MFT Green Book - CHAPTER 3- TRANSGENERATIONAL MODELS

Fusion

Over-involvement and lack of boundaries

Emotional System

The automatic emotional forces and relationship patterns that influence human behavior within families and groups.

Societal Regression

The decline in a society’s ability to manage anxiety, leading to increased emotional reactivity, polarization, and dysfunctional social patterns.

Non-Anxious Presence

The therapist’s ability to remain calm, emotionally regulated, and grounded during intense family or relational conflict.

Transgenerational Family Therapy

Examines how family patterns, unresolved conflicts, beliefs, and roles are transmitted across generations.

Family of Origin

Family in which a person grew up; influences later relationships and emotional functioning.

Intergenerational Patterns

Recurring emotional and relational patterns across generations.

Insight

Conscious awareness of previously unconscious family dynamics.

Working Through

Using insight to develop more productive behaviors and interactions.

Object Relations Theory

Emphasizes internalized relationship experiences that influence current relationships.

Nonlinear Causality

Problems are maintained through ongoing relational patterns rather than a single cause.

Differentiation of Self

Ability to distinguish thinking from feeling and maintain autonomy while emotionally connected.

Emotional Fusion

Emotional interconnectedness that limits independent thinking and functioning.

Solid Self / Basic Self

Stable identity grounded in personally defined beliefs, values, and convictions.

Pseudo-Self

Identity based on borrowed beliefs and emotional pressure from relationships.

Chronic Anxiety

Persistent emotional and physiological reactivity within an emotional system.

Emotional Reactivity

Automatic emotionally driven responses to relational tension.

Triangles

Three-person emotional structures that stabilize anxiety in a two-person relationship.

Triangulation

Involving a third person to redistribute anxiety between two people.

Nuclear Family Emotional Process

Patterns by which anxiety and fusion operate within the immediate family.

Undifferentiated Ego Mass

Bowen’s original term for emotional fusion within a family.

Family Projection Process

Transmission of parental anxiety and low differentiation to a child through overinvolvement.

Multigenerational Transmission Process

Transmission of differentiation and emotional functioning patterns over generations.

Sibling Position

Birth order and sibling configuration as influences on family roles.

Emotional Cutoff

Managing unresolved family attachment anxiety through emotional or physical distance.

Emotional System

Network of emotionally connected individuals whose responses affect each other.

Emotional Equilibrium

Relative stability of a family emotional system.

Regression

Movement toward less differentiated functioning under emotional pressure.

Genogram / Family Diagram

Multigenerational chart of family structure, life events, relationships, and emotional patterns.

Process Questions

Questions that slow reactivity and help clients observe family interaction patterns.

I-Position

Expressing personal beliefs and needs without blaming or pressuring others.

Detriangulation

Staying emotionally connected without taking sides in a triangle.

Nonanxious Presence

Calm, thoughtful therapist engagement without becoming emotionally reactive.

Therapist Neutrality

Avoiding taking sides while observing the emotional process.

Emotional Contact

Remaining connected with family while working toward differentiation.

Projective Hypothesis

Idea that what people reveal about themselves varies with the situation; discussed with genograms.

Multigenerational Mapping

Examining family structure and patterns across several generations.

Relationship Patterns

Patterns of closeness, distance, cutoff, and conflict shown in a genogram.

Family Structure

Marriages, divorces, births, deaths, and kinship relationships mapped in a genogram.