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Abstracts from the Recent Salon:
Integrating Bowen Family Systems in an Educational Environment
Kate Regan
An understanding of Bowen Family Systems empowers teachers to provide a responsive learning environment designed to perpetuate a continuum of growth both cognitively and emotionally. Through a good many years of teaching in Pre-school through 12th grade, I have become keenly aware of the emotional impact of the student in my classroom. The social-emotional child is either the barrier or the springboard for my being able to teach -truly teach. Over the years when I have seen a student expressing some kind of resistance, my knee-jerk reaction has been to look at the family for a better understanding. The "How’s" and "Why’s" help me to create an opportunity for my student. Bowen Family Systems provides a framework for new direction, while including myself and my family experiences in the process. Acknowledging the whole system in place simply makes for good teaching practice.
In a time of intense "standardization" in the field, it becomes increasingly difficult to address the humanity that is so much a part of what education is to me. The child, family, teacher, and school all greatly form the web of community. Bowen Family Systems ensures that I hold on to my beliefs and experiences in the face of a functionalist paradigm. It becomes my window for seeing, my window for providing strategies that will empower my students to come to a better and more complex understanding of their world. As well, it supports my responsibility in providing opportunities that will meet the student at their own level, while bridging personal knowledge and experience with curriculum. This creates a successful learning and teaching environment. The growing body of research in education addresses the value in connection to one’s personal life as a foundation for success. Understanding through the perspective of the family system creates inclusive, balanced environments in a time of exclusionary singular forces.
Exploring the Application of Family Systems Theory(FST) to Forest Service
Management: The role of natural resource managers' emotions in decision-making and
conflict.
Kennedy, Joan W.
Conflict over natural resources decisions is an on-going problem. The
emotions of the primary decision-maker (the manager) are not generally
studied. This research asks, "What is the effect of natural resources
managers' emotions on decision-making processes and conflict
situations?"
The author reviews the research goal, and findings, offering alternative
interpretations of conflict over natural resource decisions, and
introducing the Consilience Decision-making Model.
Key words: conflict, decisions, manager, communication, Forest Service,
family systems theory.
Language, Bowen theory and Death
Thomas J. Schur
The foundational thesis for this presentation is that language is a major part of the Emotional System in Bowen theory. This is based on the notion that language is primarily a physiological process of the brain in a network of human nervous systems, rather than a psychological one between two separate people. Further, language is a major factor in the evolution of the brain, and is what distinguishes humans from animals on this physiological basis.
Building on this foundation thesis, the consequent thesis is that language then becomes a mode of differentiation for humans, where awareness of mortality is a major factor in the process of self-reference in a system. Language allows consciousness, and then awareness of mortality, and then existential anxiety with the focus on self. Differentiation for the human requires the use of language to manage the anxiety in the functioning of the brain in the network with other humans.
Succession Narrative
Abstract of a Thought Paper presented to The Syracuse Family Center
Douglas H. Ort, M.Div.
Bowen Theory is a set of eight inter-related concepts that evolved over roughly a twenty-year period of time. Each is connected to the others as recursive expressions of multi-generational relationship dynamics that locate human functioning to non-human natural patterns. Dr. Bowen kept space in the Theory for what some call a ninth concept, implicitly recognizing that the Theory ought to be capable of talking about the relationship between the "something more" of human existence and the main body of the Theory itself.
"Succession Narrative" is a term used to identify important narrative sections of the Hebrew Scriptures. A major feature of much narrative history has to do with succession, with how and in what manner families, tribes and cultures are connected and located. It is a way to locate (originally) hearers in a stream of conscious connection from those who have gone before, through the present, and into the world of the as-yet unborn.
The central feature of evolution is succession: how shall we live so as to optimize survival and thriving for our children, family, clan, people. DNA provides a constellation of opportunities (and limitations). Family emotional process contributes to activation (and suppression) of genetic potential.
The link between family emotional system and history is a community’s narrative (which includes language, ideas, stories, art, music, dance, drama, etc.). A symbolic species cannot not tell it's stories. The Ninth Concept is not about a particular narrative, but about our species’ innate propensity to tell stories about how we think the world is, and so optimize succession. The Eight are the components of every story deemed relevant by Bowen Theory’s effort to understand human existence scientifically. Homo sapiens are "wired" to live. Stories are echoes of succession narratives that are themselves the germ of all DNA.