On the last day of 2015 I had the great honor and pleasure of meeting and interviewing Aranka Siegal, a survivor of the holocaust. She wrote the book, Upon the Head of the Goat.  She is a lovely, perceptive and gracious woman with a wonderful sense of humor. Suzanne Brue, who has studied Bowen Theory extensively, made the interview possible by introducing me to Aranka Siegal. She and Judy Baily brought intellectual ideas and questions to this most unforgettable experience. Thank you both for your contributions. See photos of the interview on my website: www.YourMindfulCompass.com.

After the interview was over, I realized how moved I was by Aranka’s inspirational story. This was more than simply a story of survival under the worst of conditions, although, of course, that is a very compelling part. Her story was about one woman expressing a very deep and human impulse; to be caring and cooperative in the face of unspeakable cruelty.

Time and again we know that cruelty can emerge in a kind of an arms race between those who are cooperative and those who are selfish. A cyclical effect takes place, in which those who are cruel continue to take advantage of the weak in a series of escalating moves. Cruelty, anger and revenge can come to dominate families and or nations. After the holocaust we are left thinking, how could this happen, and game theory offers one theoretical explanation.

Game Theory, as it relates to Nazi Germany, considers that escalation is possible because those who utilized a selfish strategy were able to trample on the weak. One iteration of game theory, the prisoner’s dilemma, shows how cooperation can be a successful winning strategy. In the case of building resistance against the Nazi’s, eventually people were able to form thoughts counter to the mainstream, thoughts that differed from the rhetoric of the Nazi party (the selfish ones). Those outside thinkers were able to band together, forming a resistance and eventually winning the day[1]

Game Theory and the prisoner’s dilemma models helps us understand how either selfish or cooperation behavior can spread through a system, depending on which stream of thought is fed. The the story of Aranka Siegal illustrates the details of how individuals in the city and then in the prison defect from participating passively in cruelty and begin to cooperate, eventually producing a survival strategy for the group.

Some people survived this cruelty, with their compassion intact, and they come to tell us their stories of courage and resiliency. Interwoven throughout Aranka Siegal’s book are descriptions of how the pressures of war transformed people. Some became numb, cold and heartless clogs in the system, while others tried to figure out how to survive, and most amazingly, despite horrible conditions, there were still those who were willing and able to care for others.

The hope for humanity is that “even during the Holocaust” a few people were able to move beyond tribalism – the us against them worldview – towards more cooperation and even compassionate behavior. Hopefully by highlighting and learning from those who survived inhumanity and terror we may become more aware of the early signs of this regression which leads into a groupthink mentality, which can create systems that allow humans to be treated inhumanly.

The initial polarization of people sets the stage for intense negative emotions towards others who are identified as the “outgroup”. They are focused on as wrong and the problem. It is here that people can be manipulated to turn cruelly against others.

For a few there was an awareness of the progression of groupthink that leads to cruelty against a group. Those who can avoid becoming part of the groupthink can find strategies to cope with the situation. For example, Aranka’ mother was able to exhibit a small but powerful act of bravery by creating a private space for her family with torn sheets while in the camps. She told the others the Germans were trying to dehumanize them and the best way to resist was to keep yourself clean so they could not regard you as an animal.

Those who are able to describe and survive this process leave a trail of hope for others who are better able to see and deal with groupthink and polarization. People like Aranka Siegal, who many years later still radiates courage and compassion, can influence us to look at just how the better side of human nature can rise up against cruelty.

For those interested in research on survivors check out this article: http://www.nytimes.com/…/holocaust-survivors-had-skills-to-…. The researchers may not be system thinkers. They focus on the individuals rather than on family patterns and values, even though they know many families were instrumental to the survival of many people.

Most of us find it challenging to see beyond the individual to the surrounding social system and to deeply appreciate that there are many primitive ways of manipulating our emotions, that play into the group dynamic of system. Going along with the group requires no thought, just a fear response.

“It was not luck that they did well afterwards. The more successful survivors are distinguished by specific traits which, far more than the degree of trauma they endured, seem to be the keys to their recovery.” Tenacity and Adaptability among these, Dr. Helmreich found, are ready adaptation to changing circumstances, a readiness to take the initiative, a stubborn tenacity and “street smarts.” “I found a widespread ability to think quickly, size up a situation, break down its complex elements and make an intelligent decision,” he said.

Clearly individual skills or traits are needed when trouble comes knocking at your door. A systems view allows us to see how families influence individuals who make up the system. Aranka’s book explores her family’s values and the effort needed to cooperate and to survive. She describes her mother’s and grandmother’s behavior as they each tried to adapt to the threats in society.

The family is an ancient organism with an emotional system operating both in the family and in society. Either one can reinforce values which continue to play out throughout life for better of worse. One automatic behavior that leads to problems is to go along with authority. This may work out in the small family unit and be a problem in society. For example obedience to the leader can make people susceptible to going along with the direction of the group. As we saw in Hitler’s Germany and in various dictatorships thorough out the world where people can be unduly pressured to go along with the group.

Bowen theory allows us to conceptualize how the appeal of togetherness can dominate and diminish the voices of the individual. Systems theory describes a counterbalancing force between individuality (and the ability to define self to the system) and togetherness,(the push to be with the group or even give up self for the group). Knowledge promotes the individual’s ability to see the system and to separate from the emotional pressure within the group. Even in the darkest situations in which automatically selfishness and cruelty leads to regression we have seen a few humans resist the push and are able to find ways to cooperate and to then take action to deal with the regression.

The four points in my book, Your Mindful Compass: Breakthrough Strategies For Navigating Life/Work Relationships In Any Social Jungle[2], remind us that after we have found reasons to define a self to the social group, we must be ready for the possibility of standing alone without love and approval when defining one’s self.

A system’s view encourages people to be mindful of emotional processes and slightly more separate from the social pressures around us.  What a gift and what a challenge.

 The Murray Bowen Archives Project

Another way of promoting a system’s view of human behavior is by collecting interviews for the Murray Bowen Archives Project. (MBAP) http://murraybowenarchives.org/support/

Bowen’s professional life began at Menninger and then he moved on to National Institute of Mental Health were he began research on the family as an emotional unit. He then went on to teach at Georgetown University from 1960-1990. The oral history project has promoted the interviewing of over 60 people who had contact with Dr. Bowen. They describe how this professional relationship motivated them to study social systems and to alter their automatic part in his or her family system.

Their stories demonstrate how various individuals figure out how to define a more distinct self in the midst of both upheaval and seeming calm. After all troubled people can pretend to be calm. But for those willing to accept the subtly and complexities of life and who are willing to integrate difficult feelings with deeper values and principles in their close up family relationships, many can describe how they found a more mature way to live and to die.

The interviews also demonstrate the many ways Bowen stepped outside the norm of conventional psychotherapy learning from his research efforts.  People report how in his teaching he would interrupt ordinary trains of thought, challenging people to think for self in the middle of an ocean of emotional pressures to conform.

SUMMERY:

One promise of Bowen Theory is by understanding the ancient ways the family as a unit organizes, we are able to see how it disrupts and redirects runaway anxiety. There are many examples from surviving the holocaust to the stories from those who are learning system theory. Each of us is trying to manage family life and to be an individual or a leader in our various social systems. Any leader can draw a negative focus from the group as they are different. Leaders can become scapegoats as they become the focus of attention. There are reasons, as we saw in the story of Aranka Siegal, for the sacrifice of comfort. The leader takes action on the possibility that the emotional system will reorganize at a higher level of maturity. And of course there are no guarantees.

Three days before he died Bowen presented at American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Conference 1990 and summed up the basic principle of being your best self in an emotional field. “When you think you know the right way just do it.” M. Bowen, MD,

Seeing the system as an impersonal organism has been the most interesting gift perhaps leading to another new book on some version of scapegoating: 101 Ways to Lead While Escaping Being Focused On, or The Top Ten Reasons to be a Scapegoat or Why Defining a Self is NOT Popular. 

May you have an interesting New Year 2016

Andrea Maloney Schara

[1] The prisoner’s dilemma is a standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely “rational” individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. The prisoner’s dilemma game can be used as a model for many real world situations involving cooperative behaviour. In casual usage, the label “prisoner’s dilemma” may be applied to situations not strictly matching the formal criteria of the classic or iterative games: for instance, those in which two entities could gain important benefits from cooperating or suffer from the failure to do so, but find it merely difficult or expensive, not necessarily impossible, to coordinate their activities to achieve cooperation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Your-Mindful-Compass-Breakthrough-Relationships/dp/061592879X/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1Y6Y6FYTF8V7SA6TTNM8

Murray Bowen in 1987 with an unnamed Gorilla at the Georgetown University Family Center Symposium

Happy New Year  – 2016 –   Andrea Maloney Schara

Back in the dark ages, in 1956 before family systems theory was a thought, Dr. Bowen was observing families at NIMH and asking his staff to describe what the families were doing. There was to be no diagnosing, “just the facts m’am”, e.g. who walks in the room and who leaves, etc., little things like that. Over time he began to make more sense of what he was seeing. Something was going on in the minds of both the staff and the family members that automatically led to labeling and blaming others. The staff would say the patients were problems. The parents would say the child was the problem. Both looked at ways to fix the problems in the others without looking at how they might have the resources themselves to deal with the problems. This is the family projection process at work and current research demonstrates that this “other focus” still goes on today but is not seen as part of what Bowen identified as the family projection process.[1]

In family after family, Bowen saw over and over again this family projection process. He observed and described three automatic steps that ended up with one person “being the problem”: “(1) thinking of the triadic one as sick, (2) diagnosing the triadic one and designating him “patient” and (3) treating the “patient” as a sick person.”[2]

Although this was written 59 years ago we see the exact same process occurring in families and in mental health clinics today. For example, people are worried about children who are bullies. They want to know how we can decrease bullying.  “Something is wrong with that child”, they say. “We’ve got to fix him or her.” Worry and upset and trying to fix and help people plus a tendency to be “other focused” are the mainstays of love. The most common concern in families is the one in which a mother is “worried” about her children and/or her husband. This is part of a natural process that becomes counter productive.

Can understanding how family projection works in society and in the mental health field give us any advantage? Remember, this knowledge has been around for almost sixty years now and doesn’t seem to have been influential on the societal level.

A system’s view seems lost in the intense focus on fixing the person that has the problem.

“A bully has a mindset” (think individual therapy).

“A bully has a mindset and is surrounded by relationships” (think family systems).

In family systems theory each individual in the system has a mind set which in some way can inhibit or reinforce the bully’s mindset and behavior. In a broad look at the system we see that under increasing anxiety/stress people tend to look for a “cause” and a “quick fix”.  This is “the blame game”, when people tend to project worry and blame onto others.

When people focus on a bully and try to fix him or her, they are often missing the system’s automatic response to anxiety.   They fail to see or understand how they are replicating the family projection process: focus on one person as the problem, diagnosis and fix them or bully them into behaving properly as long as the system is able to do that.

Mindsets range from an overall tendency to be “other focused” to more “self focused”. The “other focus” leads to problems in relationships that can only be solved by “fixing” the other.  The mindsets of people in families are varied depending on the kinds of problems the families have run into over the generations. How flexible are people in switching from an “other focus” on the problem person to a “self focus”? (One caveat: people can be self-focused on what is wrong with self. This can also lead to symptoms.)

Once people have a basic understanding of the automatic nature of projection, more thoughtful, mature questions can arise: “What can I do to understand and deal with the problem which I see in others? If I am playing some small part, can I alter that by changing what I am thinking or doing?”

In some families, the automatic response is that the bully is the “impossible” one. The family reactions fall along a continuum. At one end, family members can be over involved and react by yelling and punishing or being bullies themselves. Some families are full of frustration and/or anger and “encourage” young people to act out the parental frustration towards society. The family of the Boston bombers would fall into this category. There are families at the other extreme where there is a total lack of relationship to one another: no one in the family monitors or cares about the bully’s behavior. That person has been written off. Here the lack of a connected relationship can frustrate and drive people crazy. What keeps people from engaging bullies in conversations?

Family systems theory looks at the system with a long-term approach, enabling family members to see the advantages of continuing the conversation with so called impossible people. One person begins the effort to reengage and then one by one others alter their mindsets and the way they relate to others. The out of control bully might simply be out of meaning-filled relationships. In the majority of families there are usually one or two people who are more capable of seeing their own negative mindset and who are able to alter the way they think and interact with others.

History: Family systems therapy was found to be effective for long-term change back in the fifties, about the time new drugs were discovered that could alter behavior.  And at the same time, treating the family relationship system by coaching the stronger members of the family was seen by the prevailing medical system as too complex, too confusing regarding billing and too far from the prevailing medical model to be easily understandable. Therefore the medical model has continued to foster the family projection process when it comes to mental health.

Family systems therapy does away with diagnosing, blaming and fixing one person. The coach enables clients to develop an understanding of the processes that underlie symptoms in individuals in the family and in so doing goes against the “conventional wisdom” or medical model in psychiatry and psychology today.  Even family therapists in order to be paid have, in fact, been bullied into diagnosing individuals in order to receive payment from insurance companies and to comply with the current medical model.

Reactions to Systems Thinking: Unfortunately, training stronger people in the family to alter their mindsets was and continues to be seen by the medical establishment and other organizations as “blaming” family members, rather than offering greater variety and opportunity for both cognitive and relationship changes to take place.

Coaching: A family systems coach promotes family members’ ability to observe the system and then learn to challenge the family projection process. Questions arise as to how people might relate differently to the individual who is the identified bully.  Change in the family begins as one person begins to take responsibility for altering his or her part in the family problem. Such individuals are no longer other focused.   Now they are more thoughtfully self-focused, working to alter their part in the relationship system.

As family members are coached to be able to see the system, they are more able to relate differently to the individuals who are having issues.  Over time changes in one person’s thinking and behavior begins to impact the entire system.  Small changes in how people think and act can and both interrupt and repair the relationship system.

Change is measured not only in how people behave and think but also in the quantity and quality of relationships in both the nuclear and extended family system.

There are many different ways to alter the emotional system.  For example, if a bully comes from a family where parents are scared of their own child, or are too distant and/or bully the child, these behaviors reinforce the bullying behavior of the child.  Parents are better able to change the long-term relationship with the child when they are in more open emotional contact with their larger family system.

Stronger family relationships with extended family members enable individuals to be more confident about their ideas and opinions.  People can practice standing alone and saying what they will or will not do with family members. This practice of talking with extended family members can then alter the automatic responses to the child, and allow parents to move into a better relationship with more open communication with each other and with the child. Changes in parents increase the likelihood that any behavioral change in a child will be long lasting.

The beauty of family systems theory is that once someone sees the family as an emotional system (automatically regulating the behaviors of its members), the upsetting behavior of others becomes less personal and more interesting to understand and interrupt.

Problems in a child can motivate parents to learn theory and to see the automatic nature of systems and the four ways anxiety is distributed: distance, conflict, reciprocal relationships and family projection. Once people get too worried or anxious these mechanisms distribute anxiety to the individuals in the system.

Once people understand anxiety will be distributed to the most vulnerable (and ultimately to everyone in the system), they can rise to the challenge and be more self defined and take on the family anxiety.  The beauty of family systems theory is that anyone who is important to a system can alter the system by changing self and how he or she participates in the system.

It is possible for parents and teachers to control their own reactivity and to be curious and relate in a non-anxious way to those who say things like: “I feel like beating you up”, or “I do not feel like talking to you” or “I don’t feel like working”, or “give me more money”, etc.

If one person can say “I am glad you’re not listening to and acting on your feelings and that you are talking to me about how you feel” then something this simple can be a first step in allowing a child to see how to separate feelings from thinking. Sometimes it’s hard for people to see just what they are doing to self and others.

Bullies and those involved with them are able to gradually understand the reciprocal nature of their behavior and how it is impacting others. Initially people react and that gives the bully “positive” feedback. The bully is winning. But when one person refuses to be bullied and holds the bully accountable, everything begins to change. A parent can say, “If you continue to act disrespectfully then I will take the car away.” They do not have to get mad and get upset. An upset parent has lost control. The immaturity of the bully has become one with the parents’ immaturity.

If parents can control their emotional reactivity then often other people will find that control of self, interesting. This can motivate people to increase self-control and begin to mindfully relate to others. As one person begins to change self, that person will gradually impact the larger system.

Awareness of the automatic and reactive nature of our family and friendship systems allows us to interrupt and challenge old patterns and to be more of a responsible self in relating to others.

Families are way more complicated than a game of chess. It takes time and effort to recognize the formation of various patterns and what you might do to make more of an impact. Think about how long it takes to deeply understand our families? The family’s rules have never been written down or made explicit and doing so is up to each person.  We began by observing relationships and then defining self as to what one will or will not do. For those willing to take the higher road to a stronger, better defined self, family systems thinking reveals what one is up against in changing self.

Case: The mother of five grown children is concerned about how her husband is interacting with the youngest son. The four older sisters are married and not involved in the family business. But the son has struggled due to a learning disability and is constantly asking his father for money. He is threatening his father that if he does not get money he will have to declare bankruptcy and move to a different state, among other things.

Is this son bullying his father for money? The son has been in various financial ventures with the father. None of these ventures have been profitable and this triggers a lot of worry about the future for the parents. Their financial stability is in question and the son has not been able to make it on his own. The father works and the mother worries.

Worry about the son’s performance has flowed through the parent’s relationship. The mother feels sorry for the son and wonders if her past wish to get the father to support the son has made for trouble and what she can do now? She is worried about telling the son the possible complications they have in their own lives. It might be too much for him.

I can feel this woman’s pain and threat so I asked how people in the family have helped each other over the generations?

Each of them has a tradition of lending money to others and/or worries about having enough money in their old age. In the past generations people have had to sell their homes as they aged and this is a frightening possibility. In addition one of her grandfathers committed suicide after a financial failure.

These are the questions I posed to this mother. They were designed to challenge emotional thinking and the family projection process.

Are you taking sides with people in your family?

Are you challenging people to think for self?

What is the emotional system?

How does it direct you?

Is it possible that each person is being controlled by the emotional system and the mutigenerational fears about money?

Is it possible that even if people are dead they might still be influencing people? For example, could the memory of your grandfather’s suicide make you more worried about money, and then you might give in to your son or your husband?

Who is the hardest person to listen to, your son or your husband?

How hard is it to listen to either of them talk about their problems without taking action (or taking sides)?

When do you seem to give in to either your husband or your son?

What is the most difficult thing to talk to your son or your husband about?

Can you calmly talk to your husband/son as to the facts and/or the anxiety?

How much practice would it take to be more open with your son and your husband? Which one of them would be easier for you to be open with

Is it possible that your son/husband finds people who are willing to take care of them and that person might be you?

If you worry about either of them are you helping or hurting the situation?

Can your worry and upset impact their functioning?

What would you say is your part in your husband/son not standing up on their own?

Have they figured out how to borrow self from you at a low interest rate?

The focus is always on questions. There are no interpretations in the usual sense and only an occasional statement about past experiences with other families that might be considered an interpretation. About a fourth of the comments by the therapist are designed to detriangle the situation when a family member invokes the emotional process in a session. Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 225).

General ideas that I shared with the mother: I told her I would focus on trying to be low-key and a little humorous and talk about over and under functioning without using those words. I would say softer things to my son like, “A lot of women, including me, really seem to love you. Does that make it hard for you to find your own way with all of us thinking you’re so cute. Honestly I’m just not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse to be so adorable. I have every confidence that you’ll find your way through all of this and figure out what’s really important to you, and what you want to do. And in the meantime you might as well just enjoy all these women thinking you’re so fabulous. Your Dad has put up with all this gooey love stuff for a long time and I am not sure if it has helped him either?”

I certainly would discipline myself not to get worried about either of them. I would do two or three push-ups every time I found myself thinking about whether not he should get a job, or money will be given for no good reason.

What do you think would happen if you told your husband and son that you were doing push-ups every time you found yourself thinking about what either of them should and ought to be doing?

Summary: One-way the family projection process works is that when any of us gets “other focused” or down on self, we can back down in relationship to others. We begin to back out of relationships instead of thinking carefully about how to engage in relationships.   The head of one person begins to worry about the other person and the first thing you know thinking can get pretty fixed. The family emotional process automatically shifts the focus from one person to another until it finally sticks on one and that would be the one that has the major symptoms.

Once you recognize how the system is influencing you and you see it in the way your own head works, then one thing you can do about it is to lighten up, speak about things in a way that doesn’t spread too much worry, that is funny and silly and kind of ridiculous but still tells the truth without making the truth a burden. Anxiety can be used to make more creative changes in the system when you’re curious and ready to take on the automatic nature of the family emotional process.

Optimally, the teaching communications come when the family tension system is low and they are presented in a way that does not involve the therapist in the family emotional system. Many comments are made from the “I” position, in which the therapist presents his views, beliefs, and operating principles in such a way that they can be accepted or rejected by the family. The therapist has much knowledge that can help the family find solutions. The goal is to find a neutral way to present the knowledge. The following framework has been successful in most situations: I have some experience from work with other families that you may find helpful in planning a course of action. If any of the ideas make sense and if you can incorporate and use them as your own ideas, there is a fair chance your effort will succeed.   Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (pp. 231-232). Jason Aronson, Inc. Kindle Edition. Jason Aronson, Inc. Kindle Edition.

[1] The relationship of case managers’ expressed emotion to clients’ outcomes Solomon P¹, Alexander L, Uhl S. Expressed emotion (EE) has been studied in families of a relative with schizophrenia as well as other psychiatric disorders; and high EE (hostile, critical, and overinvolved) families have been found to be strongly related to relapse among their relatives. EE has been assessed on a limited basis among non-familial care providers and determined that providers can also have high EE which results in poor quality of life and negative consequences for their clients. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2010 Feb;45(2):165-74. doi: 10.1007/s00127-009-0051-3. Epub 2009 Apr 16

[2] Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (pp. 131-132). Jason Aronson, Inc. Kindle Edition

These ideas were generated by the first summer session for Navigating Systems and Murray Bowen’s Concept of Societal Regression.   http://www.navigatingsystemsdc.com/

Each day we are bombarded by the difficulties we as a society face: random violence, wars, mass migrations, acts of terrorism, senseless murders, posturing politicians, our decreasing attention span, increases in autism, breakdowns in relationships and many other challenges. How can we understand the essence of these societal problems? And what will it take to make a difference?

This week Dylan Roof, a 21-year-old man, joined a prayer meeting at the historic African-American Church Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina. Cool and deliberately, he killed nine people there.

“A drunken Dylan Storm Roof boasted one night about an unspecified six-month plan “to do something crazy”. This weekend Roof’s sister was to be married. Roof had repeated the ninth grade at the Lexington County High School, and was described as “very transient,” he “came and went.” In a Washington Post interview, Roof’s uncle, Carson Cowles, said his mother “never raised him to be like this.” “The whole world is going to be looking at his family who raised this monster,” Cowles told the Post. “I’d be the executioner myself if they would allow it.”[1]

Only a few things are known about Roof now. But there will be analysis of his environment and his family, as there has been for the others who slay innocent people. Once again we will learn more about the profile of a loner who had as much difficulty relating to others as they had relating to him. All the mechanisms are engaged; distance, conflict and projection.

This is another example of family emotional process, intensifying and impacting society. The family patterns of relating create intense polarizations and blaming over the generations. It is these patterns of reactivity that draw “fault” lines in a family that become more and more deeply imbedded in that family and in society.

Systems Thinking is Hard to Do

Can we become more objective about the primitive mechanisms that influence us? Faster than the speed of light the our automatic response is to feel upset and “know” that so and so is to blame, that guns or “lone wolves”, etc. explains these frightening phenomena.

Thinking systems can enable us to go beyond good guys and bad guys even though it’s just not “natural” or automatic for us to see and deal with the emotional system. Although our tendency is to buy into a particular story line to explain what has happened, when we do that we limit our objectivity and become more emotional, focusing on short term fixes. Bowen called this the force for togetherness. It allows us to be popular and agreeable and not think as hard.

Being careful of “group think” around any emotional area is probably very wise. After all societal regression occurs when large numbers of individuals come together, with high emotions and not much thought. Under stress and the pressure to be a part of the upset group, people lose the ability to become more objective and thoughtful. It is automatic to be controlled by the stress and fear generated by the emotional system.

In societal regression there is anxiety produced by many threats including but not limited to the loss of new frontiers, land, water supplies and other basic resources. The inability to manage self under increasing stress is seen in the withdrawal of some individuals and/or in frustrating and stressful interactions between individuals.

When one becomes more objective, one can both increase the ability to relate to one another as separate individuals and can take the time to deeply analyze new trends in society. One example can be seen in Robert Putnam’s new book, Our Kids. Here we see how there are many long terms trends that are changing slowly, making our society less functional. We have to see these trends as important in order to address them.[2] But we are often blind to the patterns in the emotional system.

Like our forebears who thought the earth was the center of the universe, so does the conventional wisdom suggest that the individual is “the problem”. What will it take to understand the influence of the family and the larger social systems on all of us?

When we understand that heightened emotions and criticism harms and doesn’t help, perhaps we can be better at monitoring how we communicate. If people understand that being able to relate to others is the highest priority, then they might be able to tone down the polarized talk.

I am not sure the mayor of Charleston has any idea he may be making the situation worse in using his emotional reactions as a city leader. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley said the suspect was “filled with hate and with a deranged mind.” “The man is a “no-good, horrible person,” he said. “Of course we will make sure he pays the price for this horrible act.”[3]

Family Reaction to Death

It is somewhat easier to see a system in action if it is your own family. It is harder to see that society is a system. Perhaps if you thought of news organizations somewhat like your gossiping aunt, then you could see how an emotional system be it the family or society, can be driven by anxious perceptions.

Once we are triggered into becoming more anxious, then we tend to follow the crowd and cling to short-term solutions that reflect some ancient value (like revenge or forgiveness). It is easy to be overwhelmed by problems in society. It seems somewhat more rational for us to respond and find solutions when our own families become symptomatic.

Back in the 1970’s, Bowen spelled out the emotional confusion and anxiety in describing the family reaction to death. When you take a family history you often see clusters of symptoms around the loss of an important family member. In these cases, it is easier to see that the family is an emotional system, where threat spreads from one person to another in a predictable almost deterministic way.

When families (and larger social systems) have good contact and tolerance or a deep appreciation for one another, then they have more resilience to deal with loss. Families where people are unable to talk cannot prepare well for death.

Any family can be impacted by multiple symptoms following a death.

The opposite can also happen when someone dies and others have a renewed sense of the importance of life.

The behavioral patterns that are generated in emotional systems regress into blame, polarization and distance resulting in symptoms. If on the other hand there is a pattern-breaking leader who is able to have enough awareness and insight to break patterns, the system will be influenced to move towards progression.

Awareness and understanding of what it is that one faces makes it possible to use our intellectual system to deal more effectively with the automatic emotional system. We can develop creative solutions for old problems when the emotional system settles down.

One of the most challenging things is to notice when you are being unduly influenced by the people around you. If you are feeling highly emotional (think sad, mad, disgusted, fearful, blaming, guilty etc.), then the family emotional process might just be controlling you. Can you be more separate? Can you let the emotions calm down? Take a deep breath relax for a moment, let the storm subside. Pay attention to what it takes to get out of an emotional reaction. Somewhere in the emotional upheaval there might just might be useful information. But in a storm you can also be swept away.

Losing open contact among family members is a storm warning that you may be under the control of the family emotional process. Without contact there is little ability to cooperate and to care for one another. Once we get stressed one of the early warning signs is you no longer want anything to do with “those people.”

Be it in our family or as a reaction to what goes on in our society, our brains “automatically” respond to stresses, producing cortisol, damaging connections in the brain, even if we are not aware of the growing threats and pressures.   By studying the human family Bowen saw that even as the family was at its lowest point, one person could become more differentiated and slow down or stop a regression in the group.

Bowen’s observation was that those who are more differentiated are not regulated by the emotional system. At higher levels of emotional maturity, they are more capable of thinking for self and sustaining ideas that are unusual without attacking others. They are not bullies trying to get others to agree. Instead they are good listeners and creative in considering a wide range of ways to solve complex problems without letting the disapproval of others stop them.

Greater differentiation allows one to notice and respect others while maintaining one’s own direction. A focus on self and managing as best one can to relate to others can promote greater cooperation and less anxiety in relationships.

Murray Bowen:

One principle about differentiating change is probably more important than all the others. Differentiation begins when one family member begins to more clearly define and openly state his own inner life principles and convictions, and he begins to take responsible action based on convictions.

This is in contrast to principles derived from the rest of the family. It may require months or longer for this one to become reasonably sure within himself.

The remainder of the family opposes this differentiating effort with a powerful emotional counterforce, which goes in successive steps: (1) “You are wrong,” with volumes of reason to support this; (2) “Change back and we will accept you again”; and (3) “If you don’t these are the consequences,” which are then listed. The accusations commonly list indifference, meanness, lack of love, selfishness, coldness, the sadistic disregard for others, etc.

When the differentiating one defends himself, or counterattacks, or falls silent, he slips back into the old emotional equilibrium. When he can finally stay on his own calm course, in spite of the togetherness forces, the accusations reach a peak and quickly subside.

The opposition then expresses a single statement of appreciation at the conviction and strength of the differentiating one and the entire group pulls up to the new level attained by the first.

Later, another member of the group will start his or her own effort at the better definition of self. The togetherness opposition to individuation, or differentiation, is so predictable that differentiation does not occur without opposition from the togetherness forces. Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 437). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting-suspect/index.html

[2] Robert Putnam lays out a case for a societal regression in his book: Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.   Putnam shows us the disintegration of fragile families, the crumbling communities, the increase in child poverty rates, the increase in prison populations, the decrease in jobs and shows is how both kin and non kin networks have shrunk in the last ten years. Americans are disengaged. (Putnam page 211) Even the upper classes have lost social trust. In the 1970’s 78% of people in the most educated agreed with the statement “most people can be trusted.” (Putnam page 220) By 2010 people’s ability to trust others was down to 25%.

[3] http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/18/us/charleston-church-shooting-suspect/index.html

A tragedy of ignorance unfolds as more evidence comes to light about the relationship between a vulnerable person and society.

How much do we know about how a seemingly relatively well functioning person can become psychotic/suicidal and crash a plane into the French Alps killing150 people? How much do we see him in isolation?

What are the chances that when the pilot yelled “OPEN THE DOOR!” this command from an authority decreased the chance that any useful outcome would occur?

Using Bowen’s systems theory we can find a deeper understanding of the emotional pressure that blindsides us and can turn vulnerable people into revenge machines.

If you watch the news shows you can see the emotional reactivity spread as pundits, news anchors, pilots, and psychologists, etc. focus on and “analyze” the “depressed” co-pilot. People react to the threat that there could be other depressed pilots out there. Some pilots joke that they are happily married. They pick up the importance of relationships. More worrisome are the comments like, “There is nothing we can do”, or the suggested quick fix, “Make that door open from the outside or put a stewardess in there.” And so goes the emotional responses to a threat.

What would it be like to hear a TV pundit say, “I need to back up and take a broader systems view of this tragedy”? This might require the pundit to deeply enquire as to the different variables influencing this situation. No diagnoses alone will enable us to understand what this individual was up against. A broader view may.

There is limited awareness and no talk about how emotionality spreads through a social system. People react and cannot notice how infectious and other focused their reactivity is. Some are so relieved that is wasn’t a terrorist plot that they are willing to dismiss this as a horrid act by just another “crazy” person. To some degree we have all become part of the reactivity to this event, creating the possibility of more emotional reactivity aimed at the vulnerable.

Just as in so many of these senseless and violent acts from Columbine and Sandy Hook to the Boston Marathon, there is the initial confusion which eventually gives way to helplessness (“There’s nothing we can do…”) or an angry reaction of blame towards those with depression and mental illness. It takes deep awareness not to be swept into a reactive state where the media (and our family and friends) overly influence the way we think and feel.

Unanswered questions for us as a society

• How factual is the press portrayal of the problem?
• What are the emotional reactions of the public?
• How does reactivity recreate the same problem?
• How can information about this incident promote learning?
• What are the limits of current psychotherapy treatment?
• Is a family approach needed to reorganize a stressed social system
• Can we learn from the co-pilot’s family about his early years?
• What was his recent relationship like with his family?
• Did he have relationships with people in his extended family?
• What were his relationships like with his friends?

How do people communicate and the downside of controlling others

The conventional wisdom or posture of the current psychology/psychiatry establishment is: “I will figure out what the problem. You are depressed. Please follow the doctor’s orders and take your medication”. (Even though following doctor’s orders could make you more depressed). The co-pilot was faced with a maddening bind: “Do as I say. Take the drug, lose your job.”

Doing what others want can lead to less self for a vulnerable person. Telling someone who is weak and confused what they must do can lead to a lack of compliance and increase the possibility of rebellion. This probably happened in his family, at work with his girlfriend and in the doctor’s office. The co-pilot tears up his prescriptions. The doctor feels that he did the right thing. The co-pilot is lost to anger, revenge and throws himself towards death.

The pilot yells at the co-pilot demanding that he follow orders, but the co-pilot is allergic to following orders and the pilot has not been trained to deal with emotionally disturbed people. Even if he had been, could he have figured out how to get the co-pilot to cooperate? What if he said to the co-pilot, “I need help. Please, please help me”? It is hard for the one in charge to see the big picture. Little can be done once the door to our fellow human being is locked. Can we know more about understanding the emotional tone in language?

Emotional Oneness

Early on Bowen wrote about the schizophrenic family exhibiting a kind of “emotional oneness”.[1] The self of the child is never developed so that he or she can think and live independently from the parents. The self is “borrowed” from others. This borrowed self is very vulnerable to being rejected and or invaded by the needs, wishes and demands of others. We all have this vulnerability to our relationship networks to some degree or another. Bowen said there are 100 degrees of difference in the level of emotional maturity. Each of us is influenced by our position in our social networks to be more or less dependent and or reactive.

If the co-pilot found some kind of “self” in his job and it was enough “self” to manage his relationships then he might be able to live a “normal” life. But if the relationship system were disturbed, then he would no longer be able to borrow enough “self” to function. The loss of one’s job could be one threat but there were other relationships threats that add to his vulnerability. By looking carefully at what was going on in his family, with his girlfriend and his social status at work we begin to see what went wrong that pushed him to become a killer.

What do we know so far about the disturbance in the relationship networks that the copilot used to sustain himself?  What do we know about the way in which the copilot tried to control and produce his version of a “family oneness”?

Some have suggested that the relationship with his girlfriend was disturbed by her pregnancy and he was threatened by this addition of a new person in their relationship.   Being on the outside of a mother-child relationship, just like being on the outside of any intense triangle, can make people feel threatened and vulnerable. Current reports suggest that she was actually moving out and leaving him.    Other “reasons” for his actions, some suggest, were his fear that his vision problem would end his flying career. (Yet another report implied that his vision problem was psychological. This would be more evidence of the fragile nature of his functioning. ) And after he crashed the plane, his girl friend and her family fled the village they lived in. Would they be blamed for the pilot’s murderous rage? How will they face the future and make sense of that has happened?[2] How will we?

As more facts are gathered we see the gradual desecration of all the important ingredients that held this person’s life together; his health, his job and his family relationships, were all threatened.

Other Focus

How is it that no one noticed that in losing his relationships and his health, he lost what ever was left of his self. This is what can happen. The emotional process in a social group is sensitized to focus on others and to be critical of others to get them in line. The automatic response is to look at others, focus on them and blame them, thereby freeing the rest of us from seeing our part in how the system is organized. Pause for a moment and consider the degree to which you can see how blaming individuals keeps us from seeing the larger system and this blindness makes events like this more likely to recur.

It has been reported that even the co-pilot wanted to change “the system”.  It would have been better if he had wanted to change himself but he too was focused on “others”. The best case is if this tragedy makes a small dent in the way we think about the individual and social systems and how we deal with troubled people. Perhaps he will help us understand what the “family oneness” is? Can we be more aware of what happens to others if we are too distant, too controlling, too needing of others? It is automatic to pressure others to make us happy or safe, but this “other focus” eventually leads to the erosion of self and to some kind of tragedy.

The co-pilot who crashed a passenger jet into the French Alps, killing all 150 aboard, worried “health problems” would dash his dreams and vowed one day to do something to “change the whole system”, an ex-girlfriend told a German newspaper.[3]

Understanding the system and the trapped person

One hypothesis is that the co-pilot felt trapped by the events happening to him and believed, “If you know of my problems you will fire me and that will kill me. I feel that you are against me and I must kill you”. The others around the co-pilot could have reassured him in an unsatisfactory way or been critical, making him more anxious. People feel how others regard them and often find it difficult to think or consider the facts of the situation when they are upset. They hide out, disappear and can then project their worries and negative feelings onto others. (“What I feel you are doing to me I am going to do to you.”) The primitive and reactive part of the brain is in control and the logical rational part is over-ridden.

Effective therapy allows people to be in a positive questioning relationship that enables them to see how they are tangled up and learn to gradually unhook from the emotionally driven reactions enough to begin to alter, improve and broaden their relationships with significant others. Bowen was the first person to notice that by being in good emotional contact with one’s extended family, people were able to make progress twice as fast as those in psychoanalysis.

Over time people can THINK about how automatically they behave. Eventually their thinking can alter their behavior. But if people are too sensitive to tolerate a relationship that calls things into question they can leave therapy in a negative way and may be more inclined to hurt self or others.

People are born into a functional position in their families. Some are able to observe how they are influenced by the social system, while others are born more highly sensitive and reactive to relationships. The individuals who take challenges personally cannot see the system as a larger mutigenerational system that influences and impacts all the individuals in it.

The German co-pilot was probably not a good observer of the push and pull in the human social system. Possibly he took things very, very personally and was unsure of himself and pushed people away from him. Bullies are the flip side of this dynamic. They threaten others directly, while a more passive person can hurt self or act quietly to get revenge for real and perceived hurts.

As in the case of the co-pilot social pressure leads to threatening others. As people lose self they are unsure of what they think.   They copy others and mouth the right words and sometimes this pretending works to fool others and to get along. But under stress the façade can crumble because it’s not solid. The language used in families where there are serious symptoms often shows a disregard for the identity of the individual. There is lot of telling others what to do, criticizing them, ignoring them, not letting them get a word in edgewise, using ego merger words like “YOU must, you will, you are, we are the right ones and you are the wrong one”. There are just a few of the indicators of increasing anxiety. The overall message is, “We are not sure of you and you are not sure of you either”.

Many vulnerable people are sensitive to being told what to do and so they go away, fight with you, get sick, blame or worry about others to preserve themselves in a hostile environment. The main thing one can notice is that it is difficult for people to focus on self and talk about self and easier for them to try to get the others to behave.

Once there is an “other focus” it becomes difficult to work on self. There is no “I” position that can help build an emotional backbone. And without an emotional backbone, there is no dealing with challenging relationships. Those who have become focused on can be de-selfed and under pressure they can tumble into psychosis and can do “mad “ and destructive things. When told what to do or when threatened, they seek revenge. These are the few who never had a solid self and who believe deeply that “if you will not agree with me one of us will die”.

What does it take to see patterns of relationships? What does it take for individuals to integrate negative experiences? What does it take to find a more thoughtful way to relate to those who have hurt you? These are all questions for testing levels of emotional maturity.

What would it take to change the system?

We know that integrating one’s thinking and feeling about one’s life experiences takes time and the process is not very well understood. Perhaps as we learn more about the co-pilot and his relationships, this knowledge could be generalized and change the way society understands and deals with emotional problems. But seeing these events differently requires changing the way we as a society understand mental health, shifting our thinking to a broad view of systems and how systems influence individuals, not the other way around. We would have to see the individual as in and part of the system, not as isolated from it.

The Brain

Our brain is not built for interpersonal reflection. Our ancient brain was taught to operate in and preserve hierarchies, no matter the cost to a particular individual. Humans like other animals distribute anxiety unfairly. Without thought, the weak are picked on and the strong get the better deal. This is the emotional system at work. It takes courage to look at our part in problems and to think that even how we simply react to challenges, how we act, talk and think, may be “messing up” others.

Differentiation of self

We have the capacity to lead and to take on the “unfair” nature of the emotionally driven system. In most systems there are one or two who can see that the automatic nature of blaming, shaming and isolating does not improve human functioning. These are the ones who can rise above diagnosis of the individual and think differently about how to increase functioning by managing themselves in relationships.

If one can see the social system and relate to others by being more separate, we know others will object and be upset. But this changes the direction of the “worried focus”. When one person begins to change how they deal with a problem person in the family, a different level of change occurs. One person decides, “I’m not doing ‘this diagnosing’ anymore. I am going to change the way I am acting toward so and so”. This begins to create change throughout the whole system.

Sometimes we may feel that there is only a small chance of finding a more mature leader (in a family, organization or the larger society) willing to change self in the face of a monumental problem. But if you look around there are examples everywhere. There are people stepping up to change some aspect of society that they find appalling.

One example of social change

It may be that our mental heath system based on seeing and treating the individual will come under greater scrutiny. It may be that enough evidence will be gathered to say that the surrounding social system must be involved in the treatment of those with serious symptoms. At this point, to go from an individual focus to a family focus seems way too difficult. It would involve way too much social change. But great social change is possible.

The March 29, 2015 issue of the New York Times magazine describes the story of how a few people in Norway changed a prison system from punishment to a focus on rehabilitation: Prison Planet: How do we treat the world’s most dangerous prisoners and what does it say about us.[4] The prison was designed to restore the basic elements needed for humans to grow and develop: exposure to sunlight, to open space, to encourage those in authority to play games with the inmates, to “learn” to interact with people. Halden Prison spends $93,000 on each prisoner, focusing on preparing inmates for life when they get out.   The US spends $32,00 for punishment.[5]

System Theory offers a path to a quiet revolution

Bowen theory allows us to consider the nature of the relationship systems surrounding us and to more deeply understand what is influencing our ability to stand-alone and to be mindful of emotional pressure. There are many things that go into giving up of self and the automatic desire to have an emotional oneness with others. We can notice it in our lives if we are able to see emotional pressure and how often we automatically agree with or fight with or disappear from defining ourselves in relationships with others. We give up a little bit of self when things are not questioned, when we go along with the powerful ones, when we do not put forth our differences with others, and when we cut off from difficult relationships and conversations.

We as a society are blindsided by the power of the emotional system and find it difficult to observe its influence. This is the double bind for us all. The social system is automatically functioning to identify someone as the problem and that individual is done in while we stand by silently participating. This blaming, worried process lets the group survive. And we are part of it as long as we do not see the larger process that is occurring.

In families we see how easy it is to get upset with the one who does not do his or her homework, clean the room, stays out too late and is not obedient. These are the ones who can draw the negative focus.  We have built a lucrative social structure to deal with the vulnerable ones without realizing how we are participating and benefiting from this process.

Bowen theory offers an alternative, an open window, a fresh breeze, a different way to see and understand the suffering around us. Theory offers each of us a full time job. There is a way to be more aware of relationships, and to be a more thoughtful self in the effort to open any door.

…………………………………………………….. Footnotes………………………………………………..

[1] Intensive Family Therapy: Theoretical and Practical Aspects, edited by Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, James L. Framo

[2] Kathrin Goldbach, a 26-year-old secondary school teacher, told her students two weeks ago that she was pregnant, and she was planning to marry Lubitz. However, the day before the Germanwings airplane crash, Goldbach told Lubitz, 27, she was moving out of the apartment they shared in Dusseldorf, Germany. Goldbach cited his insecurity and controlling personality as reasons for her decision. Goldbach also believed Lubitz had been seeing another woman. She accused him of having a five-month relationship with a Germanwings stewardess. Newsmax reported that Goldbach’s friends said she was leaving Lubitz because she could no longer live with him because of his erratic behavior. Goldbach had been vocal about the way he treated her. Her friends said Goldbach told them Lubitz tried to order her about what to wear, and who she could and could not talk to. Kathrin Goldbach and her family are said to be so afraid of being blamed for the Germanwings crash – caused by Lubitz after he flew the plane he was co-piloting into the French Alps – that they have fled the town and vowed to never return.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1969270/kathrin-goldbach-girlfriend-of-germanwings-co-pilot-who-crashed-plane-might-be-expecting-his-baby/#w1KG75wrfWPyj14i.99

[3] http://nation.foxnews.com/2015/03/29/crash-co-pilot-ex-girlfriend-everyone-will-know-my-nam

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/the-radical-humaneness-of-norways-halden-prison.html?_r=0

[5] Currently the prison system in Norway is designed to “ease psychological pressure, mitigate conflict, and minimize interpersonal conflict”. Norwegians have altered the system. If a prison environment can be altered, how hard is it to alter the way we think about treating people with mental heath issues?

Social Pressure and Differentiation of Self

Yesterday, January 31^st, would have been Murray Bowen’s 103 Birthday. 

Dr. Bowen left a tremendous inheritance to all of us. His broad grasp of nature, his deep understanding of emotional process, his funny southern humor, his shocking insight and his love of challenging people, all are deeply missed.   Neither Bowen nor his theory was perfect. As he said, his mission was to simply point towards a new way to think about human behavior.  

Family Systems thinking has yet to be integrated into most people’s thinking. So I am grateful for the many people and organizations that both acknowledge and continue his work.

Now I am deeply involved with the Murray Bowen Archives: http://murraybowenarchives.org/. If you Google Bowen Family Systems Theory you will find many other organizations that offer various viewpoints and ways to understand Bowen Theory. (I found about 147,000 results in 0.31 seconds). 

Last month I was honored to speak to the participants in The Vermont Center for Family Studies’ training program. They asked me many great questions about social pressure and how to define a self as a coach and as a family member. http://www.vermontcenterforfamilystudies.org/training-program/

I wrote this essay to expand on their questions and to acknowledge some of what I learned from Dr. Bowen and where his ideas have led me.

If you no longer wish to receive these updates just let me know.

Thanks,

Andrea

Social Pressure and Differentiation of Self

How hard is it to be who you want to be? How much do you conform to what others need or want you to be? How challenging is it to see and act when relationship pressures are intense to go along or to avoid issues?

The effort to define one’s self to important others is usually a tension filled danger zone. Our near and dear can act as part of a system and resist self-definition by anyone.

We are often blind to the mechanisms supporting social pressure. Evolutionary forces have rigged the family to function as a social unit so that some give up self for the group.   Therefore it is challenging but necessary to uncover and understand the mechanisms promoting relationship blindness, especially during times of great change.

It is difficult to say what is really important to you or for others to hear about your principles, or what it is you will or will not do. One needs courage and the ability to postpone the comforts of approval to be self-defined. People are willing to take on this task – to be more self-defined and respectful of others – because they deeply believe that in so doing, they and others will be able to function at higher levels. And they do it because they can accept the moments or months or years of social tension that may be necessary to unwind an anxious family system.

The Slippery Slope of Social Pressure

Bowen noted that as individuals became better observers of emotional process they could often do something about the way they reacted to social pressure. He would often tell stores about how these mechanisms worked to lure others into going along with an “other focus” rather than a self-focus.

One story he liked to tell was about an experience he had one day driving from work in Kansas to his home in Tennessee.   On the several hour drive he found himself wondering about people at work: “What is going on that I am upset with Bob? Bob is a nice enough fellow. I see that the further I get away from the system the more neutral I feel about Bob. Perhaps I just got taken in by all the gossip at the water cooler.” After he returned to Menninger, he found he could relate to Bob pretty well for a couple of days. Then he would find himself going along with the majority viewpoint of Bob. As he became aware of these automatic mechanisms, the triangles, he developed strategies to deal with the gossipers and Bob.

Bowen called this the automatic and out of awareness joining of one’s self with others – fusion. It’s a natural state for a youngster to join with others and to believe what their parents or teachers say, but taken to an extreme some people can be so highly fused they are unable to separate from others. They react to social pressure from parents and others and are unable to determine their own separate identity. Their emotional growth is stunted and they are vulnerable to all kinds of physical and emotional symptoms.

No one knows how these fused states come to be. There may be a genetic vulnerability to becoming fused with others or it may be purely psychological phenomenon.

My own experience with fusion into the undifferentiated ego mass of my family of origin is remarkably consistent with what I have observed in a broad spectrum of reasonably well-integrated families with whom I have worked in my teaching and practice. I have never seen a family in which the “emotional fusion” phenomenon is not present… There are others so intensely “fused” they probably can never know the world of emotional objectivity with their parents. Few people can be objective about their parents, see and think about them as people, without either downgrading or upgrading them”.[1]

Perhaps the first step in defining a self is just to acknowledge the problem of perception. We are under evolutionary pressure to act as part of a social unit and that pressure overrides the inclination to be an individual. The togetherness force is common to all social animals, and for good reason. The herd is a powerful protection, both physically and emotionally. Maybe this is the evolutionary reason we have a strong tendency to automatically fit in with our social groups.

Until one achieves some ability to doubt one’s initial instinct to go along with the group, we are destined to follow the instinct to be for the group.  So, what does it take to find your own small difference, or a principle that you can base your decisions on, rather than relying on the love and approval from going along with others?

Laurie Lassiter and others have suggested that there is an evolutionary “gain” from being a bit more separate from the social group. Usually the more separate individual is a more factual observer of the situation and can lead others in a better direction. Evolution favors increasing awareness to contend with changes in the environment, shifting alliances and the transfer of information to enhance survival. [2]

Part of a leader’s responsibility is to see the world accurately and decide what needs to be done now to prepare for the future. So how do leaders emerge? In some social groups, leadership is decided on criteria about who can be the fiercest chimp in the pack. But violent individuals cannot make much progress. Such leaders do not prepare us to organize well to face a complex future. Differentiation prepares people to be more separate and more autonomous so they can be useful to the social group without compromising self.

Cell differentiation creates an organism with many parts that function “differently”, e.g. kidney, liver, heart, limbs, etc. What does it take to have a well-run family, business or society? It requires that each of us live up to our potential as individuals who are well defined for self and can also be connected to the group in a useful way.

How do you really know what is important to you if you are willing to alter it to please others? What does it take to know the beliefs, ideas and opinions that you have acquired in order to get along with others? And how can you lead yourself, let alone others, in a complex world without your own principles to guide you?

The Social Science of Influence

Many years of social science research have demonstrated that our perception is a personal and biased view of the world, reflecting the family we grew up in and the pressure we experience even subliminally to conform. Social science researchers like Solomon Asch show us that our social groups can cause us to radically alter what we believe we see about something as fundamental as our perception of the length of a line.

Asch’s most famous experiments set a contest between physical and social reality. His subjects judged unambiguous stimuli – lines of different lengths – after hearing other opinions offering incorrect estimates.  Subjects were very upset by the discrepancy between their perceptions and those of others and most caved under the pressure to conform: only 29% of his subjects refused to join the bogus majority.  This technique was a powerful lens for examining the social construction of reality, and gave rise to decades of research on conformity.  Stanley Milgram’s studies of obedience to authority were inspired directly by Asch’s studies.

“Behavior is not a response to the world as it is, but to the world as perceived.”[3]]

Asch told his colleagues that his idea to study conformity was brought about by his childhood experiences in Poland. He recalls being seven years old and staying up for his first Passover night. He recalls seeing his grandmother pour an extra glass of wine. When he asked who the glass of wine was for, she said that it was for the prophet Elijah. He then asked her whether he would really take a sip from the glass and his uncle assured him that he would. His uncle told him to watch very closely when the time came. “Filled with a sense of suggestion and expectation” Asch “thought he saw the level of wine in the cup drop just a bit. Thus, early in life, Asch succumbed to conformity, which fostered his idea to investigate conformity later in life.[4]

 Asch believed that social interaction reflects the ability of individual people to synthesize information about group norms, the viewpoints of others and their own perceptions of themselves as group members. He emphasized that independent thought and disagreement among group members is a cornerstone of group functioning. He believed that only by settling our differences with other group members, can we actually understand the shortcomings of our own beliefs. [5]

I don’t know if Murray Bowen knew of Asch’s 1951 research. However, by the 1950’s Bowen had his own view of how people see self and what part of self they would like others to see. Bowen would eventually call the ability to negotiate self in the social system differentiation and the process whereby one becomes de-selfed, fusion.

From Psychoanalysis to Biology

Bowen was in psychoanalysis during his early years at the Menninger Clinic. He often talked about how he saw transference as a growth process in the two-person relationship between therapist and patient. In relationship to an objective and knowledgeable analyst, the other is able to learn to see self and others more accurately. This two-person relationship was predictable and he thought it could be part of science.

Transference and counter transference[6] involves a step by step process of getting to know one’s self in relationship to an analyst who is non-threatening, objective and interested in clarifying each one’s perceptions of relationships. The assumption is that each person has his or her version of people and events and acts in accordance with that view.

Bowen called the misperception of others and the behavior it produced as evidence of “fusion”. His effort was to ground human behavior in a biological process. In the beginning cellular lives are clumps without a nucleus. The cells fuse and slowly begin to separate from one another and take on a specialized role.[7] Differentiation then is the process of a cell or an individual developing its special functions and no longer functioning as part of the undifferentiated mass.

In effective psychotherapy or coaching you can see the progress that a person makes in becoming more of a self and less reactive and dependent on others.

During Bowen’s early years at the Menninger Clinic, he described the way he observed shifting relationship pressures in psychotherapy.

1. what patient thinks his parent thinks he is;
2. what patient feels he is;
3. what patient feels his wife and therapist think he is ;
4. what patient tries to act like;
5. what patient hopes outside people think he is (often he thinks they suspect #1); 6. what patient hoped therapist saw on first appointment;
6. what patient hopes to be;
7. what patient wants therapist to think of him.[8]

The urge to agree with and to thereby fuse with another, to figure out what “they” want you to be, happens so fast and in the most innocent ways. “Do you like my dress?” “No!” “Of course you are right, I do not like it either.” This is the fused or automatic response, confirming our vulnerability to want to fit in well with the other. This can range from dressing “properly” to hating a broad swath of people, e.g. “If it weren’t for the (nations, peoples, religion, etc.), the world would be a better place.” Social pressure can be extreme and the reasons complex, especially when manifest in individuals or groups who hold their truths to be sacrosanct and who terrorize others to control them.

Knowing all of this, one senses the need to be more of a strong self in order not to fall under the automatic influence of social groups. How do any of us go about changing our selves to be more like whom we want to be, and less like the complaint ones (go along to get along), or the ghost from the past (living as though the realities of the past are the realities of today), or the rebel (being “different” for the sake of being different, not based on any thoughtful principles), or the puppet that is strung along on the social expectations of another (living without awareness of any of the above).

A Time for Change

There are two ways that change seems to happen. One is the automatic response to changes in the system: time for you to leave home for college or a job, to fall in love, to start a family, to watch your parents die and to cope with all that comes at you. For most people these are knowable changes that the family adapts to. People can do a good job at this but they have to change. There may be emotional shock waves that create havoc during these transitions. People have to adapt.

The second path is “mindful” change. Can I be better defined, can I use this time of change in the system to understand the system and my part in it and better manage the anxiety related to transitions? Bowen took this second path in his work in his own family. He wrote up his experience doing this in “The Anonymous paper.”

For curious and motivated people the answer is yes, I want to know how systems work and I want to alter myself in relationship with others. For these folks, the first goal is to cool down anxious situations, and redirect anxiety away from the vulnerable ones.

The basic challenge in system learning is to be vulnerable and to observe the reality of people’s lives. How does one get out of blind fusion with others and develop a person-to-person relationship? Can you talk about the way you see things and listen to the how the other person sees things without defending or attacking? Sounds easy, but it’s a big risk.

Understanding self and others will help us do well with all kinds of sticky situations where people are sensitive to one another. Understating fusion and what it takes to be a more separate self can enable one to run or dispose of a family business, or help us deal more thoughtfully with a family member who has been hospitalized for a serious physical or emotional illness. It can be very challenging to see self as part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of telling others what to do or running from them, you get to know them and you reveal more about you. You stick with the “I” position and not with the “YOU should” position

One of Bowen’s Efforts to be Better Defined

The new plan was to define myself as a person as much as possible and to communicate individually to a wide spectrum of extended family members; I tried to establish as many individual relationships within the family as possible. Every possible opportunity was used to write personal letters to every niece and nephew. The less differentiated family segments still tended to reply with letters to my entire family, but more and more some began to write personal letters addressed to my office, and since they were addressed to me personally, my family never saw them. The return on this endeavor is like a long-term dividend; it has modified my image within the entire family. Another project was the development of a “person-to-person” relationship with each of my parents and also with as many people as possible in the extended family. A person-to-person relationship is conceived as an ideal in which two people can communicate freely about the full range of personal issues between them. Most people cannot tolerate more than a few minutes on a personal level. When either party becomes anxious, he begins talking about a third person (triangles in another person), or the communication becomes impersonal and they talk about things. In such an effort, one encounters every rejection, alliance, and resistance that are present in emotional systems everywhere. In disciplining the self to do this, one develops versatility and emotional courage in all relationships; one learns more about people than in most endeavors, and the family profits too. In some family situations the positive results are sweeping, both for the family and the one who initiated the effort. These experiences were used in clinical practice, which in turn made contributions to the effort with my own family. [9]

A Method to See and Deal with Emotional Pressure

Sometimes words pressure us to go along with others. For example, “we” can be a word of confusion. Who is this “we”? Can you see the folding in on one another? No one asks if you want to be part of the “we”.

Fusion happens so fast because we want others to agree with us or we want to go along with others as in the Solomon Asch experiment. “We” can be a short cut to cooperating to get things done. Or it can be a short cut to control others, to feel in control or simply feel “in” with a social group. Anxiety can create confusion and limit our ability to know where our responsibilities to and for others begin and end.

Love affairs, raising teenagers or trying to train a new manager to take over the business often present this kind of challenge. One way to see how anxiety and fusion work is to notice when people get “other focused”. They blame, worry about others, or become adamant about a stance they are taking.   Listen for the words of fusion and see the loss of self-focus:

• “You better do what I say or you will get sick, flunk out of school, lose your job or prove you’re a jerk!”
• “If you want to be married to me, you better do, x, y and z!”
• “You are the problem. If it were not for you I would be happy!”
• “Take the garbage out, drive the car, stop drinking and smoking, etc.”

The ability to be less reactive is enhanced with the effort to be aware of the automatic nature of emotional pressure and the urge to go along with others. If one can tone down one’s automatic responsiveness one can build a better more meaning filled life.

What will it take to think before you act and to define what principles guide your actions?   To the extent one can do this, one has the opportunity to become a more defined self and a person who can offer self and others more freedom.

Profile of moderate to good differentiation of self.

This is the group in the 50 to 75 range. These are the people with enough basic differentiation between the emotional and intellectual systems for the two systems to function alongside each other as a cooperative team. The intellectual system is sufficiently developed so that it can hold its own and function autonomously without being dominated by the emotional system when anxiety increases. In people below 50, the emotional system tells the intellectual system what to think and say, and which decisions to make in critical situations. The intellect is a pretend intellect. The emotional system permits the intellect to go off into a corner and think about distant things as long as it does not interfere in joint decisions that affect the total life course. Above 50, the intellectual system is sufficiently developed to begin making a few decisions of its own. It has learned that the emotional system runs an effective life course in most areas of functioning, but in critical situations the automatic emotional decisions create long-term complications for the total organism. The intellect learns that it requires a bit of discipline to overrule the emotional system, but the long-term gain is worth the effort.

Murray Bowen, M.D.,

Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 369).

[1] Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 494). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

[2] Lassiter, Laurie, Chapter 7, Others, Edited by Lynn Margulis, Celeste A. Asikainen and Wolfgang E. Krumbein, Chimeras and Consciousness :Evolution of the Sensory Self

[3] http://www.brynmawr.edu/aschcenter/about/solomon.htm

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Asch#cite_note-NYtimesArticle-11

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Asch

[6] Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is “the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person’s childhood.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transference

[7] Cell fusion is an important cellular process in which several uninuclear cells (cells with a single nucleus) combine to form a multinuclearcell, known as a syncytium. Cell fusion occurs during differentiation of muscle, bone and trophoblast cells, during embryogenesis, and during morphogenesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_fusion

[8] Williamsburg Collection: The Murray Bowen Archives of Leaders for Tomorrow

[9] Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray (1993-12-01). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 499). Jason Aronson, Inc. Kindle Edition.

JSB EDITS 10/29/14 8:30 AM

The Nuclear Family and the Rabbi

As part of the Navigating System’s (http://www.navigatingsystemsdc.com) monthly webinar to discuss the basic ideas of Bowen theory, we saw Dr. Bowen’s video on the nuclear family emotional process. Dr. Bowen describes the nuclear family as two people, in an unstable relationship, putting pressure on one another so that eventually one person impinges on the other. I wondered about the implications for society if we are each born into emotional systems where we naturally and automatically impinge on one another.

As the nuclear family begins to form, love itself makes it hard to see “reality.”  One wants to spend time with the other warm and fuzzy person. It is so hard to see the beginning of the world of compromise. Hard to see how “wanting” to be with the other could be a part of impinging. Relationship pressure can be as silent as a wink, a smile, or even a sad look. We can be beaten, get sick or just make compromises to keep the peace in important relationships. Without a thought or even a whimper, we distance, we avoid, we may even get sick, or best or worst of all, when impinged upon, we blame others for creating our troubles, seek revenge or go to war.

Everyday we see the evidence of how these very same nuclear family dynamics leak out into society at large. The media and our newspapers show us some horrid situations and proclaim:  We are very busy looking to see who is to blame.  Stay tuned. No questions allowed. Each of us has blind spots that remain unacknowledged and of course, out of our awareness. Some people are unusually good at seeing the automatic emotional system working on us. That emotional system is full of urges, encouraging us to pick on people, to focus on others, to be negative, to worry, to blame to dislike, and finally to polarize (“They are not human”) and to cut off. Lacking knowledge of relationship dynamics often leaves people reacting to others, living in smaller and smaller relationship circles, barricading themselves against the “others” and living in a “social wasteland”.

The headlines amplify the blame game. Take for example the following alert: Washington Rabbi arrested. For the victims of voyeurs, a terrible theft of trust.   Read and be alarmed. One of our trusted leaders arrested for a dirty secret. Look what he did to us, the headlines screech. Not how did this person fall so far down? What leads to these kinds of behaviors?   Are we part of the problem? Is this the primitive emotional system at work tugging at us to follow along? People read the headlines and automatically blame, want the perpetrator to be punished and to suffer for his crimes. Perhaps there is another story that we can all learn from? Perhaps the rabbi was blindsided, not seeing the emotional nature of the pressure in his own marriage and in the synagogue?

The Georgetown rabbi arrested for allegedly hiding a camera in the mikvah pool area where Jewish women take sacred, private ritual baths, the Baltimore gynecologist who secretly filmed his patient examinations, the freaks hacking into celebrity mobile phones and even creeps snapping photos up women’s skirts all have easy access to plenty of porn. The turn-on here is about power, subjugation and humiliation. It’s about men getting what they want, despite what women say. Members of the local Jewish community were stunned this week by the news that Rabbi Barry Freundel, a renowned scholar and a towering figure in the Kesher Israel Congregation, had been charged with six counts of voyeurism and could face up to six years in prison. Investigators say Freundel, 62, recorded women in the mikvah area using a clock radio that contained a hidden camera. This is the wise man who guided women on their spiritual path, who helped them through times of tribulation or urged them on to further enlightenment. ….Twitter: @petulad.[1]

Understanding what happened here is not to excuse anyone. (People must be held responsible for their actions and breaking the law.)   The need is for us to understand, to gain knowledge in order to intervene early and to see who is vulnerable.  It is already an automatic behavior not to hold leaders responsible for their actions or the actions of their colleagues.  The question is how do we get beyond this? What could the family, the rabbinic council or the congregation have done differently?

People want to know how this man with so much talent and so many gifts become obsessed with crazy ways to stabilize himself.   How will the wife of this man understand her part in his acting out, if as I assume, everyone has a part in the nuclear family dance? She might have noticed and been fearful to act, or she may have been unaware. At this time there is no way to know what might have been useful to her or to the rest of the family, the rabbinic council and the congregation, although the rabbinic council had, according to news reports, information about the rabbi’s misuse of his office, e.g. asking potential converts to do clerical work for him without pay and the council had told him to stop cease and desist on those counts.

Right now we do not know enough about the situation to be useful.  But we can become more aware of the difficulty of understanding others.   Not just the Rabbi and the terrorist, but all of us, are to some degree relationship blind.  We are blind to the way we see ourselves, the way others see us, the way we see others and of course how each wishes others would see us. For a few it is worth the time and effort to untangle relationships and to learn to function rather than be swept along the emotional stream of life.

But do not give up on the media because sometimes they do follow the clues and turn towards the family for understanding. After the recent terrorist act in Canada, the press looked at the family.  “Details of Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau’s life are hard to come by. But his radicalism seems only to have strengthened as his grip on ordinary life grew weak. And his hold appears to have begun to slip in the late 1990s, when his family fell apart.”[1] Just one fact as to the intensity of cut off: he had not seen his mother in 5 years.

Explanation/speculation 101 – Now back to the nuclear family. Often people do not like the behavior of their spouse and so they distance, hoping to keep the marriage or the family going. They are impinged on by the way the other is, and have little ability to come back and relate well. Anxiety rises and each individual in the relationship looks for relief. One wants closeness to feel better. The other wants distance. Over time each pretends to be something they are not, and to compensate in some way that is sustaining or possible. Probably both are cut off or compromised by distance in their own families.

It all begins in the two-person relationship, when one innocently impinges on the other. “Please take out the garbage. After all you have more time than I do.” It is so subtle as one person begins to impinge on the other and the other begins to look for a way out, “OK I will do it,” or “You’re so maddening,” “In a minute…” or “I feel sick.” And then of course, “You and I can make the kids do it.” The intensity of these mechanisms (conflict and winning or losing, distance, sickness and projection) have been highlighted by researchers like John Gottman and others, as one of the central causes of marriages ending. But just suppose you can find a small place to hide and feel better and save your marriage and pretend….for awhile.

Is it possible this man’s behavior began a long time ago, when the need for distance crept into the synagogue, infecting and overwhelming all his wisdom? Was this rabbi psychologically blind or knowingly revengeful or malicious? Was this synagogue different from any other organization, where peace and comfort is prized over disruption, where differences and disruption are frowned upon? Darwin shined the light on diversity but differences in families and organizations make people uncomfortable. To understand the way the system distributes anxiety onto the weak, and what one can do, requires a new way to think about how to function in social systems with differentiation in mind.

What can I do? If the only one I can change is me, then how do I see what is going on in the relationships around me in order to change the social system around me as it accidently impinges on me? What does it take to recognize the automatic nature of threat? Can I get to the middle kingdom so to speak by at least describing what is going on?

Can I create a “no blame, but hold them responsible zone?”

Perhaps evolution will provide us with a periscope that peeks out and sees our part in relationship compromises? Perhaps Jiminy Cricket could stop by, sit on our shoulders and tell us what is going on in the “no blame zone”. While we wait for evolution to provide us with an easy out there is another way to deal with these automatic mechanisms that govern life, the fifth way, differentiation of self. I believe that by observing and commenting on the system you can create opportunities to be more for self and less reactive to “perceived pressure.” Of course in so doing, you run the risk of upsetting the others. There is no risk free zone.

Of course all kind of events stir our biochemistry, even turning on and off our genes, as we try to cope with the outside world. From the time we are born until we die we are influenced. We are almost pre-programmed to attack, to defend, and to seek comfort without awareness of what we are doing and why.

Choices can be made about the way we react to others.  We can learn about our automatic behaviors, and in so doing we can rise up to relationship challenges and offer the system a bit more information. This is not always fun, but it does promise a bit more emotional freedom for each of us and for others.

[1] www.washingtonpost.com/local/at-a-georgetown-synagogue-a-terrible-theft-of-trust/2014/10/16/36b27288-554f-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/25/world/americas/ottawa-canada-gunmans-radicalism-deepened-as-life-crumbled.html?_r=0

October 10, 2014 I presented at a conference in El Paso, Texas honoring Louise Rauseo’s retirement.  I have known Louse and admired her work since 1976. Her team asked me to present on my new book, Your Mindful Compass, and talk about the cost and benefits of becoming a leader in your family and in your community. My overall theme was that one can know that people play into problems of all sorts and still stay focused on being more separate and less reactive in social systems, and at the same time build strength in individuals, families and communities.

The four points on the Mindful Compass are about the process of decision making: 1) This is what I am going to do, 2) this is the resistance I might encounter, 2) this is my level of knowledge to deal with the problems and 3) this is my ability to stand-alone.

Dr. Murray Bowen died 24 years ago on October 9, (1913-1990). His theory was the first to point towards the family as an emotional system that “governs” the behavior of family members. He was a mentor for both Louise and me in learning how families “work.”  Bowen’s view of the significance of relationships to change human behavior is a long, long way from our current worldview of diagnosing the weaker ones and fixing their symptoms.

Bowen was a visionary who could “shock” people into seeing how they just might do more with their lives if they were willing to become more aware and self-defined. Changing self became more of a knowledge adventure than a fixing answer.  This was the road that Louise took.  I am fortunate to have been able to walk alongside her on several of her adventures along the border.

Louise has a life long fascination with families who have endured emotional cut off. She has brought the phenomena of cut off into people’s awareness, clarifying how past generations’ actions impinge on people’s current lives.  The question of cut off and its consequences is “in your face” along the border as many people come here to leave the past and search for a new life. Louise has pointed to the question- what is the cost of leaving your extended family? How are people prepared to deal with transition from rural to urban and factory life? What are the important things to keep in mind in order to maximize the chances for success in such moves?

Many have followed the allure of jobs and money to come to the border and found there is no infrastructure to support the basics of life.  People have torn themselves away from their roots to start over.  How many of these folks know it might be useful to stay connected to their extended families?  Who among these emigrants/immigrants really knows the difference it makes to manage themselves in their own family over a lifetime?

To be cut off from the family also occurs with emotional, not just physical distance.  Way back in 1989 Louise organized a meeting bringing Dr. Bowen to give a talk to the Winnebago Indians who were caught up in an epidemic of drug abuse.  First the chief spoke. He was an old man whose voice still carried strength as he spoke of the old ways with hints of wisdom and suffering.  The chief told the story of the modern era, how few were interested in the old ways or spoke the native language of the people. Tribal and family culture were being abandoned and along with them the identity of the people. Tribal members had become cut off from their history while living in the middle of it.

The chief was perhaps the only one in the tribe who could see this and talk about it. It was more than the problem of alcoholism.  It was the problem of those who had lost their history and who now did not know who they were.  In 1989 the tribe spent its time negotiating rights with the federal government.    Dependent on the federal government, the tribe was trying to regroup around the right to have casinos on reservations. The chief speculated that the loss of his peoples’ identity had opened the way for drug abuse and that abandoning one’s history was a problem that casinos would not solve.

Bowen was interested in the man’s wisdom. Rather than focus on the drug problems, which he noted were “squishy”, Bowen said that trying to make alcoholism better will only make it worse because “the strategy” is so focused on FIXING OTHERS.

Given these issues in the tribe (and in all of our lives to some degree or another), how do you hold someone responsible who is acting out or impinging on you?  How do you bring what is going on into awareness? How do you focus on self and not participate in blame or shame to control others? Are symptoms a part of one’s multigenerational family history? It is far more complex to understand a problem and relate to others when you do not want to get caught in the trap of telling others what they “should” do.

Bowen and the chief became fascinated with how you might rebuild a Winnebago nation once again.   Bowen explained that family systems theory was a way of thinking about a problem that allows people to know more about science and the world around them. With most serious questions, the answers are not immediately available as it involves changing self and not changing others.

Well, this was a difficult message to hear and understand for people who had come to the conference seeking answers.  A woman got up and said she just wanted her husband to stop drinking and then things would be better… wasn’t that the way everyone sees the drug problem?  (A hundred thousand people around the world were nodding their heads in agreement.)  But Bowen said:  “I hear you saying mostly the men have drinking problems. What about the woman? What kinds of problems do they have?”  “Weight,” the woman said.  “Well”, Bowen replied, “if the women worked on the weight problem then maybe the men would do better.”

That was not a happy moment in the room and the muttering began as the opposition in the group to the idea that you work on self rather than just blaming others, gathered steam.

The woman continued by saying that there were some problems that did not involve responsibility for each person as in sexual abuse, but Bowen kept the focus on each one’s part. It went something like this. Some believe that sexual abuse is only the responsibility of the abuser and that the “victim” has nothing to do with it. Yet woman can be playing some part in the problem, if only by being fearful of the man and then staying in the relationship, or by cutting off from her own family to join his, making herself more isolated and vulnerable.  Well, as you might imagine, things went from bad to worse and only the chief seemed to regard Bowen as worth listening to. Louise and I were glad to get out of town with our heads still on.

And that was the way it often was with Bowen. He focused like a laser on the way people influence each other.  He said what he saw, that the focus on others to be “fixed” or to do things “the right way”, was automatic, instinctual and out of awareness.   And such focus only intensified the symptoms because by focusing on fixing others, people didn’t have to think about working on self.

Both Louise Rauseo and Dr. Bowen found ways to refocus from what is “wrong” with others or identifying pathologies, to building awareness of emotional process and managing self in relationships.  The importance of this kind of leadership is the life long accumulation of knowledge with a focus on defining self while relating well to others.

Louise may not have made much progress that day but she has a way of taking on gigantic problems that start with self.  I am privileged to walk alongside Louise on some part of her journey of the challenges of seeing and understanding emotional process for those of us on both sides of the border.

Other who came from far away to participate in the conference and who helped make it a success: Victoria Harrison, Katie Long and Dan Papero.  Each has made a significant difference to the border programs over the years. The time with these important people, dedicated to making a difference in their communities, was a genuine celebration for all that Louise has accomplished.  It was also great fun. I so enjoyed the good questions from Louise’s husband, Nick, who has been a mainstay in this adventure in El Paso that began way back in 1993. We will see what these years of good work might produces in the future.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

The Center for the Study of Natural Systems and the Family (CSNSF) Border Programs sponsored the Mindful Compass meeting this year.  It was the last meeting for 2014, and as noted, honored Louise Rauseo as its retiring director.

Three people have volunteered to take over the job that Louise did. Ada Luisa Trillo, Anita Ochsner and Liza Richardson will develop future programs and projects to bring Bowen theory into the larger community.  Each woman has a history of working with Bowen theory in her own family, her field of work, and in projects such as understanding violence and resilience at the border (Ada Trillo), relationships and emotional process that have an impact on contemplative practice (Anita Ochsner), and the impact of anxiety on health care organizations (Liza Richardson).

The day before the conference I crossed the border into Mexico with several nuns and Rosa Villeela, the director of Centro Santa Catalina, to support this programs in Juarez, which enables families to function better.

This is a woman’s center with programs for women, a school with pre-kindergarten and kindergarten for young children and a sewing cooperative that allows some of the women to support themselves (www.centrosantacatalina.org).  Sister Donna Kustusch, OP, started this organization and Louise was glad to lend her a hand.  Now Ada Trillo is helping them in several ways, including the fundraiser she kindly invited me to where I signed copies of my book, Your Mindful Compass.

I am looking forward to seeing how each of these leaders develop programs that are important and useful in the years ahead.   This past conference was an example of how each person took responsibility and worked together effectively and creatively. Stay tuned, as further programs will be announced as they are developed.  http://csnsf.org/programs/descriptions-of-border-programs.

Louise Rauseo will continue to serve on the Board of Directors of CSNSF and will continue to travel to El Paso for her own research and teaching in the Border Programs there.  Victoria Harrison, Katie Long, and Ada Trillo are the other members of the CSNSF board.

Family Systems Forum, the quarterly publication of CSNSF, has published several articles by Louise Rauseo on migration and family emotional process, on violence and resilience, and on spirituality in the context of differentiation of self.

The latest two issues include an interview of Louise Rauseo by Katie Long, editor in chief of Family Systems Forum (FSF).   Back issues of FSF that include articles by Louise Rauseo can be located under http://csnsf.org/author-index-family-systems-forum. Please contact Victoria Harrison at vaharrison@sbcglobal.net if you want to discuss buying the collected works of Louise Rauseo.