Bowen and Friedman: Two Systems Thinkers · “Bowen Theory and Therapy” Brunner/Mazel Handbook of Family Therapy, Vol. 2 (1991) Precisely because Bowen theory is so tied up with

The Rabbi and Bowen Theory

The Rev. Carol P. Jeunnette, Ph.DBowen Center for the Study of the Family

Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018

Courtesy of Carol Jeunnette, MDiv, PhD

Bowen and Friedman: Two Systems Thinkers

Courtesy of Carol Jeunnette, MDiv, PhD

Courtesy of Carol Jeunnette, MDiv, PhD

Rabbi Jesus saved my soul, but Rabbi Friedman saved my ass.

Edwin H. Friedman• b. 1932, New York City

• Upper West Side of Manhattan

• Only child

• Bucknell University

• Hebrew Union College

• Ordained in 1959

• Temple Shalom - Washington DC

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1966

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Feb. 27, 1981

Richard Steinbach, M.D.Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry

I want Rabbi Edwin H. Friedman appointed to the faculty because he brings a new thinking dimension to family theory and family therapy I have never heard in others. The different dimension is important in our teaching programs and the development of research projects.

Now to some very personal and private comments. Rabbi Friedman has been loosely associated with my Family Programs for almost fifteen years. He has grown in stature locally and nationally. He is much in demand as a teacher and speaker. All his positive qualities could be served in his present loose association with the Family Center but he wants something more definite. The Family Section at George Washington University Hospital wants him on their teaching faculty. He would prefer Georgetown. I do not want to lose this “genius” type expert I have helped to create. I want him here and I will somehow manage any adverse professional reactions.

Murray Bowen, M.D.

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Read by Mike Kerr, 2006 Conference

1985Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue

1988 Center for Family Process training programs

Speaking Engagements

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Rabbi to all clergy.

Didn’t know Jesus, but knew his flock.

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The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family

Nov. 17, 2016

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So - what do I think? Is Friedman’s work Bowen theory,

or something else?

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Generation to Generation (1985)

• Identified Patient

• Homeostasis

• Self-differentiation

• Emotional Field

• Emotional Triangles

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Anxiety

• Triangles

• Differentiation of Self

• Nuclear Family Emotional Process

• Family Projection Process

• Multigenerational Transmission Process

• Emotional Cutoff

• Sibling Position

• Societal Emotional Process

Bowen Theory

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Bowen Theory and Therapy

Edwin H. Friedman, D.D.

1991

“Bowen Theory and Therapy” Brunner/Mazel Handbook of Family

Therapy, Vol. 2 (1991)

Precisely because Bowen theory is so tied up with the most fundamental issue of life, it is open to different understandings. What is about to be presented, therefore, is not meant to be the

definitive view of Bowen theory. Rather, it is how one disciple who has spent two decades trying to

apply it to families, institutions, and his own life has come to see it.

- p. 135Courtesy of Carol Jeunnette, MDiv, PhD

Friedman, Edwin H. “Bowen Theory and Therapy.” In Handbook of Family Therapy, edited by A.S. Gurman and d. P. Kniskern,

134-170. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1991, p. 135..

Bowen theory

is not fundamentally about families,

but about life.

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• Differentiation

• Emotional System

• Multigenerational Transmission

• Emotional Triangle

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Anxiety

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The term “emotional system” refers to any group of people or other colonized forms of protoplasm… that have developed emotional interdependencies to the point where the resulting system through which the parts are connected (administratively, physically, or

emotionally) has evolved its own principles of organization. The structure, or resulting field therefore,

tends to influence the functioning of the various members more than any of the components tend to

influence the functioning of the system.

Friedman, Edwin H. “Bowen Theory and Therapy.” In Handbook of Family Therapy, edited by A.S. Gurman and d. P. Kniskern,

134-170. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1991, p. 144.

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A Failure of Nerve Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (1999)

This chapter will be an extended metaphor. Using the European discovery of the New World as an allegory of the human experience

of getting unstuck, it will do the following: It will show the characteristics of imaginatively gridlocked relationship systems and

how it is quite possible not only for families and other institutions but even for an entire civilization, including its most learned members, to be stuck in an orientation that confuses its own models with reality. It will illustrate the process and the difficulties involved in trying to re-

map reality under those conditions. It will describe the kind of leadership that must arise before any relationship system (marriage,

corporation, or entire nation) can undergo a fundamental reorientation.

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Friedman, Edwin H.. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (Kindle Locations 667-675). Church Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Differentiation (1991)• the lifelong process of striving to keep one’s being in

balance through the reciprocal external and internal processes of self-definition and self-regulation.

• the capacity to become one-self out of one’s self with minimum reactivity to the positions and reactivity of others

• charting one’s own way by means of one’s own internal guidance system, rather than perpetually eyeing the “scope” to see where others are at (p. 140-141)

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Letter from Friedman to Bowen February 9, 1989

…I do not agree with you about science or the way you define it. I can understand your concern about the therapeutic profession or the social sciences not being disciplined enough to scrutinize how they get n the way of their own observations, but the development of science, and I mean the hard sciences, has never been a history of the observation of facts alone.

For example, the Family Center’s interest in Carl Sagan not withstanding, major discoveries in astronomy and physics are chuck full of subjectivity,. Copernicus, Galileo and Newton often came to conclusions that had nothing to do with the facts they were observing. Indeed sometimes their conclusions were based on the wrong facts.

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The Murray Bowen Archives, National Library of Medicine,

Acc 2007-073, Box 2 of 4

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For me, Bowen theory has been the integrator for my life and ideas and helped me become the

person I wanted to become. I see you as belonging to the clan of prophets,

those who are uncompromising in their search, and eternally dedicated to their vision,

and I am thankful you stay on target else how could I be so free to experiment?

The Murray Bowen Archives, National Library of Medicine,

Acc 2007-073, Box 2 of 4

The Pioneer Meets the Adventurer

“By the way, Dr. Bowen, do you know Rabbi Friedman?”

“Oh yes, I know Ed. He’s the metaphor man. I know Ed real well.”

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Do I water theory down? Probably. I have never considered myself your disciple (I’m not that

“disciplined”), only your student.

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…is what I am doing with Bowen theory a contribution to its erosion… or, as time may tell, its

evolution?

What do I think?• Bowen theory was at the core of Ed Friedman’s work

• A different understanding of science, plus his curiosity, far ranging interests and agile mind meant he was freer to take the theory wherever it would go. This and his exuberance probably took it past the boundaries of theory at times, but to him, that was not a problem.

• As the Rabbi wrote to the psychiatrist, I think time will tell if what Friedman did with theory contributed to its erosion or its evolution.

Courtesy of Carol Jeunnette, MDiv, PhD