Description
Book SynopsisFamily psychiatrist and researcher Murray Bowen’s effort to contribute to a science of human behavior, led to the famous Family Study Project at NIMH and the later development of a formal theory of the family and its clinical application. Later known as Bowen theory, it represented a radical departure from the individualistic paradigm predominant in psychiatry. Following Bowen’s mode, this book examines the interplay between the individual and the family in shaping the differential capacity to effectively adapt to life’s many challenges.
Trade ReviewThis book is for the helping professionals and family members who have ever questioned the efficacy of using an individualistic paradigm to solve life’s problems. Noone tackles important myths about Bowen Theory and situates the human family as a self-regulating system. He pulls the reader out of cause-and-effect thinking and into a Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST) world that is grounded in natural systems, evolutionary theory, and includes the biological basis of development. This book is a light at the end of the tunnel for new and seasoned helping professionals.
-- Carrie Elizabeth Collier, The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Family and Adaptive Capacity
Chapter 2: Toward Emotional Objectivity
Chapter 3: The Brain and Self-Regulation
Chapter 4: The Family as an Adaptive System
Chapter 5: An Evolutionary Perspective on the Family and the Brain
Chapter 6: The Impact of Stress on the Family and Adaptive Capacity
Chapter 7: Family and the Multigenerational Process
Chapter 8: Emotional Cutoff and the Establishment of a Self in Each Generation
Chapter 9: A Systems Theory of the Family
Chapter 10: Family as a Pathway toward Enhanced Adaptive Capacity
