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In our life, the same situations are often reproduced, similar mistakes are made — after all, our decisions and choices are invisibly influenced by the fate of our ancestors. But the influence of family history is not fatal. Psychologist Ekaterina Zhornyak talks about the theory of family systems in psychotherapy.
Perhaps many of us will agree that actions and intentions are made and arise not only due to our personal characteristics and preferences, but also under the influence of the family. American psychotherapist Murray Bowen was one of the first to suggest that the family is a single organism, a system that lives according to certain laws. Problems, behavior, choices that we make throughout life, Bowen understood not as the result of our character traits and peculiarities of thinking, but, first of all, as a result of processes invisible to man himself, which happened to his ancestors for many generations and are repeated in his today’s family. Each of us is part of such a family system. Without realizing how it works, we automatically act in accordance with its laws. In the middle of the last century, Bowen managed to formulate the laws of life and development of family systems and create his own psychotherapeutic method. It allows us to become more independent from our family and at the same time maintain warm emotional relationships with loved ones.
family drawing
Marina is married for the third time. She has a 12-year-old son from her first marriage, and a 7-year-old daughter from her second. She separated from their fathers on her own initiative shortly after the birth of the children. Now Marina is 32 years old, she is expecting a child again, and two weeks ago she invited her husband to live separately. Each time, in her chosen ones, Marina saw strong, successful men who could become a support for her children. When she became pregnant, her eyes seemed to open and it seemed to her that a weak, weak-willed person was nearby, who only burdened her life. Marina considers herself a strong woman and is sure that she can raise three children alone. But for the first time, she wondered why everything was repeating itself. Does it depend on her? And is there a chance to change this life story?
Working according to the Bowen method, the psychotherapist invited Marina to do a study of the history of her large family. And for this, build a genogram — graphically depict family ties (including all ancestors and relatives — your own and three husbands). In order to reflect many exact facts on the genogram: names, dates of birth and death, professions, moves, illnesses, the nature of relationships, Marina met with relatives, learning all the new details, filling in the gaps, revealing family secrets. And as a result, she had… a choice. Discussing the genogram with the therapist, she saw by what laws her family “functions” for many years and how, being part of the system, she obeys these laws, acting primarily on the basis of emotions, and not reason (even when it seems to her that she has thought everything through down to the smallest detail). She had the opportunity to choose which parts of her family history she could draw on and which parts were not useful to her.
Between feelings and reason
Murray Bowen believed that we are all, to varying degrees, able to distinguish between our emotional and intellectual lives. When emotions control the mind, we lose control over our own lives, we find ourselves at the mercy of passions, other people’s views, dogmas and myths. And vice versa, relying on our ideas, values and beliefs, we make a conscious choice and stop sailing at the behest of the waves. The more these two systems are separated (that is, the higher the level of differentiation of the “I”), the easier it is for us to cope with any life situations. Murray Bowen compiled a scale that reflected our ability to distinguish between our own experiences and objective facts.
«Pseudo-I» and the integral «I»
From early childhood, under the emotional pressure of first family, then friends, classmates, we develop the so-called «pseudo-I». This part of our personality is controlled by emotions, it is contradictory and unstable and consists of many beliefs and attitudes that we share only because our environment considers them correct. And often they contradict each other. Murray Bowen believed that in the course of life, relying on the mind, we can develop another — a holistic «I», which consists of thoughtful and consciously chosen principles and beliefs. They are coordinated with each other, therefore, for example, when making a decision, we feel responsible for it. And getting into special (stressful) circumstances in which there is a strong emotional tension, he is able to make an independent choice rationally, and not succumbing to emotions. And the more developed our integral «I» is, the more objectively we can assess the situation, relying not on feelings and stereotyped beliefs, but on reason. And the higher our level of differentiation of «I».
How do we choose a partner
Bowen believed that the partners have this level is about the same. Parents pass it on to their children, and when they grow up, they choose a partner, focusing on the one who is close to them, including the differentiation of emotions and intelligence. When two people with a level of differentiation below the average enter into an emotionally close relationship, their «pseudo-Selves» merge. This happened every time with Marina, when she «plunged into boundless love.» Such a rapprochement threatens to lose oneself, which is why Marina could feel strong again only by breaking off relations. Such an «emotional gap» is the other side of the «fusion». Children who have ceased contact with their parents, spouses who formally communicate with each other, continue to be in an emotionally ultra-close relationship and distance themselves in order to protect themselves from such a merger. However, alone, they also feel insecure, because they lack their own integrity, but they (just like Marina) are again looking for it in another.
From generation to generation
Paired with a low level of differentiation, anxiety constantly accumulates, and the third one helps to relieve tension. If a child grows up in a family, he automatically connects to the parental couple, forming an emotional triangle with them. And the relationship in it is always quite definite. For example: cold between spouses, very close to daughter and mother, and distant between daughter and father. It was this basic triangle that was passed down from generation to generation in Marina’s family.
Many years ago, her grandmother Sonya lost three husbands. The first died in the Stalinist camps, and the grandmother was forced to leave Moscow with her one-year-old son. Catching a cold on the way, the boy soon died. During World War II, her second husband died. Then she remarried, gave birth to a daughter, Anna (Marina’s mother), and five years after the illness, he also died … When Anna got married years later, she (like her mother, and later her daughter) dreamed of finding support in a man, first of all . But she felt an unaccountable anxiety (we now know its origin), which told her that men could not be relied upon. This anxiety made her notice the smallest signs of her husband’s «unreliability» and move away from him more and more, habitually finding understanding and support from her mother, and eventually from her daughter. After 15 years, they nevertheless broke up … Marina always felt a special closeness with her mother and grandmother, and her father seemed to her very distant, distant. And now Marina got family anxiety: her three husbands are alive, but she does not communicate with them, as if they had died, like her grandmother’s husbands. She feels that there is some kind of barrier between her and her eldest son, but she is very close with her daughter, Sonya. Little Sonya does not communicate with her father. When she was six years old, she comforted her mother: “Mom, don’t worry, I will grow up and give birth to a girl without a dad.” Probably, Sonya has already received a family message.
Exploring her family history as part of Murray Bowen’s therapy, Marina explored the relationships in her family, learned family myths and patterns of her large family system. She saw that relationship patterns that were useful in the old days continued to replicate in her life—automatically and utterly pointlessly. Like her mother, she made decisions emotionally, based on unconscious anxiety. Marina’s «Pseudo-I» was developed much more than the integral «I», but, having explored her family system, she was able to become more independent of the influence of emotions and strengthened her integral «I» — she was able to communicate constructively with relatives, without expecting approval and without fear be rejected.
Collecting information for the genogram, after a long break, she began to communicate with her father and brother. And I learned about other, alternative stories and models of relationships. Among the ancestors of her father were men who, in difficult times, saved the whole family. These stories have become a resource for internal changes for Marina. She began to communicate more with her son, and he admitted that he secretly communicates with his father. Marina called him, then her second husband. And her daughter met her father. Marina has improved relations with her current husband.
Bowen believed that when the differentiation of one family member increases, the entire family system gradually moves to a higher level of functioning. So now not only Marina, but also her relatives, including children, have more chances to build their lives based on their own choice.