Family psychiatrist and researcher Murray Bowen's effort to contribute to a science of human behavior, led to the famous Family Study Project at NIMH and the later development of a formal theory of the family and its clinical application. Later known as Bowen theory, it represented a radical departure from the individualistic paradigm predominant in psychiatry. Following Bowen's mode, this book examines the interplay between the individual and the family in shaping the differential capacity to effectively adapt to life's many challenges.

The Handbook of Bowen Family Systems Theory and Research Methods presents innovative approaches on a range of issues inherent in family research and discusses the links between theory, data collection, and data analysis based on Bowen family systems theory. This multi-authored volume discusses core issues within family systems theory, including anxiety, stress, emotional cutoff, differentiation of self, multigenerational transmission process, and nuclear family emotional process. Chapters also examine related constructs in the research literature such as adaptation, resilience, social support, social networks, and intergenerational family relations. Readers will be able to view theoretical and methodological issues from the perspective of Bowen theory and develop a clearer knowledge of ways to navigate the challenges faced when studying individual, familial, and societal problems. An essential resource for clinicians and researchers in the social and natural sciences, the Handbook of Bowen Family Systems Theory and Research Methods provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the application of Bowen theory to family practice and family research.

The Family Emotional System: An Integrative Concept for Theory, Science, and Practice presents an ongoing dialogue among scientists, family investigators, and clinicians related to a natural systems view of the family and human behavior that has been occurring over several decades. The concept of the family as an emotional system, as defined in Bowen theory, is presented as the principal integrative concept underlying this dialogue and an effort to move toward a science of human behavior. As a natural system, the family forms the immediate and most important context for individual development, and may be the most central and important environment shaping brain development across the lifetime of the individual. This book explains how the family system can serve as an integrative framework within which specific factual discoveries and hypotheses from many areas of science can be brought together and understood as various manifestations of a coherent whole. The Family Emotional System provides understanding of what is entailed in conceptualizing the family as an emotional system, a sense of the breadth and depth of knowledge the sciences are contributing to this effort, and examples of how this theoretical framework contributes to family research and practice. The richness and excitement occurring in the ongoing dialogue between scientists and Bowen family systems practitioners and researchers is captured along with the promise it holds for the study of human behavior.

The Family Emotional System: An Integrative Concept for Theory, Science, and Practice presents an ongoing dialogue among scientists, family investigators, and clinicians related to a natural systems view of the family and human behavior that has been occurring over several decades. The concept of the family as an emotional system, as defined in Bowen theory, is presented as the principal integrative concept underlying this dialogue and an effort to move toward a science of human behavior. As a natural system, the family forms the immediate and most important context for individual development, and may be the most central and important environment shaping brain development across the lifetime of the individual. This book explains how the family system can serve as an integrative framework within which specific factual discoveries and hypotheses from many areas of science can be brought together and understood as various manifestations of a coherent whole. The Family Emotional System provides understanding of what is entailed in conceptualizing the family as an emotional system, a sense of the breadth and depth of knowledge the sciences are contributing to this effort, and examples of how this theoretical framework contributes to family research and practice. The richness and excitement occurring in the ongoing dialogue between scientists and Bowen family systems practitioners and researchers is captured along with the promise it holds for the study of human behavior.