Bowens Family Systems

The purpose of this paper is to explain how to use the framework of Bowen's family system, and explain how personal differences and degree of anxiety affect familial relationships and strength. Bowen's family system theory features how the interaction pattern of the original family affects the interactions of next generation couples and children. Bowen explains the differences in family function due to degree of anxiety or extent of differentiation within the family. Bowen defines the definition of self-differentiation as the ability to distinguish intellectual functions (thinking) from perception.

Murray Bowen is a developer of family system theory. Bowen's family system theory is one of the earliest comprehensive theories of family function. Bowen's theory attracts great attention in Austria and New Zealand and is still very influential in practicing family therapy in North America (Hurst, Sawatzky, & Pave, 1996). Bowen is an evolutionist and its theory is based on the fact that human beings are the result of evolutionary process, but all processes are inherently common (Larson & Wilson, 1998). Murray Bowen was born in Tennessee in 1913 and died in 1990. He was a psychiatrist and was originally practiced in a psychoanalysis model. In the Menninger clinic in the late 1940s, he began to involve mothers in the research and treatment of schizophrenic patients. In 1954, he began to shift from personal focus to understanding family dimension.

Home system therapy is based on Murray Bowen's family system theory and insists that individuals and their relationship networks are inseparable. Like other psychoanalysts in his time, Murray Bowen is interested in creating more scientific and objective treatments as an alternative to traditional diagnostic frameworks and pathological languages. Bowen believes that all therapists have experienced tasks within their families and that this knowledge can help the therapist normalize the behavior of the person being treated.

Bowen Family System Therapy is a treatment focusing on emotional processes rather than content. Murray Bowen 's eight concepts provide a clear overview of the concept of this emotional process, making it easier for therapists to comply with systems and intervention plans. Bowen's theory and concept are based on his own secular view, but God shines through this theory in his own way. From the Bible point of view, many aspects of Bowen's theory are reasonable, it can only provide a better reason for the Bible to provide knowledge to the world. Since God is the ultimate advisor, it is reasonable to mention the difference in his discourse first.