This accessible text examines how the science of autonomy and adaptation informs all family therapy approaches and discusses how clinicians can use this science to improve their practice. Uniquely focussing on how to integrate science as well as theory into clinical practice, the book provides an overview of science from multiple domains and ties it to family systems theory through the key framework of autonomy and adaptation. Drawing on research from genetics, physiology, emotion regulation, attachment, and triangulation, chapters demonstrate how a comprehensive science-informed theory of family systems can be applied to a range of problematic family patterns. The text also explores self-of-the-therapist work and considers how autonomy and attachment are connected to systems of power, privilege, and oppression. Supported throughout by practical case examples, as well as questions for consideration, chapter summaries, and resource lists to further engage the reader, The Science of Family Systems Theory is an essential textbook for marriage and family therapy students as well as mental health professionals working with families.

The Family Emotional System: An Integrative Concept for Theory, Science, and Practice presents an ongoing dialogue among scientists, family investigators, and clinicians related to a natural systems view of the family and human behavior that has been occurring over several decades. The concept of the family as an emotional system, as defined in Bowen theory, is presented as the principal integrative concept underlying this dialogue and an effort to move toward a science of human behavior. As a natural system, the family forms the immediate and most important context for individual development, and may be the most central and important environment shaping brain development across the lifetime of the individual. This book explains how the family system can serve as an integrative framework within which specific factual discoveries and hypotheses from many areas of science can be brought together and understood as various manifestations of a coherent whole. The Family Emotional System provides understanding of what is entailed in conceptualizing the family as an emotional system, a sense of the breadth and depth of knowledge the sciences are contributing to this effort, and examples of how this theoretical framework contributes to family research and practice. The richness and excitement occurring in the ongoing dialogue between scientists and Bowen family systems practitioners and researchers is captured along with the promise it holds for the study of human behavior.

Family psychiatrist and researcher Murray Bowen’s effort to contribute to a science of human behavior, led to the famous Family Study Project at NIMH and the later development of a formal theory of the family and its clinical application. Later known as Bowen theory, it represented a radical departure from the individualistic paradigm predominant in psychiatry. Following Bowen’s mode, this book examines the interplay between the individual and the family in shaping the differential capacity to effectively adapt to life’s many challenges.

In a single volume, Bringing Systems Thinking to Life: Expanding the Horizons for Bowen Family Systems Theory presents the extraordinary diversity and breadth of Bowen theory applications that address human functioning in various relationship systems across a broad spectrum of professions, disciplines, cultures, and nations. Providing three chapters of never-before-published material by Dr. Bowen, the book also demonstrates the transcendent nature and versatility of Bowen theory-based social assessment and its extension into fields of study and practice far beyond the original psychiatric context in which it was first formulated including social work, psychology, nursing, education, literary studies, pastoral care and counseling, sociology, business and management, leadership studies, distance learning, ecological science, and evolutionary biology. Providing ample evidence that Bowen theory has joined that elite class of theories that have enjoyed broad application to social phenomena while lending credibility to the claim that Bowen theory is one of the previous and current centuries’ most significant social-behavioral theories. More than a “resource manual” for Bowen theory enthusiasts, this book helps put a new great theory on the intellectual landscape.

When Bowen was a student and practitioner of classical psychoanalysis at the Menninger Clinic, he became engrossed in understanding the process of schizophrenia and its relationship to mother-child symbiosis. Between the years 1950 and 1959, at Menninger and later at the National Institute of Mental Health (as first chief of family studies), he worked clinically with over 500 schizophrenic families. This extensive experience was a time of fruition for his thinking as he began to conceptualize human behavior as emerging from within the context of a family system. Later, at Georgetown University Medical School, Bowen worked to extend the application of his ideas to the neurotic family system. Initially he saw his work as an amplification and modification of Freudian theory, but later viewed it as an evolutionary step toward understanding human beings as functioning within their primary networkDtheir family. One of the most renowned theorist and therapist in the field of family work, this book encompasses the breadth and depth of Bowen's contributions. It presents the evolution of Bowen's Family Theory from his earliest essays on schizophrenic families and their treatment, through the development of his concepts of triangulation, intergenerational conflict and societal regression, and culminating in his brilliant exploration of the differentiation of one's self in one's family of origin.

If family therapy is like a camera through which clients are able to view their lives, then the treatment method used by clinicians could be considered the lens, offering different ways of seeing. In Metaphors of Family Systems Theory, Paul C. Rosenblatt explores the metaphors of family systems theory that form the conceptual foundation - the lens - of a great deal of therapy, research, theory, education, and policy making in the family field. He demonstrates the value of testing out theoretical or alternative metaphors - other lenses - to provide new perspectives and a fresh means of gaining clarity. The literature that informs family therapy is rich with striking accounts of how therapeutic metaphors have helped to move families into healthier, energizing, freeing, and more satisfying relationships, yet little attention has been devoted to the development of alternative theoretical metaphors. This innovative new work investigates the uses and limitations of the standard metaphors of family systems theory. Perhaps more important, it also provides the means to generate alternative theoretical metaphors to stimulate new thinking about family systems. Rosenblatt asserts that the capacity to recognize metaphors will enable clinicians and clients to identify biases, hidden implications, and reification, as well as what may have been overlooked. He shows the way this ability also helps us to organize and remember information, and to better appreciate the multilayeredness of "reality". Initial chapters define metaphor and discuss family systems theory, as well as the uses and limitations of standard therapeutic metaphors. The chapters examine the notion of the family as an entity, themetaphor of "system", and the major systemic metaphors. Rosenblatt extends his analysis to the idea of family boundary and to the closely related metaphors of family subsystem, family boundary permeability, and family boundary ambiguity. He also analyzes the metaphors of family structure, systems control, family rules, and negative and positive feedback. Later chapters apply these ideas to the metaphors of communication, therapeutic goals, the therapist in the system, and family response to intervention. Rosenblatt Illustrates new insights with a variety of experience-based metaphors and presents strategies for the evaluation and development of new theoretical metaphors for family systems. Unique and innovative, this book offers a fresh perspective for anyone working with metaphors of family systems theory. Of special interest to family therapists, family researchers, social workers, and other mental health professionals working in the family field, it is especially useful as a text for courses in family systems theory, theories of family therapy, and theory construction.

This accessible text examines how the science of autonomy and adaptation informs all family therapy approaches and discusses how clinicians can use this science to improve their practice. Uniquely focussing on how to integrate science as well as theory into clinical practice, the book provides an overview of science from multiple domains and ties it to family systems theory through the key framework of autonomy and adaptation. Drawing on research from genetics, physiology, emotion regulation, attachment, and triangulation, chapters demonstrate how a comprehensive science-informed theory of family systems can be applied to a range of problematic family patterns. The text also explores self-of-the-therapist work and considers how autonomy and attachment are connected to systems of power, privilege, and oppression. Supported throughout by practical case examples, as well as questions for consideration, chapter summaries, and resource lists to further engage the reader, The Science of Family Systems Theory is an essential textbook for marriage and family therapy students as well as mental health professionals working with families.