At a time when family therapy is rediscovering its psychoanalytic roots (Quadrio, 1986; Luepnitz, 1988; Flaskas, 1993; James, 1992), it is important to be clear about the distinctions between psychodynamic and Bowenian approaches.

While both models are comprehensive in accounting for many aspects of human experience, the essential difference is that Bowen's focus is not the intrapsychic experience of the individual.  It focuses on the structure and workings of the system so that the individual can forge a different systemic role.

While in psychoanalysis, self understanding comes through the vehicle of the therapist / client relationship, in Bowenian therapy it comes from the between-session, planned action of the 'self in the system'.

In giving an overview of Bowen's model, this paper risks oversimplifying its in-depth formulation of family process.  My aim has been to summarise Bowen's core concepts and to give a flavour of how these influence the focus of therapy.  One needs to be mindful however, of potential pitfalls when using a family of origin model.

Bowen's focus on the distant to solve the proximate may take families on therapeutic paths which go beyond their request for the shortest possible road to symptom relief.

Without recent significant socio-political additions, Bowen's theory decontextualises relationship patterns that are powerfully informed by gender, ethnicity and class.

Those who adhere to a Bowenian framework speak of the appeal of its attention to complex family patterns in both vertical and horizontal time.

Perhaps what is most distinctive about Bowen's theory amongst systemic therapies, is that it directs therapists to consider their own roles in their families of origin so that they can personally experience the theory in order to appreciate its clinical application.