Selected Essays And Book Reviews
COUN 601 - Marriage and Family Counseling
Lesson 24. Bowenian Family Counseling {915 words}
1. Discuss the five techniques of experiential family counseling. First is redefining symptoms as an effort for growth. This redefining to trying to do something positive. Second is to try to separate interpersonal and intrapersonal stress, to separate personal from environmental stress. Third is to augment the despair of the individuals (almost paradoxical). Their pain is real, and augmenting forces the family to take action. Fourth is to treat the children like children. Children should not be in parental subsystems, and this also sets good boundaries between parents and children. Fifth is the use of humor, and this can connect the therapist with the family and deemphasize authority. However, this approach can backfire.
2. Discuss the important definitions of Bowenian counseling.
A. Differentiation of Self (Bowen's definition) - the ability to choose between thoughts and feelings and to choose between being guided by one's intellect or one's emtions. On an interpersonal level, it is the ability to experience both intimacy and independence from others.
B. Emotional Cutoff (Bowen's definition) - flight from an unresolved emotional attachment to one's parents. With family, everything related to the parents.
C. Family Projection Process - the mechanism by which parental conflicts are projected onto the children or spouse. This is based on psychotherapy theory. One family can project something from their system onto another family.
D. Genograms - a schematic diagram of the family system, using squares to represent men, circles to indicate women, horizontal lines for marriages, and vertical lines to indicate children. People will often open up and volunteer private information to fill in these diagrams.
E. Multigenerational Transmission Process - a process wherein varying degrees of immaturity are projected onto different children in the same family. The child who is most involved in the family emotional process emerges with the lowest level of differentiation, and passes problems to succeeding generations. The person most involved in the family is usually the one most enmeshed.
F. Nuclear Family Emotional Process - the level of stuck togetherness, or fusion, in the family.
G. Sibling Position - thought to predict what part a child might play in the family emotional process, in conjunction with specific knowledge about a specific family.
H. Societal Emotional Process - a background influence affecting all families. This describes how a prolonged increase in societal anxiety results in a gradual lowering of the functional level of differentiation in society. The Cuban missile crisis probably made many familes more enmeshed.
I. Triangles (Bowen's definition) - three person systems, in Bowenian counseling the smallest stable unit of human relations. He thought that triangles were normal, even though they could still mean trouble.
2. Discuss the basic Bowenian Family Theory. Bowen believed that people felt a force to be separate and distant but also to be connected at the same time. This meant that people were constantly struggling with becoming too disengaged or too enmeshed. The counselor tries to help family members become more differentiated or more integrated into the family. Bowen was a very good writer, and he wrote very some good things.
3. Discuss normal family development. To have a normal family, all family members need to be relatively differentiated, anxiety must be low, and parents must be in good emotional contact with their families of origin. Bowen thought that this last point was very important and that parents needed to work through issues within their families of origin. He also thought that individuals tended to marry people of same or similar differentiation.
4. Discuss the cause of behavior disorders (according to this approach). First, disorders result from the family's level of chronic anxiety. Constant tension and stress will create pathology because the family cannot adapt forever. Second, the level of differentiation of the family system (not just the individual) will determine the amount of pathology. Lack of differentiation in the family leads to the projection of problems onto the spouse, a subsystem, the family system, or even another system.
5. Discuss the goals of Bowenian family counseling. First is to decrease the level of anxiety. Second is to increase the family and individual level of differentiation.. Third is to help the family gain insight into the family system. Bowen's goals were personality change, not symptom relief. He believed that symptom relief would follow personality change.
6. Discuss the six techniques of Bowenian family counseling. First, genograms can help the family gain insight. Second, try to detriangulate people in unhealthy triangles. One way is to give power to one member or to support one member over another. Third is to try relationship experiments and get families to do something new. Fourth is to take an "I" position rather than a "you" position. There is a need for the individual to express their feelings rather than tell someone how that person makes them feel. Fifth is to bring in multiple generations of the family to really get at the root of the problems. Sixth is coaching, where the therapist actively encourages the client to say or do something.
Tom of Bethany
"He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." (I John 5:12)
"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)
Index to Selected Essays And Book Reviews
Lesson 25. Cognitive Behavioral Family Counseling
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