Literature Review

Literature Review

Bowen family therapy

Bowen family systems theory was developed by Murray Bowen, M.D. in the late 1940's and early 1950's, when he was a psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic, in Topeka Kansas. After his time at Menninger's, he moved to the National Institute of Mental Health, to Georgetown University Medical Center and finally established the Georgetown Family Center in Washington, D.C. (The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family).

Strengths weaknesses

Bowen family systems theory is based on the assumptions that the human is a product of evolution and that human behavior is significantly regulated by the same natural processes that regulate the behavior of all other living things. Dr. Bowen spent his life developing and testing his theory. He began by combining repeated clinical observations with the study of biology, the study of evolution, and all the natural sciences. Murray Bowen was a scholar, researcher, clinician, teacher, and writer. He worked tirelessly toward developing a science of human behavior, one that viewed man as part of all life(Corey, 2000).

From his early observations and research with a wide variety of clinical problems in both inpatient and outpatient settings, Dr. Bowen radically departed from previous theories of human emotional functioning by conceptualizing the family as one emotional unit and the individual as part of that unit rather than as an autonomous psychological entity. Dr. Bowen did not ignore the psychology of the individual but placed the individual's functioning in the broader context of the family. Bowen family systems theory focuses primarily on relationships and how they shape individual behavior and functioning in family, work and social systems.

Bowen family systems theory describes processes that create this range of functioning or adaptation in the members of a multigenerational family. Families tend to change gradually from one generation to the next. This is because people's lives are enormously affected by the functioning of those in the generations preceding them. The generational transfer of information that so shapes people's lives occurs on many interconnected levels; for example, genes, intrauterine environment, ways individuals react to and behave towards one another, and communication of attitudes, values, and beliefs. Families transmit their behaviors almost as predictably as they transmit their genes.

Cognitive therapy

Cognitive therapy operates on the belief that the way you think affects the way you feel and behave. If a therapist challenges a client's irrational thoughts and replaces them with rational ways of thinking, the client will feel ...