Psychodynamic and Bowen family systems

PFT theorist

Nathan Ackerman

BFT

Murray Bowen

PFT key concepts

• family history matters (attachment)

• unspoken, universal hopes and fears play out in relationships

• therapists ‘unearths’ unspoken hopes and fears by attending to unconscious processes

• new insights unlock potential for behavior change

• insight alone does not create changed relationships

BFT key concepts

• anxiety

• togetherness vs. separateness

• feelings self vs. intellectual self

• triangulation

• emotional cut-off

P and B FT shared concepts

differentiation and individuation

scapegoat

differentiation

Bowen

• a state of togetherness or closeness with family that is balanced by a self that is not responsible for the emotional state of others within the family

• goal is to enhance individual members levels of differentiation or individuation and to encourage others to accept and support the differentiation process

scapegoating

P and B FT

• identified family member upon whom family problems are laid/blamed. this person is offered as the ‘reason’ for family strife and the one who others need to be fixed for the family to be healthy

• a goal is to assign responsibility for issues justly and to view the family as a set of interlocking processes in which many members participate

anxiety

people are prone to anxiety as a matter of existence; it is the center of most problems. Healthy individuals use rational means to balance emotion, especially anxiety

togetherness vs. separateness

togetherness motivates people to stay connected, but it is held in tension with the desire to be one’s own person

feeling self vs. intellectual self

we need both emotional and rational guidance systems in order not to be primarily reactive to feelings or distant from others

triangulation

occurs when two members of a family draw in a third to avoid dealing with their own tension

emotional cut-off

a person cuts off, by emotional or physical distance, a family relationship due to discord or tension