Family Diagram
The Significance of the Family Diagram and Family Research
About the Family Diagram
Family Diagram is an app focused on family assessment and research with Bowen Theory. The goal of the app is to provide a family diagram that animates family emotional process over time in the manner that Dr. Bowen envisioned. Developed by Dr. Patrick Stinson and in contact with regional leaders of the Bowen Network, the Family Diagram is one attempt to support the current state of the art in family assessment as well as a way to challenge Bowen Theory itself as a scientific theory. More information on Family Diagram can be found here: https://alaskafamilysystems.com/family-diagram/
People ask and address questions based on the family diagram, such as:
When do births accompany deaths in other generations?
Which sibling is more involved with the parents in each generation?
Under what circumstances does cutoff occur?
How do people function downstream from emotional cutoff?
What is the evidence for rising levels or falling levels of differentiation of self?
How does the larger family system play a part in when and where symptoms occur?
The Diagram as a Personal and Professional Research Tool
Family research and developing one’s own family diagram are part of psychotherapy or coaching based in Bowen theory. The diagram is an important tool for working on differentiation of self and contributes toward decreasing anxiety and increasing the ability to observe and manage reactions and their impact in the family. As people become more factual about the family and themselves, they are better able to take steps toward being more responsible for themselves, their reactions and their functioning in life, work and the family.
Therapists find that developing a family diagram as part of therapy provides a framework for people to see symptoms or problems in their marriage or family in a broader and more factual perspective. It is easier to shift one’s focus from simple cause-and-effect thinking and from blaming or diagnosing individuals toward being more curious or interested. Family diagrams are equally useful tools for thinking about an organization or congregation as a relationship system.
Create and Engage Your Family Diagram
Family research and developing family diagrams are part of training in Bowen theory and its applications. People in the Postgraduate Program and in the Continuing Studies Program work with a faculty coach and supervisor to learn more facts about the history of their families and place those facts on a family diagram.
Resources
Victoria Harrison has written an illustrated guide for family research and developing one’s own family diagram for those who participate in coaching or study based in Bowen theory. This book, The Family Diagram and Family Research: Tools for Working on Differentiation of Self is available through the publisher, Center for the Study of Natural Systems and the Family.
Michael E. Kerr, MD, provides a good explanation of the family diagram in chapter 10 of Family Evaluation*. Mignonette Keller, PhD, features the family diagram as an important research tool in a chapter of Handbook of Bowen Family Systems Theory and Research Methods: A Systems Model for Family Research, which she and Robert J. Noone, PhD, edited.
Several students of Bowen theory have adapted the family diagram into what is commonly called a “genogram.” John F. Butler, PhD, described important differences between the family diagram as developed by Murray Bowen and these adaptations. His article, “The Family Diagram and Genogram: Comparisons and Contrasts” was first published in The American Journal of Family Therapy in 2008. The article is reprinted in the appendix of Ms. Harrison’s The Family Diagram and Family Research.
Dr. Patrick Stinson is working with Dr. Laura Havstad in Santa Rosa, CA, with Bowen Center faculty, and with leaders in regional Bowen theory programs to develop a family diagram app for clinical practice and research based in Bowen theory. He aims to improve the process of family evaluation by making the various dimensions of family functioning more visually accessible by, for example, animating the emotional process of the multigenerational family organism through time.
Please Note: Through the Amazon Associates program, The Bowen Center will receive a small commission if you purchase Family Evaluation with the provided link.