I first met Dr. Bowen at a conference in 1976.  He accepted me into the Post graduate Training Program and I became a kind of an apprentice.  In 1980 he hired me to be the audiovisual coordinator at the Georgetown Family Center. l learned so much from watching and relating to him. It has been twenty seven years since he died.

If you, like me, are interested in seeing some of Dr. Bowen’s original teaching tapes, you can get a flavor of how he taught and what made being with him such a lively and challenging experience just by going to the website of the Bowen Archives on The Murray Bowen Archives Project (TMBAP) website.    http://murraybowenarchives.org/videos-GreenBay.html

I taped many of these videos back in the eighties. Of course, some of the tapes have awful sound problems or the video breaks up. But back in the eighties that was par for the course with the equipment that was available.

Traveling with Bowen was a wonderful opportunity for which I will always be grateful. Bowen gave people a new paradigm to think about human behavior. Here is a quote from one of the video tapes produced in Green Bay, Wisconsin, April 19-20, 1990. This tape was made six months before he died.

“Individuality comes from inside self.  You don’t take it to the group to find out. If you do not know where you stand, then ask your neighbor….. How are you going to stand up if you do not know yourself?  Most people do not want to bother.”

Andrea

The following is what Bowen wrote up as part of his Curriculum Vita

Practical Issues. New concepts introduced by the “Bowen Theory” include evolution to replace most of Freud; the part of Freud that is relatively scientific; and natural systems theory to combine the two. Numerous variables prevent clear writing when the reader is “hearing” Freud.

The differentiation of self and emotional systems are essential for the theory. Therapists use the correct words, but use their own heads to interpret meaning.

Beyond that, the theory includes the family diagram; a summary of a differentiation scale; triangles; fusion; cut-offs; projection of immaturity to succeeding generations, to minorities, or to the weakest link in the chain; extended family patterns; emotional objectivity; the multigenerational transmission process; sibling position; the extension of family process to work and social systems; societal regression; and a precise integration of the amalgam which is the family. Most patients and clients can change themselves if given a chance. Most therapists are trying so hard to be therapeutic, they cannot “think” theory. Good therapy is determined by the way a theorist thinks about human problems. When the therapist cannot think theory, the theoretical gap is closed by some fixed version of Freud, the therapy is less efficient than it could be, and the therapist is vulnerable to becoming the author of yet another personal procedure.

Theoretical Future. The theory will probably replace Freudian Theory within the coming decades. There are indications it may influence the whole of medicine, more than psychiatry and mental health. When theorists have become aware of its potential, the theory may move on to a “science like” baseline in which theory governs everything that occurs in the field. Good theory is never final. It can always be changed with new knowledge, but change is not frivolous or personally determined. It is interesting to guess what may have occurred by the middle of the 21st century.

Date and Place of Birth: January 31, 1913, Waverly, Tennessee

College: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, B.S. 1934

Medical School: University of Tennessee Medical School, Memphis, MD 1937

Family Background: Family in Middle Tennessee since the Revolution. Oldest of five. Father died in 1974 at 87. Mother died in 1982 at 95. All siblings are living. Married to second of three daughters. Four children, ages 42 to 37.

Internships: Bellevue Hospital, New York City, 1938; Grasslands Hospital, Valhalla, New York, 1939-41.

Military Training: Five years active duty with Army, 1941-46, in the United States and Europe. Rank: 1st Lt. to Major. Had been accepted for fellowship in surgery at Mayo Clinic to begin after military service. Interest changed from surgery to psychiatry during WW 11.

Psychiatric Training and Experience:

Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas. 1946-1954. Fellowship in psychiatry, personal psychoanalysis, and on staff. Background interest in science led to a new theory, which uses evolution and systems ideas to replace Freud. Enough promise for the theory to seek full-time research in a neutral center.

National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, 1954-1959. Previous years on theory made research go rapidly. Live-in parents, with one adult schizophrenic child, provided a dimension for all children. Family therapy was a by-product of theory. It began the first year, about two years before it was known nationally. Concepts integrated with the new theory, emerged one after the other. None had previously been described in the literature, and none could have been “seen” with Freudian theory. They are now known as the “Bowen Theory.” Long-term research terminated by Institute for short-term research studies.

Georgetown University Medical Center. Washington, DC 1959 – present. Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Director of Family Programs, and founder of a Family Center. Half-time research and teaching. Each concept was extended, and woven into physical, emotional, and social illness. It has already gone far beyond another family systems theory. Through association with medicine, knowledge has been extended to every medical specialty, and even the prodromal states that precede medical diagnoses. The future is promising. As long as psychiatry exists to diagnose and treat emotional illness, its potential is limited. The theory is directed to human life rather than symptomatic cubicles. National popularity indicates the theory will eventually replace Freudian thinking. It may well contribute more to all of medicine than to psychiatry alone. At Georgetown since 1959.

Other Faculty Appointments and Consultantships. Visiting Professor in a variety of medical schools. More permanent included the University of Maryland, 1956-1963; and part-time Professor and Chairman, Division of Family and Social Psychiatry, Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, 1964-1978. Closed-circuit television in Richmond was used to integrate family therapy with the larger theory.

Current Appointments and Activities. Half-time, Clinical Professor in Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical Center, and Director, Georgetown University Family Center, 1959 to present. Private practice, part time, family psychotherapy, Chevy Chase, Maryland, 1954 to present,

Organizations. List limited to those with a potential interest in a single theory. American Psychiatric Association, Life Fellow; American Orthopsychiatric Association, Life Fellow; Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Life Member; Diplomate in Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, 1961; American Family Therapy Association, Terminated membership 1989 after two consecutive terms as first President.

Biographies. Listed in Membership Directories. American Psychiatric Association, since 1950; Directory of Medical Specialists, since 1952; American Men of Medicine, 1961; World Who’s Who in Science, 1700 B.C. to 1966 A.D. (3700 years in one volume), 1966; International Biography, since 1968; Personalities of the South, since 1976; Who’s Who in America, 1978.

Recent Awards and Recognition.

Originator and First President, American Family Therapy Association, 1978-1982.

Alumnus of the Year, Menninger Foundation, June 1985.

Faculty, Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference, Erickson Foundation, Phoenix, December 1985.

Graduation Speaker, Menninger School of Psychiatry, June 1986.

Governor’s Certificate, Tennessee Homecoming ’86, Knoxville, 1986 Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, October 1986.

Publications. About fifty papers, book chapters, and monographs based on new theory of human behavior. The most important ones are in my book, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Jason Aronson, Inc., publisher, Northvale, NJ, 1978, which contains twenty years of theory. Other papers are referenced in the book. The past ten years, most of the concepts have been described in detail in about twenty videotapes. A list of tapes, both theoretical and clinical, are available at the Georgetown University Hospital.

Addresses: Department of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Hospital, 4380 MacArthur Blvd., NW, Washington, DC 20007, or 4903 DeRussey Parkway, Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815.

Washington, D.C.

January 1990

Sometimes I am just so lucky to be in the right place at the right time.  I had the opportunity to join my granddaughter, Isabelle, for a week. She was doing an internship at the Santa Fe Institute.  She and her friend were studying the behavior of large groups, among other things.One question, how do people (mostly young people) use Snapchat?  Apparently Snapchat enables people to do “small talk”.  Apparently they like to hang out with each other and show photos and be loosely connected. Of course I am older and like to be deeply connected.  So while they were drawing diagrams and figuring out millions of signals, I reconnected with an old friend, Norman Johnson, PhD.[1] We too have a deep interest in understanding human behavior.

The conversation started with Norman’s interest in threats and social copying (doing what others do, forgetting your own interests) and how under stress we tend to do more and more social copying and this tends to influences behavior in a group.

Norman approaches problems from a macro perspective: biological warfare, financial markets and traffic jams. Often he will design computer simulations to test his ideas. Since he is interested in how to influence behavior he has also trained people in conflict resolution. Meanwhile, I am observing how families function as emotional units, managing threats in automatic ways, while at the same time producing leaders who often have the ability to be more differentiated and responsible for defining principles.

In the U. S today we have a political situation fanned by fear and spread by social media that encourages and increases polarization and social copying.  Your family and/or friends think that the “other” person is awful and so do you.  A direct result of polarization is that there is little to no agreement on the nature of the problems we face and therefore little ability to cooperate. We are just for being comfortable in our social group so we are against someone else. Perhaps an unintended byproduct of democracy is that under threat, we resort to joining with the “group think” of our in-group.

It is challenging to see the situation we are in. Like the frogs who are still content as the warm water begins to boil, it may be too late when we notice the problem.  No message arrives in the morning news announcing today is the day when you will be bombarded with seven degrees of fearful and disturbing information that may cause you to be social copying or – fill in the blank.

If we can recognize when we are becoming reactive rather than thinking for self, perhaps we can return to more rational or logical thinking.  But if, as in a family, the group may benefit from someone else being the problem, then it takes another order of awareness to see the system and our part in polarization and the seductive comfort of social copying.

Main points from my conversation with Norman Johnson

1) Under conditions of increasing threat various social species are unable to focus on task and begin to copy one another. This kind of social copying behavior can be useful under specific circumstances but the tendency to copy one another is automatic.  It is more important to our instinctive way of reacting to fear than the tendency to think and understand and to be more logical or even rational.

2) Social copying is not cooperation but it can look like it as animals and humans begin to circle the wagons to protect the group.

3) It is difficult to encourage animals to cooperate when they are threatened.

4) One way of encouraging cooperation is to alter the environment: Force animals to cooperate by a) looking at one another and b) both pressing a bar to obtain water. This series of “forced” encounters rewards the animals,  reduces threats, and increases cooperation.  By altering the environment to force animals to cooperate, the animals could tolerate eight times the social density.  The rules of the system (two animals must press the bar to get water) became beliefs that an animal was willing to die for.[2]

5) The rules of the system are not perceived as something that can be altered.    In the movie “The Lobster”, there is a good example of how humans blindly follow the rules the system imposed on them because they are not able to see or challenge them.

6) One has to be seen as a member of the “group” to be listened to.  The messenger is more important than the message.  Therefore, people and animals do not listen to or are not easily led by someone who is not or demonstrates that they are not in your group.  If they do not vote your party, if they are not in the same branch of the military etc., they are not in “your group”.

7) Family observations show that if there is one individual who can manage to be different within the group and not react to threats, that person can slowly alter the behavior of the group.

8) Those who strive to be more autonomous are altering the belief that we all must be alike, believe and act in the same way in order for us all to be safe.

Conversation between Norman and Andrea (only for those who like to go deep)

Norman Johnson (NJ):  Social organisms have a universal characteristic.  We tend to think social organisms are all about cooperation and while that’s true, it’s also about social copying which is a “circling the wagons” mentality. One of the smallest examples is five hornets that live socially in the nest. All you have to do is disturb them, you don’t have to threaten them.  If you poke a stick in the nest they start to socially copy one another.  They stop doing their individual tasks. They look around and seem to be saying “what are others doing?” And that’s what they do.

The funny thing is they and we stop solving problems when we are disturbed or fearful.  This is what happened to us after 9/11.  We became uncertain and then hyper-patriotic and did some dumb things.

Andrea Schara (AMS):  Are you talking about how we invaded Iraq looking for chemical weapons after we invaded Afghanistan to punish/kill Al Queda for the 9/11 attacks?

NJ:  Well, yes that was a horrible thing, but on the local level we repressed the Muslim population. These were the very people that rationally we needed to work with in order to understand why this just happened. Instead we outlawed and isolated them.

Hence we did the exact opposite of the rational thing. We circled the wagons and therefore were unable to solve real problems. Leaders take advantage of that and currently Trump is a good example of this.  He talks about fearful events and how bad things are and in essence he is amplifying the social uncertainty that people have.

AMS:  You recall the work of Jack Calhoun, PhD[3] who studied the inability of animals to solve problems and the social regression in which animals either piled together in groups, a form of social copying, or withdrew from interactions.  These mice had all the food and water they needed but due to the increasing population they had less social space. As the numbers of interactions increased with the increasing population, there was no time to recover from frustrating or fearful interactions.   So Calhoun designed an environment to “force cooperation.” In the cooperative universe two animals had to walk down a path to press a bar in order to obtain water. In the “dis-cooperative” universe only one animal could press the bar to produce water. No other animal was allowed to enter the pathway.  This design required animals to look at one another and depend on one another to cooperate in order to obtain water. Calhoun saw that by structuring the environment in a way that forced animals to notice each other and therefore cooperate the animals could tolerate eight times the increase in density before the “universe” collapsed.

NJ:  Yes, I recall that there was the one deviant animal in the cooperative pen. He had been trained to obey the rules in the “dis-cooperative” universe.  This mouse had accidently entered the universe where two animals had to walk down together in order to get water.   Since the rules were different in his own universe (only one animal at a time went to get water) he was almost killed trying to get these “cooperative” animals to go along with the rules he lived by in his dis-cooperative system. (You could consider this to be obedience to one’s internalized ethical commands learned in his system.) I still use this example when I give talks.

AMS:   One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the way the system is set up and the way our brain interacts with the surrounding clues. If I hear you Norman, the fact that we are disturbed reduces our ability to be rational and to solve problems.  To remain rational one has to decrease fear. How aware are people of the social clues that are impacting their brain and manipulating them?   Both political parties may use words and slogans that manipulate the behavior of the group. How do people know what is happening to their brain as they listen?

NJ:  Hitler used a fear based approach to get his followers to believe he saw the truth.  Trump seems to be the Pied Piper for those who are the most vulnerable to social copying. Hillary Clinton and her gang seem to use raw power behind the scenes manipulation. Trump is a modern era leader using social media with very little substance, feeding on the anger which makes people more fearful and more inclined to social copying.

AMS:  Social copying is a great expression and perhaps it would lead people to greater awareness if that concept became better known. I don’t think I’ve read about it anywhere.

NJ:  There were two main things that Dr. Merle Lefkoff and I observed while doing a study of the science behind the field of conflict resolution.

• When you have people in conflict they are each defending their own social identity group. So that reduces the rationality in the individual. The result is that rational arguments by the conflict negotiator fail as a mechanism to bring people together.

• What does work is to get people relaxed or make them feel comfortable with the uncertainty they have. Then they can become open to rational arguments for cooperation. I have done this in many social groups.

AMS:  We use Zengar neurofeedback as part of the program for Navigating Systems DC. [4] In the first part of the day, before people start exchanging ideas, everyone has a neurofeedback session. This kind of equipment and method, reorganizes the brain. People report being more open and relaxed.  They seem to have the ability to perceive the environment as non-threatening.  But neurofeedback is an expensive technology that you can’t really use for vast numbers of people.

NJ:  Meditation is useful for sure. But I think what Trump is exploiting is the broad economic uncertainty largely due to economic disparity (the 1% getting most of the increased wealth in the last 60 years). People feel that the 1% or China or Mexico or someone is taking their subsistence, and in their uncertainty villainize the “other”.  In addition, the family unit has been degraded and so in that kind of uncertain situation, people’s fears can be amplified and they can then be manipulated.

When there is more collective fear, people become more easily manipulated.

The military is a really good example of the system that promotes a strong social group identity as a way of coping with threat. Soldiers have been taught to count on one another. They know how to circle the wagon and survive because of it.

Dr. Merle Lefkoff concluded: you cannot give leaders the solution.  You can make them comfortable and give them tools to discover answers for themselves. But you cannot tell them what to do.

AMS:  You don’t want them to become robots?

NJ:  You cannot tell them because you are the “other” and will not be listened to.  This is an example of where the “messenger is more important than the message.” I will accept what you say if you are of my tribe, but if you are not, I will not even hear you.

AMS:  Can you give me an example of this?

NJ:  For example if I were to walk up to an unknown military person and I was of his tribe, I would immediately accept him/her. Together we’d say “Oh, you are part of my tribe” and accept anything each of us said – assuming we are in a certain state of mind. In addition, if the person were in military uniform I would know a great deal more about him or her. But if I were not in the military system, his/her tribe, the details of the uniform would just be noise to me and all I would see is a military person. And depending on whether or not I am in an uncertain state, they might be “other”, a stranger, or I might be neutral about them.

So if someone who is a member of your tribe says something to you that is slightly off or you don’t agree with them, you would still like them because they’re part of your tribe.  You would allow them in. But if they were part of an opposing social group then this is where the identity would come into play and the conflict would arise. If they’re from another tribe you would not listen to them, no matter how good their argument is.  The messenger is more important than the message.

A lot of the challenge for the police today is that they see the other, who is black, as not in my tribe. And the people in black neighborhoods see the police as not in my tribe.

AMS:  Yes, the chief of police in Dallas seems to understand this and was trying to recruit people from the neighborhood to police their own neighborhood.   This was more the right answer but despite this people objected to his ideas. Perhaps they were not in his tribe so they could not listen to anything rational that he was saying.

NJ:  One of the biggest barriers to problem solving is social identity.  We need to address that one and secondly we need to develop tools they don’t trigger social identity when we’re problem solving.  A couple of months ago I was in Washington DC and I gave a talk to 400 federal employees representing 60 federal agencies. As an audience they understood more of the message than any of the crowds I have talked to.

AMS: Is that because they have to deal with this on a daily basis for their survival?

NJ:  Yes, and a lot of them were minorities and they’re very aware of marginalization because of being different.

Have you heard of the example about where different ethnic groups put their ketchup in the kitchen? African Americans store their ketchup not in the refrigerator like whites do, but out on the counter. There’s nothing on the bottle that says you should refrigerate ketchup.   Restaurants leave ketchup on the counter, but white people have been socialized by their group identity to put the ketchup in the fridge.

Scott Page was the first person to give this as an example of how strongly we may be patterned. The storage of ketchup wasn’t a hot issue.   People hearing it can become aware of how strongly they may be patterned, but without judging it to be right or wrong.

AMS:  Well, social pressure to display similar habits that tells us which tribe we belong to wins again.  Social copying makes for a social identity and leads to an “us against them” situation when the group is disturbed or fearful.

NJ:  And they reinforce each other.   Uncertainty leads to copying, which leads to stronger collective uncertainty, which leads to more copying….

AMS:  As you know Bowen tried to describe differentiation of self as the ability to be sure of one’s own principles and beliefs as one defines a self and at the same time remains connected to important people.  So differentiation would be the recognition that my social identity is continuously being established with my family, since family members may not always be on the right track, especially if there’s a crazy person in the family.

The family unit, perhaps at an instinctive level, can be observed to pick on those who are different and often marginalize them even though they are in the same family.  Families, organizations and nations seem to all generate an “us against them” scapegoating process.

One way of dealing with the tendency to scapegoat and project onto others is to encourage family leaders to get to know extended family members. (These are often people who are strangers to you, “others”.)   You know they are part of your family but since they are more “distant” from your immediate family, you may be able to tolerate their differences more than you can tolerate the differences of those family members closest to you.

In other words, more extended family members, the “others”, are in a distant but related tribe, not the tribe you are the most loyal to.  They could have reasons to be suspicious of you and you would have to extend yourself to get to know them and all of this requires decreasing fear and increasing the ability to get to know “the other.”

Bowen noted: One speculation is that it is easier to observe family patterns and to take ‘action’ on issues in the more distant, but equally important family of origin, than in relation to one’s spouse in whom immediate needs are more imbedded, and with whom it is more difficult to take emotional stances. This effort requires the trainee to take responsibility for his own life and to accept the working proposition he, through his own efforts, can modify his own family system.[5]

NJ:  Bowen is great because he’s always looking at these outer effects of socialization.

AMS:  Yes, this is not the kind of thing one person does on their own, at least not so far.  Right now it takes having heard of Bowen and his theory. Most people are more interested in finding out about their dead relatives as in ancestory.com, than meeting and dealing with the ones who are alive.

Defining a self  as a method to strengthen self in the era of automatic copying has not yet become a meme.

Therefore the thesis is that once people recognize how they are being influenced automatically to do things, to follow people, they MAY want to take back their autonomy.

People can get very caught up in following and copying during a presidential election and then wonder how did I fall for that person?

There are many ways to steady yourself once you can accept that you are automatically influenced, by a threat, an image or a word beyond your ability to notice.  

The main question:

Am I social copying or am I socially coping?

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/drnormanleejohnson. The Applied Science of Collective Intelligence: Solving the grand challenges facing humanity(Link)

Invited paper to the Spanda Journal, special issue on Collective Intelligence

January 2015

[2] https://yourmindfulcompass.com/2015/07/11/when-does-an-emotional-system-guide-your-behavior/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun

[4] http://navigatingsystemsdc.com/

[5] From Coach to Coach, Murray Bowen, MD, abstract of paper presented at Annual Georgetown Family Symposium, Washington, DC, 1970

A New York Times article, “No Sound, No Fury, No Marriage” by Laura Pritchett appears just as I am reading Reaching the Animal Mind by Karen Pryor.

What does the founder of “clicker” training, an observation based approach to shaping animal behavior using positive reinforcement, have to say about human relationships? How is it that families fall apart but dogs can be well trained?

Are human relationships immune to the power of reinforcement?

Or is it just hard to notice what is going on in relationships and therefore very difficult to interrupt the negative and reward the small positives when change begins?

Training animals requires that one carefully observe the details of behavior, rewarding only positive behavior with food or praise and then reinforcing these behaviors over time till they become established. Sounds simple.  But it’s difficult to do when it comes to humans.

We are social animals that are not as oriented to food but to being a part of the pack.  The human animal has been trained by a multigenerational social system.

Our genetic inheritance is complex.  Our brain controls our social/emotional functioning and both make it difficult to change ourselves over the long term.

Can any of us see how our current life has many of the same patterns that have guided family members in the past? If so how is it that we end up doing the same kinds of things or the opposite that our grandparents did?

The challenge is to stay focused on our own part, to avoid over-reacting and falling into the psychological traps involved in changing others.

Who thinks that their behavior is being guided by these four ancient mechanisms? Distance, conflict, reciprocal relationships and projection onto others may be analogous to behavioral reflexes, like responding to the offer of food. The four relationship patterns respond to our intolerance for stress.

Anxiety goes up and we are more vulnerable to distance, etc. The other option – differentiation of self – is based on our ability to stand on principles and find ways to manage self with others.

Karen Pryor can train all kinds of animals.   Even as primitive a life form as a hermit crab can be taught to ring a bell.  She is a great storyteller, clarifying how behaviors can be developed, learned, and altered based on the work of Pavlov and later Skinner.[i]

Laura Pritchett describes beautifully the stress-absorbing mechanism of distance that has crept into her relationship with her husband under the pressure from increasing stress, and cast a pall over her efforts to speak her truth to her husband.

Shakespeare had it right: “My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart, concealing it, will break.” I never spoke of the anger in my heart, the mounting resentments and hurts, and neither did he. I never demanded attention or care, and neither did he. And that’s why we broke.[ii]

Of course it is more complex. Pritchett speaks of both parental families using conflict as their major mechanism and the allergy to conflict that this created in each of them.

Then there is the list of stressors that may have corrupted each person’s ability to take on more stress and anxiety, impairing their ability to be more independent and mature selves.

Yet who does not know the urge to keep things normal for the sake of the children as in recent years they have already been traumatized by things beyond their control: evacuated for wildfires, cut off by historic flooding and exposed to loss and devastation.[iii]

It all seems very rational, the many challenging reasons to be quiet, to get along, to pretend.   Yet how many people think of this urge to protect as letting a primitive mechanism, distance, guide one’s behavior?

There is a cost to take on the challenge of being more of a self in relationships and to learn to tolerate the disruption in the system. After all, who wants upset?  Not your children, your spouse or even your extended family not to mention your friends or even the neighbors. Yes, the difficulty of defining yourself to important others without receiving love and approval from them cannot be overstated.

That is the beauty of the piece by Laura Pritchett.   You can see the logic and how much easier it is to (try to) change partners than to tolerate the upset in the “stuck” relationship.

The alternative of striving to be open and being willing to take the rejection that often follows any attempt to disrupt the pattern of relating by being more self-defined, is not understood as an option.

Pritchett speaks of her inability to demand attention and care without really understanding that this is a long way from being self-defined. This automatic “other focus” is a “reflex-like” behavior. It leads one to see the other as the one that needs to change.   This “other focus” leads to polarization, blame etc. with all its negative ramifications.

If you could solve marital problems as Karen Pryor does in training a dog, you would still have to focus on self not just the other. The trainer decides when and how to reward and reinforce the desired behavior with a pat on the back or something like “good dog.”

Karen Pryor also admits to her problems with animals, describing her part in relationship failure and the heart breaking depressions that even fish or monkeys fall into when the trainer is inconsistent.

In my book, Your Mindful Compass, the process of self-definition asks any of us interested in becoming more mature, to define what we will or will not do to change self in the system.

Focusing on what it is “I” can do and take responsibility for, takes the “other focus” off the table gives others greater freedom. The idea that one can change self and thereby alter the system moves beyond behaviorism.

The long-term nature of defining yourself in multiple relationships requires that the family leader not react to any negative reaction from others.

Yes, people object to change but usually family members do not get depressed when someone defines self. Often they simply criticize the leader for upsetting others. Therefore, the one who is willing to change self in a system understands the complex nature of the emotional process.

• They are aware of the inevitable resistance to any change in the system.
• They have impersonal knowledge as to how systems function: understanding how families are automatically organized, how to extinguish or reinforce behaviors, and focus on relating to others while being a more separate self in the system.
• They have a willingness to use system knowledge to steady self and to manage without love and approval while the system itself changes.

Systems knowledge gives one the ability to act in more self-aware ways. People speak of standing on principles when defining what they will or will not do. Others speak of describing the nature of the emotional system as a way of putting more information into the system.   Overall systems thinking allows people to choose a more mature way of interacting in the hope that changing self can influence the larger system over time.

Footnotes:

[i] Reaching the Animal Mind: Clicker Training and What It Teaches Us About All Animals June 8, 2010 by Karen Pryor

[ii] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/fashion/marriage-breakups-separation.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

[iii] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/fashion/marriage-breakups-separation.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

Would it be useful to see how dominance behavior emerges in a triangle?  It is easy to see the two person social system, as above, and far more challenging to see the family as a unit where the two against one triangle emerges.

Can it be that triangles are an automatic “whatchamacallit” scapegoating thing?

Answering yes, confirms that you do see the automatic nature of triangles, the two against one mechanism, putting pressure on a few to conform.

The dance begins innocently enough. Two are comfortable dancing in the dark. Then as tensions rise, a third is chosen who will either help the two dance the right way, or if the third person objects to helping, then more pressure is applied until they conform or become symptomatic.

Is it our fate to be blind to this kind of a mechanism? After all the mechanism has purpose: it distributes anxiety enabling cooperation but at some price. If the price is too high then perhaps there are things we can do to be more aware and perhaps fine-tune this regulatory mechanism?

For those interested in studying human behavior, one can learn to see how the two against one dance works by observations of subtle alliances. It’s hard to see since we are participating in subtle alliances all the time. At some level, to mess with these alliances is fraught with danger. Most of us live in dread of being rejected and of losing the love and approval we naturally seek. And messing with alliances or just bringing them into attention threatens everyone, including us.

Seeing the primitive nature of triangles is a window into our “red in tooth and claw”[1] of our evolutionary past. The brain and the autonomic nervous system conspire to convey that what worked in the past is good enough for the future, so leave well enough alone or else!

Consider that there are good reasons for each of us to be emotionally blind to the use of coercion. Our ancestors were faced with a dire need to cooperate or die. But to apply the pressure, and for that pressure to work, one must believe it is in the best interest of the other, it has to be sincere and appear to be well intentioned. So what do you do when someone you are dependent on uses guilt and blame just to make you conform, of course “for your own good”.

We see blame and scapegoating just about everywhere today, from our nuclear families and workgroups to the nation. Most of the presidential candidates find something to complain about and mock their competitors, or other nations, a sure-fire way to get their poll numbers up. At the office or at home, people are blaming, shaming and otherwise focusing on others and the same old problems continue. So what if anything can we do about these triangling, polarizing processes?

Understanding how automatically two-against-one triangles begin in the family, (where one person is often over worried about, scapegoated to bring the group together), can give us some insight into how larger political systems function.

As we become aware of these polarizing mechanisms, there is more that can be done to resist the instinctive urge to go along with ostracizing some for the benefit of others. Both in the family and in the larger society, people are increasingly aware of the downside of blame and the use of the triangle even if they don’t talk about triangles, per se. A family leader or a political figure that can be loose and momentarily outside the control of triangle can free the system. The ancient Chinese had a name for being freer of the system, Wu-Wei, or “the Way”. (I’ll say a little more about that later.)

Mechanisms to manage anxiety in a family unit or in society are so smooth and automatic that we barely notice, until, under the conditions of heightened anxiety someone becomes the outcast, the “loser.” Here is how it works. The one who is a little out of step with the group begins to draw more and more anxiety on to him or her self. They do not want this to happen any more than the others want it to happen, it just happens. Under enough anxiety someone gets pushed out. They do not fit in, are not cool enough or they are sick. Now the group is functioning better on the back of this one. They worry about them, complain and can’t get them to fit in, and so what happens next? One says to the preferred other, “I did all I could.” The twosome is restored and the third one is out.

You can observe this and explain it by saying people are so anxious that some have to get away from the others, and miss the triangle in the background working to force these two in and one out. For example it seems so logical when someone says: “I “choose” to have nothing to do with my great aunts” and then eventually say the same thing about their spouse and/or children.  No one thinks, “Oh my God, it’s a multi-generational triangle. The anxiety of my or his/her parents has landed in my marriage.” We do not see the flow of anxiety. We just often see that the cause of trouble is outside of self and in “the other”. Now if we can just find someone to tell about this and they agree, the triangle is formed. The scapegoat is chosen and two against one wins the day.

What does it take to see how triangles distribute anxiety?

What does it take to see interactions as part of an ancient emotional process and not as something particular to one person? Seeing how the system works for a minute or two can be confusing, disappointing and might even make you angry. However, if you’re aware of emotional process, there are things you can do to cope more adequately with side taking and scapegoating, etc. .

If you are unaware and are focused on blaming others, then you can miss the system that surrounds or reinforces the problems and you become part of the automatic forces of that system.

It can take years to train ourselves to notice the way relationships shift silently in the night and to be willing to take action to do something about the part we play in these situations.  All of these mechanisms, conflict, reciprocal relationships, over and under functioning, physical and/or emotional symptoms and projection of worries into the next generation may be activated as anxiety rises due to any kind of stressful event that disturbs the status quo.

Bowen developed a scale of differentiation to describe the range in functioning in people’s ability to perceive adequately the outside environment and solve problems in a realistic way, without encouraging greater dependencies. Consider that people may feel “we all should cooperate.” In an innocent way this urge runs over a few people who may see the problem differently and want to respond differently.

Bowen focused on fusion and the togetherness force (controlling others or giving way to others) and how both can lead to a regression in self, because there is greater reliance on others to make decisions and less ability to adapt and grow.

Putting self OUT to build one’s emotional backbone

The essence of de-triangling is separating a self emotionally, while staying connected to others. In other words one chooses the outside position, instead of being put there by others. One is carefully defined based on growing awarenss fo the fusion dn the togetheness force, stands alone, or is neutral and is not side taking or one is just different or just “strange.” Being “strange” and or provocative in a social group has a long history.

Putting others together (or into togetherness) and getting self outside, is the goal as one defines one’s self. It is a very difficult and challenging disciplined path to take. However, over time this kind of process does result in higher levels of emotional maturity for those who are willing to step outside the controlling and sometimes even comforting control of the triangle. For some it is worth the price of potential rejection to have more interpersonal freedom and a bit of joy.

Differentiation of self is the only effort that has been described by Dr. Bowen as a way through these multigenerational triangles. Dr. Bowen’s quotes about this process appear at the end of this paper. One of his off-the-cuff explanations of de-triangling was, “ Put your parents back together and get yourself out.“

Since the time of Adam, Eve and the snake we have seen over and over just how automatically the triangle works. Two are momentarily together and one is out.  When the outsider gives in, having been in essence manipulated and seduced into going along with the others, all hell breaks loose.  A regression of biblical proportions takes place.  Adam ate the apple. He was unable to keep his promise not to. Principles sound good and even noble till one is bullied in a triangle.  Some of us might think that “It’s not me with the snake” or “That’s not me being the snake” or “Poor old Adam is just a little blind, but I’m not”. We are all doing it, joining, rejecting, influencing, punishing and being punished.  We may feel how others try and do influence us, but not know what to do about it. We may not notice how we are picking on others or joining and going with others to put down or build up others thereby impacting our own status.  The way in which people are able to control another is so subtle, so amazingly innocent and so very easy to talk about, but so very hard to notice in real time.

Once we can accept the subtlety and innocence of triangles then it is possible we can see them.  This method of observing self in relationships dispenses with the blame or guilt that often can blind us to seeing the impersonal and automatic machinations of the system. Of course, this is the way Mother Nature designed the system. Why not just marvel at how nature works to distribute anxiety in a system? Amazing, isn’t it?

If you get the idea of standing alone with no one on your side then you see the down side of de-triangling successfully. Be careful of the kiss of togetherness that beckons.  Be careful about saying to yourself (or worse, to others), “Look how clever I am.”  Yes, I am suggesting that the only way to be a more mature self is not totally believe or get addicted to love and approval. A little bit goes a long way.

My grandfather used to say, “Approval is a bit like perfume, have a drop but do not drink it.” The avoidance of love and approval can safeguard you from false pride and intense need for others. Get used to struggling along and welcoming being on the outside. One may be their best stumbling along. There’s no need to be perfect.

Systems will encounter too much anxiety and so, as nature shows us, the parts begin to break down. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just sometimes too much for the system (and some of the individuals in it) to handle.  Stuff happens. People die, people suffer and people lose the ability to cooperate and solve problems. Trust is lost and misunderstandings, blame, guilt and isolation begin to dominate the relationship landscape. Stumbling along as we learn to define a self requires us to think carefully about how we might begin to restore trust and cooperation in a system by changing the way we participate in it.

The Way and Wu-wei

In ancient China, irrationality was encouraged as a way for individuals to regain the ability to cooperate and reestablish trust. It sounds counterintuitive, but being irrational does force you to draw the negative focus, so be prepared. You draw the energy towards yourself in an effort not to give in to the demands of the system to keep the status quo going. It is not easy to separate yourself from all the others and to be cool in the face of rejection and criticism.

If one is the focus of negativity for too long, one doesn’t have the strength to break family patterns. Often it is the strongest person in the family who can perceive reality with a bit more clarity, and who is not so fearful of disturbing others. Such individuals are not as afraid of rejection, are willing to risk breaking the patterns that seem mal-adaptive under the current circumstances.

Many people change after a death. Perhaps a little inner voice will remind you and say, “ Come on, it’s worth it. We’re outside the system and we have freedom.” Of course people know there is a price to pay for doing this but they also get the positive freedom of stepping outside the controlling ways of the system.

Bowen wrote that a person over 65 on the scale of differentiation can say and do things without getting people upset.  I consider this an ideal to move towards. Most of us will still pay to be more open, more self defined, because the system wants you as you were and is always prepared to put up a fight to keep you there.

Since each of us passes on anxiety in some way or another the anxiety is often absorbed more by one or some, than others. It may not be “fair”, but it’s how systems work. Pipes leak because pressure builds up in the system. Where the leak occurs is not always predictable but with enough pressure, there will be a leak. Some may be willing to sacrifice for others. But many sacrifice themselves because the emotional process began early on to program them so that they see themselves as “the problem”.

There have been many attempts to explain how to live a better life and how to become a more mature person. Bowen added to this by clarifying what the emotional system is and what the nature of the individual is who’s willing to be more separate from others.

In the Chinese philosophy of wu-wei, “The Way” one begins to move self, not following clues from others but finding a moral compass, an inner guidance system that is mature to deal with an unaware and uncooperative and unethical social person or group.  The Wui-we energy may be perceived as crazy as its not part of the system, it seem irrational in the short term but if emotions are sincere they demonstrate “The Way” to restore virtue and values.  Spontaneous irrationality can be threatening to self and others, or it can be clever like posing paradoxes or speaking to others in reversals. The point is to force the system to reorganize.

One example of an unregulated system and a way of responding that breaks the pattern is described in the following ancient Chinese story. The farmer promises his son 5 chickens for a day’s work. The son chops wood all day but the father insists that the son’s work is worth only 3 chickens. Should the son accept his father’s assessment of the value of his work and in so doing, encourage his father’s unreasonable behavior? The son believes it is not virtuous to encourage this dominant seeking behavior in his father.   If the son displays irrational indignation in objecting to his father,, the father may think twice and give him the 5 chickens. Virtue and cooperation are restored.  Of course in this story we do not hear about any triangles or the mother’s part in this situation.  She is silent, but we know she must be feeling sorry for the son, angry with the father or some other variation on these ancient patterns of human interaction.

“Very basic social interactions cannot work unless there are powerful emotions lurking in the background keeping everyone honest.”[2]   Robert Frank at Cornell showed that old-cognition or rational self-interest was incapable of establishing trust, whereas human emotion is the only way to keep people honest. In the Confusion and Daoist schools, wu-wei describes the state of mind of an effortless and spontaneous state.

“Wu-wei” is sometimes compared to being like a pivot or hinge. The behavior points at the center from which one can respond to every change, to every eventuality.” [3] Here the mind is capable of producing great art, or a brilliant insight from a highly integrated state of great harmony.

The ideas of wu-wei were produced in the 3rd to 5th centuries BC, a time of great wars and transformations. Bowen theory was developed following WW II, a time of change and social upheaval. Both wu-wei and the ideas of de-triangling and differentiation of self offer paths to a release from the controlling ways of the emotional system and allow the possibility of greater cooperation with others.]

Bowen theory points to the effort to be emotionally separate from the interlocking triangles. The effort is full of many small steps. One can begin anywhere by simply defining with humor one’s self and one’s boundaries. This lack of blame and greater ease demonstrates that one is available to interact freely without threat. Taking steps to be less caught in triangles, less caught in the primitive state in which two are comfortable while the third is suffering, is where freedom is earned.

Defining self leads to maturity. More energy is directed towards changing self than towards changing others. A more mature person is less dependent on others and therefore knows what to do spontaneously in order to deal with the challenges in both the family and in the larger social systems.  Spontaneous behavior is hard to fake. Differentiation of self is hard to maintain unless one can perceive the environment accurately enough to define self to the system.  Then hold onto your hat, and breath slowly while you stand your ground, alone for a long enough time for the social system to reorganize.

A  Book on Triangles:

Triangles: Bowen Family Systems Theory Perspectives edited by Peter Titleman

Chapter two The Regulatory Function of Triangles by Laurie Lassiter

A Few Bowen Quotes on Triangles and Differentiation of Self

Theoretically, the experience with families adds increasing conviction to the belief that schizophrenia will eventually be explained as an emotional phenomenon if we conceive of an emotional process involving multiple generations. Schizophrenia is as fixed and rigid in the father-mother-patient triad as in the patient, but there is evidence to indicate that the process can be reversed in the family ego mass in which the parents grew up if members of the family of origin are available for therapy. Notes: I prefer to use the word “triad in one” because it designates one component of the family ego mass. Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 145). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

This will be discussed under “detriangling the triangle.” From experience with this therapeutic system, there are two main avenues toward a higher level of “differentiation of self.” (1) The optimum is differentiation of a self from one’s spouse, as a cooperative effort, in the presence of a potential “triangle” (therapist) who can remain emotionally detached. To me, this is the “magic” of family psychotherapy. They must be sufficiently involved with each other to stand the stress of “differentiation” and sufficiently uncomfortable to motivate the effort. One, and then the other, moves forward in small steps until motivation stops. Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 175). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

After several years of symptom-relieving methods, including working with various combinations of family members, I began what I have called “detriangling the triangle.” This is too complex for brief discussion but it involves helping one parent to establish an “I” position and to “differentiate a self” in the relationship with the child. If there is another “magic” in family psychotherapy, it is the family response when one parent can begin to “differentiate a self” from the amorphous “we-ness” of the intense undifferentiated family ego mass.

One bit of clearly defined “self” in this area of amorphousness can bring a period of amazing calm. The calm may quickly shift to other issues, but the family is different. The other parent and child fuse together into a more intense oneness that alternately attacks and pleads with the “differentiating parent” to rejoin the oneness. If the differentiating one can maintain a reasonable “I” for even a few days, there is an automatic decrease in the intensity of the attachment between the other two and a permanent decrease in the intensity of the triangle. The second step Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 180). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In broad terms, the concept is one of withdrawing psychic energy from the other and investing it in the poorly defined ego boundaries. It involves the idea of “getting off the back” of the other by reducing the “other directed” thinking, verbal, action energy which is designed to attack and change the other, and directing that energy to the changing of self. The changing of “self” involves finding a way to listen to the attacks of the other without responding, of finding a way to live with “what is” without trying to change it, of defining one’s own beliefs and convictions without attacking those of the other, and in observing the part that self plays in the situation. Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 178). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition..

Two important variables in triangles. One deals with the level of “differentiation of self.” The other variable deals with the level of anxiety or emotional tension in the system. The higher the anxiety, the more intense the automatic triangling in the system. The lower the level of differentiation in the involved people, the more intense the triangling. The higher the level of differentiation, the more the people have control over the emotional process. In periods of low anxiety, the triangling may be so toned down it is not clinically present. In calm periods, the triangle consists of a two-person togetherness and an outsider. The togetherness is the preferred position. The triangle is rarely in a state of optimum emotional comfort for all three. The most uncomfortable one makes a move to improve his optimum level of emotional closeness-distance. This upsets the equilibrium of another who attempts to adjust his optimum level. Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 307). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition

The over-all goal was to help family members become “system experts” who could know the family system so well that the family could readjust itself without the help of an outside expert, if and when the family system was again stressed. Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 157). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

[1] Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850, Richard Dawkins used ‘red in tooth and claw’ in The Selfish Gene, to summarize the behavior of all living things which arises out of the survival of the fittest doctrine.

[2]  Trying not to Try: the Art and Science of Spontaneity by Edward Slingerland, p 77

[3]  Trying not to Try: the Art and Science of Spontaneity by Edward Slingerland, p 159