45th Annual Symposium
on Family Theory and Family Psychotherapy
Schedule
Friday, November 7, 2008
8:15 Registration
8:45 Welcome and Introduction
Michael E. Kerr, MD
THEORY
9:00 What is Systems Thinking?
Daniel V. Papero, PhD, MSW
Reviews Dr. Bowen’s efforts to describe and define “systems thinking” with the goal of arriving at a specific definition and description of the elements of the process of “systems thinking.”
9:30 Considering Fundamental Aspects of the Emotional System: Contact and Distance
LeAnn Howard, MSW, MA
Considers the fundamental life forces of individuality and togetherness through a discussion of contact and distance behaviors in harvester ant colonies and human families. Unregulated contact is one path to symptom development.
10:00 Panel Discussion
10:30 Intermission/Coffee
11:00 Theory, Family, and Social Neuroscience
Robert J. Noone, PhD
Describes the areas of study, conceptual frameworks, and knowledge feeding the development of social neuroscience and discusses of conceptual advantages Bowen theory offers the field and obstacles impeding its consideration.
11:30 Laughter: An Evolutionary Perspective
Keo L. Miller LCSW
Discusses how laughter can reflect an individual’s ability to evolve a self or how it functions to bind anxiety. Neuroscientists are enriching Bowen theory’s perspective on laughter by viewing it in an evolutionary context.
12:00 Panel Discussion
12:30 Lunch (Video Showing)
DISTINGUISHED GEUST LECTURES
2:00 Distinguished Guest Lecture Part I
Social Knowledge in Nonhuman Primates – Robert Seyfarth, PhD
In their natural social groups, nonhuman primates interact in predictable ways with one another. As a result, human observers can document patterns in their behavior and structure in their social organization. Baboon society, for example, is organized around a core of adult females who remain in the group where they were born throughout their lives. Individual females can be ranked in a linear dominance hierarchy in which offspring acquire ranks immediately below those of their mothers. The result is a hierarchy of ranked, matrilineal families. But are these relationships just anthropomorphisms – a product of the human mind – or do they exist in the minds of the animals themselves? We begin the afternoon’s discussion by describing sixteen years’ fieldwork on baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, and presenting the results of experiments designed to explore what baboons know about each other.
3:15 Intermission
3:30 Distinguished Guest Lecture Part II
The Evolution of Social Knowledge – Dorothy L. Cheney, PhD
Social knowledge is a striking feature of life in all primates, including humans. How did it evolve? In our second presentation we discuss the adaptive value of baboons’ social skills, in this case drawing on our studies of stress and its alleviation in wild baboons. During their lives, female baboons – like modern humans – experience the greatest stress from events that are unpredictable and difficult to control: in the baboons’ case, predation and challenges to their infants from infanticidal males. When these stressors are absent, females who experience the least stress are those with close, focused social networks: a few good friends are better than many acquaintances. When challenged, females alleviate stress by maintaining and – if necessary – broadening and extending their social relationships with others. Social skills are thus they key to successful survival and reproduction. Long before the evolution of tools, language, or culture, our primate ancestors relied on their ability to form and maintain close social bonds with others.
4:30 Panel Discussion
5:00 Adjournment
6:00 Dutch Treat Cocktails
7:00 Banquet and Banquet Program
Saturday, November 8, 2008
COMMUNITY APPLICATIONS
8:30 Bowen Theory in a Family Business: A Case Study
Anne S. McKnight, LCSW, EdD
One family member’s effort to be in contact with two conflicting sides in a family business led to an estranged brother and his family rejoining the business and reuniting with the entire family.
9:00 Differentiation, Cooperative Interaction and Work Systems
Roberta B. Holt, DSW, ACSW
How does an individual act to support the mission of an organization without losing self? What are the challenges to differentiation in the workplace? When do committees, person-to-person relationships, and togetherness promote regression?
9:30 Anxiety, Relationship Intensity and Social Intervention
Michael J. Sullivan, LMSW
The same emotional forces govern families and social agencies. A well-defined agency can reduce emotional reactivity in a family, but an anxious one can impose demands that intensify the family’s regression.
10:00 Panel Discussion
10:30 Intermission/Coffee
CLINICAL PROCESS
11:00 Relationship between Emotional Cutoff and the
Adaptive Spouse
K. Blake Horne, PhD, LMFT
What is the relationship between the degree of an individual’s emotional cutoff from previous generations and being the adaptive spouse in the nuclear family and of the developing chronic symptoms.
11:30 A Systems View of Symptom Development in a Spouse
Linda Piontek, DMA
Development of severe symptoms in a spouse motivated this presenter to reconsider the accuracy of assumptions in Bowen theory about the impact of one family member’s efforts to be more of a self.
12:00 Panel Discussion
12:30 Lunch Break (Video Showing)
2:00 Cancer and the Unidisease Concept
Michael E. Kerr, M.D.
The biological processes common to the development of most clinical symptoms, including cancer, appear to be chronic stress response-driven disturbances in cell functioning and cell relationships that impair tissue and organ functioning.
3:15 Intermission
CLINICAL RESEARCH
3:30 Physiological Reactivity, Anxiety, and Differentiation of Self in Nuclear Family Triangles
Victoria Harrison, LMFT, LCSW
In comparing simultaneous physiological measures for five family members, differences in physiological reactivity between siblings and their parents were found that may reflect slightly higher and slightly lower levels of differentiation of self.
4:00 Difficulties Being Objective in Describing a Family System
David S. Hargrove, PhD
Objectivity is important in assembling and interpreting the facts about one’s family as part of an effort to differentiate a self. Traditional concepts of reliability and validity may be useful in this process.
4:30 Panel Discussion
5:00 Adjournment
