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'Fusion' or 'lack of differentiation' is where individual choices are set aside in the service of achieving harmony within the system.
Fusion can be expressed either as:
- a sense of intense responsibility for another's reactions, or
- by emotional 'cutoff' from the tension within a relationship
(Kerr and Bowen, 1988; Herz Brown, 1991).
Bowen's research led him to suggest that varying degrees of fusion are discernible in all families.
'Differentiation', by contrast, is described as the capacity of the individual to function autonomously by making self directed choices, while remaining emotionally connected to the intensity of a significant relationship system (Kerr and Bowen, 1988).
Bowen's notion of fusion has a different focus to Minuchin's concept of enmeshment, which is based on a lack of boundary between sub-systems (Minuchin, 1974). The structural terms 'enmeshment' and 'disengagement' are in fact the twin polarities of Bowen's 'fusion'.
Fusion describes each person's reactions within a relationship, rather than the overall structure of family relationships. Hence, anxiously cutting off the relationship is as much a sign of fusion as intense submissiveness. A person in a fused relationship reacts immediately (as if with a reflex, knee jerk response) to the perceived demands of another person, without being able to think through the choices or talk over relationship matters directly with the other person. Energy is invested in taking things personally (ensuring the emotional comfort of another), or in distancing oneself (ensuring one's own).
The greater a family's tendency to fuse, the less flexibility it will have in adapting to stress.
Bowen developed the idea of a 'differentiation of self scale' to assist in teaching this concept. He points out that this was not designed as an actual instrument for assigning people to particular levels (Kerr and Bowen, 1988: 97-98). Bowen maintains that the speculative nature of estimating a level of differentiation is compounded by factors such as stress levels, individual differences in reactivity to different stressors, and the degree of contact individuals have with their extended family. At one end of the scale, hypothetical 'complete differentiation' is said to exist in a person who has resolved their emotional attachment to their family (ie. shifted out of their roles in relationship triangles) and can therefore function as an individual within the family group.
Bowen did acknowledge that this was a lifelong process and that 'total' differentiation is not possible to attain.
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