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Home > Papers > Illustration and Critique > The Model In Clinical Practice
 
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The Model In Clinical Practice

Bowen's is not a technique focused model which incorporates specific descriptions of how to structure therapy sessions.
The goal of therapy is to assist family members towards greater levels of differentiation, where there is less blaming, decreased reactivity and increased responsibility for self in the emotional system.
Perhaps the most distinctive aspects of Bowen's therapy are his emphasis on the therapist's own family of origin work, the central role of the therapist in directing conversation and his minimal focus on children in the process of therapy.
Bowen views therapy in three broad stages.
  1. Stage one aims to reduce clients' anxiety about the symptom by encouraging them to learn how the symptom is part of their pattern of relating.
  2. Stage two focuses adult clients on 'self' issues so as to increase their levels of differentiation.  Clients are helped to resist the pull of what Bowen termed the 'togetherness force' in the family (Bowen, 1971 in Bowen, 1978: 218).
  3. In the latter phases of therapy, adult clients are coached in differentiating themselves from their family of origin, the assumption being that gains in differentiation will automatically flow over into decreased anxiety and greater self-responsibility within the nuclear family system.

The Model In Clinical Practice
 
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This paper was written by Jenny Brown and was originally published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy (ANZJFT, 1999, Vol.20, No.2, pp 94-103).
The full paper is available as a pdf (221K - 10 pages - 2 columns per page).
Please contact us if you would like a printed copy sent in the post.
 
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