Murray Bowen, MD
January 31, 1913 – October 9, 1990
“If my hypothesis about societal anxiety is reasonably accurate, the crises of society will recur and recur, with increasing intensity for decades to come. Man created the environmental crisis by being the kind of creature he is. The environment is part of man, change will require a change in the basic nature of man, and man’s track record for that kind of thing has not been good. . . . I believe man is moving into crises of unparalleled proportions, that the crises will be different than those he has faced before, that they will come with increasing frequency for several decades. . . . The type of man who survives that will be one who can live in better harmony with nature.”
Murray Bowen was born in Waverly, TN, to a family that had been in Middle Tennessee since the American Revolution. Waverly, located about sixty miles west of Nashville in Humphreys County, was a town of approximately 1,000 inhabitants in 1913, when Bowen was born. He was the oldest of five children of Jess Sewell Bowen and Maggie May Luff Bowen. After attending primary and secondary schools in Waverly, he earned a BS from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1934 and an MD from the University of Tennessee Medical School, Memphis, in 1937. He interned at Bellevue Hospital in New York City in 1938 and at the Grasslands Hospital in Valhalla, NY, 1939-41.
Bowen served five years on active duty with the Army during World War II, 1941-46. Stationed in the United States and Europe, he rose from the rank of lieutenant to major. He had been accepted for a fellowship in surgery at the Mayo Clinic, but as a result of his wartime experiences, he changed his specialization from surgery to psychiatry.
He trained at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, KS, beginning in 1946. He then became a staff psychiatrist, although he had assumed staff-level responsibilities while still in training. He remained there until 1954, when he embarked on a five-year research project at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, MD. Mothers and eventually whole families moved into an inpatient unit where an adult schizophrenic family member was hospitalized.
Bowen left NIMH in 1959 to become a half-time clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center. He directed Family Programs and in 1975 founded the Georgetown University Family Center. Bowen remained director of the Center until his death. He also maintained a private practice at his home in Chevy Chase, MD.
He was a visiting professor in a variety of medical schools, including the University of Maryland, 1956-1963; and part-time professor and chairman, Division of Family and Social Psychiatry, Medical College of Virginia (MCV), Richmond, 1964-1978. While at MCV, he pioneered the use of closed-circuit television in family therapy. He used television to integrate family therapy with family theory.
Murray Bowen was a scholar, researcher, clinician, teacher, and writer. He worked tirelessly toward a science of human behavior that viewed the human as a part of all life. He was active in professional organizations, always seeking to contribute in any way he could and usually trying to remind himself that there was only so much he could do. He was a life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Orthopsychiatric Association, and the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He served two consecutive terms as the first president of the American Family Therapy Association. His activities and prolific writings led to many awards and much recognition. He was honored as Alumnus of the Year by the Menninger Foundation in 1985 and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1986.
He has been credited as being one of those rare human beings who had a genuinely new idea. He had the courage to go against the psychiatric and societal mainstream in standing up for what he believed about human behavior. Thanks to his efforts, the world has been rewarded with a new theory of human behavior that has potential to replace Freudian theory and give rise to a radically new method of psychotherapy.
For more information about Dr. Bowen, please visit the Murray Bowen Archives.