large cohesive family from Tennessee. He studied schizophrenia, thinking the cause for it began in mother-child symbiosis, which created an anxious and unhealthy attachment. He moved from studying dyads (two way relationships like parent-child and parentparent) to triads (three way relationships like parent-parent-child and grandparent-parent-child) afterward. At a conference organized by Framo, one of his students, he explained his theory of how families develop and function, and presented as a case study his own family. Bowen's theory focuses on the balance of two forces. The first is togetherness and the second is individuality. Too much togetherness creates fusion and prevents individuality, or developing one's own sense of self. Too much individuality results in a distant and estranged family. Bowen introduced eight interlocking concepts to explain family development and functioning, each of which is described below. The family systems theory is a theory introduced by Dr. Murray Bowen that suggests that individuals cannot be understood in isolation from one another, but rather as a part of their family, as the family is an emotional unit. Families are systems of interconnected and interdependent individuals, none of whom can be understood in isolation from the system. The family system According to Bowen, a family is a system in which each member has a role to play and rules to respect. Members of the system are expected to respond to each other in a certain way according to their role, which is determined by relationship agreements. Within the boundaries of the system, patterns develop as certain family member's behaviour is caused by and causes other family member's behaviours in predictable ways. Maintaining the same pattern of behaviours within a system may lead to balance in the family system, but also to dysfunction. For example, if a husband is depressive and cannot pull himself together, the wife may need to take up more responsibilities to pick up the slack. The change in roles may maintain the stability in the relationship, but it 99

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