Family Evaluation by Murray Bowen

Author:Murray Bowen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

1 The words undifferentiation and anxiety are used interchangeably in reference to what is “bound” or “absorbed” by the patterns of emotional functioning in a family. While differentiation an anxiety are distinct processes, the “amount” of undifferentiation and the “amount” of anxiety tend to parallel each other. With this in mind, the words are used interchangeably.

2 The process of parents’ focusing anxiously on a child can be set in motion by increased anxiety in the child as well as by increased anxiety in the parents. Who gets anxious first is less important than the process of one person’s anxiety infecting another and a vicious circle ensuing.

3 As should be evident from the discussion of triangles, the relationship processes that lead to symptom development are usually much more complex than just what transpires between two parents and one child.

4 People are generally unaware of the emotional aspects of this selection process. It occurs fairly automatically.

5 Of course, even a highly adaptive individual can succumb to major internal defects or to an overwhelming assault of external pathogenic influences.

6 In a psychoanalytic relationship, the analyst’s neutrality allows the patient to create a distorted image of the analyst that is a product of the patient’s past life experience. In the ideal analytic relationship, the distortion is in the fantasies of the patient and not reinforced by verbalizations or actions of the analyst. The past life experience of the analyst does not affect the nature of the patient’s transference. Spouses, however, are not neutral. Each spouse does act out (either through compliance with or rebellion against) the distorted image of himself or herself held by the other spouse. The transference, therefore, is not confined to the fantasies of each spouse; it is reinforced by verbalizations and actions of the other spouse. The past life experience of each spouse does affect the nature of the transferences. The less the emotional separation or differentiation between people in a relationship, the more the mutual reinforcement of transferences occurs.

7 Transference and emotional fusion are similar on a descriptive level, but different on a conceptual level. Transference is linked conceptually to an “unconscious.” Fusion is linked conceptually to an “emotional system.” The psychoanalytic concept of “unconscious” is not equivalent to the family systems concept of “emotional system.”

8 This can occur even when people are determined to create a family situation that is different from (better than) the one in which they grew up. The repetition of the past in spite of the determination to do otherwise is a product of people’s efforts being based on false assumptions about the nature of the problems in their original family. People can change the superficial appearance of things through efforts based on false assumptions, but underlying processes are not altered. One purpose of therapy is to question the accuracy of assumptions about past generations and in the process to develop a more reliable blueprint for directing one’s efforts with present and future generations.

9 It could be argued that a family tends to focus

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