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- Title
MURRAY BOWEN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF COMPLEX HUMAN SYSTEMS.
- Authors
Papero, Daniel V.
- Abstract
Complex systems consist of multiple connected parts acting together as a whole, a unit, or a system. This results in collective behavior of the unit that cannot be inferred directly from the behavior of the specific parts. For complex living systems, behavior emerges from the interaction among the various elements reflecting, among other things, the retained effects of past collective behavior, the environment in which the parts interact and to which they must adapt, the particular characteristics of the individual components, and the shifting degrees of metabolically produced energy within and among the parts as they interact. Bowen theory describes one kind of complex living system, the human family. Following his service in World War II in 1946, Murray Bowen entered the Menninger School of Psychiatry to begin his training in psychiatry. He later described the Menninger program as a rich environment where he was exposed to ideas and the leading thinkers of the day in the many symposia and lectures available to students (Kerr and Bowen 1988). He served on the library committee (personal communication) and used the excellent library to read widely across many disciplines. He reported the Menninger experience reignited his early interest in science, and there he encountered the idea that Freudian theory was not as scientific as originally believed. The combination of his natural scientific curiosity, extensive multidisciplinary reading, and wide clinical experience at Menninger led him to begin to develop a broad theoretical framework that differed from the Freudian ideas of the time. In 1954, Bowen moved from Menninger to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, an institution he considered more amenable to research that considered the patient to be the family rather than the individual. At the NIMH, Bowen and his staff observed the interactions of family members --with one another and later with the hospital staff--of a severely impaired young adult, recording their observations in detail. Drawing upon his work at the NIMH and his continuing work with families less severely impaired, Bowen constructed a theory that considered the family a unit or natural system. Within the family, individuals react emotionally to one another. Those reactions reflect a deep connection and sensitivity among family members that regulate individual physiology and psychology as well as interactional sequences of behavior among family members broadly. He proposed that eight factors (theoretical concepts) plus a variable of amount of energy (anxiety) create the context from which dynamic family behavior emerges. Knowledge of the family system permitted Bowen to extend theoretical formulations to larger complex human systems like organizations and communities. He observed that many of the same processes evident in family system behavior exist in other human systems as well. These include, among others, the role of fearful emotional arousal (anxiety and stress) in energizing behavior, the emergent markers of the effects of that anxiety on individuals and relationships within the system, the emotional flow and counterflow among members and segments of the system that form a discernible and predictable pattern of behavior, and the ability of one individual to influence the functioning of the system with his or her own behavior.
- Subjects
BETHESDA (Md.); NATIONAL Institute of Mental Health (U.S.); ADLERIAN psychology; COLLECTIVE behavior; WORLD War II; YOUNG adults; WORRY; HUMAN experimentation
- Publication
Family Systems: A Journal of Natural Systems Thinking in Psychiatry & the Sciences, 2022, Vol 16, Issue 1, p43
- ISSN
1070-0609
- Publication type
Article