Special Topics Recordings

Featuring recordings on individual topics by Dr. Bowen, Dr. Kerr and others. Most videos are available for both sale or rent. Both The Basic Series and the Bowen-Kerr Interview Series are available at no charge on our website.

  • Rental terms: Your rental will be available for 30 days. Once started, you’ll have 72 hours to watch it as much as you’d like!

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Emotional Detachment in Family Therapy Rent $50/Buy $80
In this recording, Dr. Murray Bowen describes the therapeutic significance of developing emotional objectivity while staying in contact with the family. Central to training at the Bowen Center is learning to focus on process rather than content in one’s own family of origin, which then carries over into clinical work. It involves learning to be more of an observer than a reactor. One relates to the system without being part of the system. Dr. Bowen uses examples spanning his professional career as a clinician and teacher to demonstrate how emotional detachment permits “tremendous therapeutic flexibility,” including the ability to see people clinically with whom one has a professional or social relationship. This video is one of the most frequently used by the faculty in training at the Bowen Center and in presentations they make at other institutions around the country.

Extended Family and Emotional Cutoff $50/100
Daniel V. Papero, PhD, LCSW and Kathleen B. Kerr, MSN, MA address some of the common misperceptions about this process of defining a self in the extended family. In particular they discuss such an effort when differentiation is the guiding principle. Dr. Papero highlights the importance of chronic anxiety. In the second portion of the tape they discuss the concept of cutoff and its integral relationship to the emotional system, differentiation of self, and anxiety. Mrs. Kerr talks about her study of cutoff in older persons and the way that led her to the relationship between cutoff and differentiation of self. Both discuss the subtleties of the process of cutoff and its effects. 1992. 60 min.

Paul MacLean and Murray Bowen $50/100
Dr. Murray Bowen had been a clinical investigator while Dr. Paul MacLean was a researcher. This video elaborates the route each took to investigate evolutionary process. Dr. MacLean developed the evidence for the triune brain. He thought that survival was not of the fittest but of those who could make the most of nature’s inventions. Dr. Bowen noted that each generation changes a little but it is difficult for humans to think of evolutionary time. Maternal behavior, audiovocal communication, and play appeared about one hundred and eighty million years ago. They discuss the discipline of science and how the human is part of nature. Produced in conjunction with the Twentieth Annual Symposium on Family Psychotherapy. 1983. 60 min. $100 purchase or $50 rental.

On the Development of a Systems Concept of Supernatural Phenomena: A Status Report Presented by Michael E. Kerr, MD $50/60
Murray Bowen first considered the idea of a concept to address supernatural phenomena in 1980. He concluded that by studying the function that beliefs in supernatural phenomena serve in people’s lives, facts would emerge that could be included in a natural systems theory. He never developed the idea into a formal concept, but continued to hold that “a systems theory could account scientifically for biological, psychological, and spiritual phenomena in a single frame of reference.” In this presentation, Dr. Kerr, Director Emeritus of the Bowen Center, explains some of Bowen’s original thinking. It also describes research during the past twenty-five years (in medicine, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology) that provides a clear direction for developing these ideas into a new concept.

AAMFT Commemoration of Dr. Murray Bowen $48/48 Produced in 1991, this twenty-minute video is a composite of four segments produced between 1969 and 1990. Dr. Murray Bowen explains the origin of his theoretical concepts and his ideas about the difficulties he had developing his theory. Another segment exemplifies Dr. Bowen's sense of humor and research attitude in clinical work. He describes the challenge of defining a self in all one's important relationships. Progress appears to alter the individual's ability to understand theory. The last segment is excerpted from a recording made two days before his death in October 1990. It demonstrates Dr. Bowen's dedication to live out theory.

Why Do Siblings Turn out so Differently? Michael E. Kerr, MD $50/60
The same parents often raise children that turn out very differently in their ability to cope with life's inevitable challenges. Statistical studies confirm that siblings all too often diverge widely in social status, wealth, and education. This presentation describes how Bowen family systems theory explains the divergence.

Using easy-to-follow diagrams and everyday language, Dr. Michael Kerr presents the central elements of Bowen theory in a way which makes it, even for non-therapists, both an excellent introduction to the theory's ideas and provides a valuable integration of concepts for long-time students of the theory. $60/$50

An Overview of Bowen Family Systems Theory Murray Bowen MD $50/80
This one hour video, first recorded by in 1980, provides a brief summary of the eight concepts of Bowen family systems theory: triangles, differentiation of self, nuclear family emotional process, family projection process, multigenerational transmission process, emotional cutoff, sibling position, and societal emotional process.

What distinguishes this video is Dr. Bowen's detailed description of what he calls the conceptual dilemmas that stand between the listener trained in conventional psychological theory and a full understanding of the theory. It is commonplace to grasp one or two systems concepts without really knowing systems. People hear the theory through their programmed thinking patterns and then years later become aware that they had not really comprehended this entirely new way of understanding human behavior.

These conceptual dilemmas are described under four general headings: (1) a new basic hypothesis about the nature of mental illness; (2) a redefinition of the concept of emotion; (3) the shift to systems thinking; and (4) the necessity of unlearning cause and effect thinking. He describes the importance of Darwin's concept of emotion and Dr. Paul MacLean's research on the brain at the NIH on the triune brain to the development of his theory. He also describes how his own family research at NIH led to the discovery that schizophrenia belongs on a continuum with lesser degrees of emotional illness and that the family is the emotional unit of treatment rather than the individual. $80/$50

A Systems View of Human Relationships. $50/80. This video, recorded by Dr. Murray Bowen in 1979, has been used extensively in training programs at the Bowen Center. It is regarded by many as one of the most important videos they have seen for learning about interdependence within systems and the relationship between systems.

In this lecture, Dr. Bowen describes how the family system, the work system, and the social system function interdependently and how anxiety influences relationships in these interlocking systems. The family is part of a vast system of interlocking triangles including the workplace and society. The greater the level of emotional dependence in the family, the more sensitive the family is to anxiety in the work system and in other social systems, and in society.

Dr. Bowen begins with a description of the patterns of a three-person system, starting with the original triangle with one's parents which leads to the impairment of one child more than the others. This anxiety-driven process also occurs in other species. Dr. Bowen describes Dr. Jack Calhoun's work with mice populations to illustrate this point.

Dr. Bowen then describes how this process, which leads to variation in the functioning of offspring, also operates in larger systems, especially the workplace. As within the family, the level of anxiety and degree of emotional autonomy of those in the system are the variables that influence the functioning of the system. The characteristics of an individual in a family who will take responsibility for self rather than blame others are the same characteristics that make a good administrator. It is possible for one person to have an amazing effect on the system.

Kerr Lecture Series Set $300/400
This teaching series reflects Dr. Michael Kerr's way of presenting Bowen theory as an integrated whole, with family, workplace, and clinical examples. It is designed for a wide range of audiences. There are six 60-minute videos in the complete set. 

  • Kerr Lecture Series #1: Applying Systems Thinking to Human Behavior $80/$50
    In this recording, Dr. Kerr makes extensive use of examples from his own family to illustrate ideas such as the nature of the shift from individual to systems thinking, the way a family functions as a system, and the connection between clinical problems and disturbances in the balance of a family system. Graphics that include distant galaxies and tiny life forms place systems thinking in a historical context and place human relationship systems in the context of all life. 1999. 60 min.

  • Kerr Lecture Series #2: Chronic Anxiety and Defining a Self $80/$50

    In this presentation, Dr. Kerr presents the two main variables in Bowen theory: (1) the degree of anxiety and (2) the degree of integration of self. Emotional fusion, biological roots of differentiation and anxiety, unresolved emotional attachment, defining a self, the distinction between acute and chronic anxiety, and the interconnection between anxiety and differentiation are discussed. These ideas are illustrated with examples from family and work systems. 2000. 60 min.

  • Kerr Lecture Series #3: Individuality, Togetherness, and Triangles $80/$50

    This lecture describes the individuality-togetherness balance in relationships, how level of differentiation affects the flexibility and stability of a relationship balance, and how triangles function to stabilize anxious relationship systems. Triangles also contribute to some people functioning at the expense of others. These ideas are illustrated with examples from family, work, and social systems. Animated diagrams of triangles and interlocking triangles illustrate the infectious spread of anxiety through a system and people maneuvering for the most comfortable positions in the system. 2001. 60 min.

  • Kerr Lecture Series #4: The Nuclear Family $80/$50

    This presentation describes three concepts in Bowen theory that are crucial for understanding nuclear families: nuclear family emotional system, family projection process, and sibling position. The patterns of emotional functioning contributing to divorce, physical illness, mental illness, and behavioral problems are spelled out with a new level of detail and integration. New evidence is also presented that firmly anchors these patterns in the emotional system. An understanding of these emotional forces, coupled with conviction and courage to change, helps people live their lives more the way they want to live them rather than how anxiety dictates they live them. 2002. 60 min.

  • Kerr Lecture Series #5: The Multigenerational Family $80/$50
    This presentation focuses on two concepts in Bowen theory: the multigenerational transmission process and emotional cutoff. Every multigenerational family has its unusually stable and productive branches, its fairly problematic branches, and many gradations of family functioning between these extremes. The multigenerational concept explains how this variation develops. The cutoff concept describes how people try to reduce tensions and conflicts that are triggered by contacts with their families of origin by physically or emotionally distancing from the family. This can reduce tensions with the extended family, but intensify tensions in the nuclear family. This presentation also explains the basics of constructing a family diagram and how to use theory to interpret it. 2003. 60 min.

  • Kerr Lecture Series #6: The Process of Differentiation $80/$50

    The process of differentiation refers to an individual's structured effort over time to increase his or her basic level of differentiation. This presentation describes the theoretical principles that guide this effort and illustrates their application with examples from marital, parent-child, family of origin, and work relationships. The examples help to integrate the ideas that have been presented in the previous presentations. The presentation also includes a discussion of an eighth concept in Bowen theory, societal emotional process. This important concept helps to explain many of the disturbing trends in contemporary societies by placing them in the context of mankind's exploitation of the planet. 2004. 60 min.

Questions: Contact Paulis Waber, Media Coordinator