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Family System Therapy

Family systems theory was developed by Dr. Murray Bowen in the 1940s-50s as an alternative to Freudian individual psychology. [1] Bowen believed human behavior is influenced not just by individual psychology but also by relationships within family systems. [2] Family systems theory views the family as an emotional unit and understands individual behaviors in terms of past family relationships and multigenerational family histories. [3] It recognizes that biological, psychological, and social factors all interact to influence individual behaviors over time.

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31 views

Family System Therapy

Family systems theory was developed by Dr. Murray Bowen in the 1940s-50s as an alternative to Freudian individual psychology. [1] Bowen believed human behavior is influenced not just by individual psychology but also by relationships within family systems. [2] Family systems theory views the family as an emotional unit and understands individual behaviors in terms of past family relationships and multigenerational family histories. [3] It recognizes that biological, psychological, and social factors all interact to influence individual behaviors over time.

Uploaded by

miji_gg
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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PCB 4024 : SPECIAL CHILDREN AND FAMILY COUNSELING

Course Leader: Puan Hajah Sabariah Siron

COURSE NOTES

TOPIC 10: FAMILY SYSTEM THERAPY

Family systems theory was the brainchild of Dr. Murray Bowen of Georgetown
University; a psychiatrist working with patients with schizophrenia in a hospital setting in
the 1940’s and 50’s. At that time, the predominant thinking came from Sigmund Freud
and his followers who believed that the psychology of human behaviour was rooted in the
individual. Dr. Bowen’s family systems perspective was a major challenge to the
psychiatric thinking of his day. He deviated from the mainstream of psychiatric thinking
of the 40’s and 50’s in two important ways:

1. Systems theory was developed on the assumption that an understanding of a


person’s emotional functioning must extend beyond psychological constructs
to recognize his/her relatedness to all life

2. He made the assumption that a comprehensive understanding of human behavior


must rest on a foundation that moved beyond the study of the individual to
include the human’s relationship system. In other words, Bowen proposed that the
human family operated in ways that were consistent with its being a system
and that the system’s principles of operation were rooted in nature.

1
Family Systems Theory:

 is a way of understanding present situations in terms of past relationships or


family histories.
 understands the family as a single emotional unit made up of interlocking
relationships existing over many generations.
 suggests that individual behavior throughout life is more closely related to the
functioning in one’s original family than most people realize.
 attempts to move beyond cause-and-effect thinking to a more comprehensive
understanding of the multiple factors which interact across time to produce
problems or symptoms.
 recognizes an interplay between biological, genetic, psychological, and
sociological factors in determining individual behavior.
 identifies some of the ways that human functioning is similar to the
functioning of all other forms of life, and postulates that certain principles
governing behavior are common to all life forms.
 views most of human life as being guided by emotional forces which to a
varying degree can be regulated by an individuals ability to think. (Emotional
here includes a smorgasbord of automatic responses such as those driven by
instinct, genetics, biology, and hormones as well as automatic feeling or sensory
responses.)
 postulates that the degree to which individuals may be able to exercise some
choice regarding how much they respond to their automatic emotional input
can be predicted by understanding the functioning of the family unit.
 indicates that people are able to modify their responses to the automatic
emotional input by undertaking a study of their own patterns of behavior and
their link to those in their multigenerational family.

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