Volume 17.2

FROM THE EDITOR
Robert J. Noone, PhD

ARTICLES

OBSERVATIONS OF CHANGE WHILE WORKING ON DIFFERENTIATION OF SELF: A CASE STUDY BASED IN BOWEN FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORY AND THERAPY
Victoria Harrison, MA, LMFT
This case study describes and documents changes in symptoms and functioning that occurred over a three-year period for an individual, her spouse, and children while she was enrolled in the Bowen Center’s Postgraduate Training Program and learning Bowen family systems theory and practicing its application in her family. Careful records about symptom occurrence and intensity, nodal events, and family work, combined with quarterly physiological measures of sympathetic nervous system activity, cortisol and brain wave activity provide a framework for evaluating the difference that one person’s work on differentiation of self can make for the nuclear family. The qualitative and quantitative design of this study allows for correlation of changes with nodal events in the family as well as with various activities involved in working on differentiation of self.
Key words:  therapy outcome; Bowen family systems psychotherapy; family therapy; health and mental health; stress reactions; biofeedback; differentiation of self

SIMILARITY IN SPOUSE FUNCTIONING
Phillip Klever, MSW
Bowen theory describes how a couple’s functioning is influenced by the emotional processes between the couple and within the family. Through this lens this study examined similarity in the levels of husband-wife symptomology. In the study sample, higher functioning families more frequently had spouses with similar, lower levels of symptomology which were steady over time. In lower functioning families there was less frequent spouse similarity in functioning, higher levels of spouse symptomology, more year-to-year fluctuation in husband-wife symptomology, and more divergent spouse functioning. The researcher contends that similar spouse symptomology was probably influenced by spouses marrying at the same basic level of differentiation and by the effects over time of the couple’s level of differentiation and the family’s emotional processes. Higher levels of differentiation seemed to have moderated the family stress response and contributed to stable, similar husband-wife functioning. At lower levels of differentiation the emotional processes that appeared more frequently to contribute to spouse similarity and convergence were spouses mutually losing self, mutually binding anxiety in physical, psychiatric, and/or social symptoms, mutually projecting immaturity and tension onto another, and/or distancing.
Keywords: Convergent spouse functioning, assortative mating, family functioning, Bowen theory, differentiation of self, emotional oneness, family emotional process, absorbing anxiety, steadiness versus fluctuation

FACULTY CASE CONFERENCE: Presentation of a faculty clinical case, followed by a discussion with faculty members of the Bowen Center.

CONDUCTING CLINICAL RESEARCH WITH FAMILIES
Randall T. Frost, MDiv
”I presented this case several years ago as a part of a faculty case conference. There have been some interesting developments with this family since then that I want to describe. This is one of the cases that I'm trying to use to illustrate an overall methodology for doing clinical research.”

BOOK REVIEW: Reviews on books relevant to Bowen theory and its many applications

Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them
by Karl Pillemer
Review by Anne McKnight, EdD
”Fault Lines, written by Karl Pillemer, a sociologist and professor at the Weill Cornell Medical College, is the outcome of research interviews over a five-year period with 1600 families who experienced estrangement. In the process of his research, Dr. Pillemer became aware of the concept of cutoff, one of the eight core concepts of Bowen theory. He traveled to the Bowen Center to learn more about cutoff, interviewed faculty members, and then was invited to speak about his research at the Bowen Center’s 56th Annual Symposium.”