Customer Reviews

Family Therapy in Clinical Practice

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a well organized, thoughtful book telling the origins and details of Bowen theory. I particularly like the many cases covered in this book. It appears that they got promising results in helping families with schizophrenic children. There is also a chapter where Dr. Bowen talks about his own efforts at differentiating within his family of origin. It's one thing to talk theory--another to apply it to yourself and then write about it. Fantastic.

There is something very compelling about Bowen's approach, and his insistence on being able to link it with scientific techniques. If you've given up on the more accepted "30 years and a couch" approaches, take a look at Bowen theory.

If you can't find the book here, try the website of the new publisher, "Roman & Littlefield".

It's rare to find books that are both academically credible and accessible to the layperson. This book is the exception, and the content is truly life changing. It is unfortunate that most of the people who read this book are psychologists or psychiatrists who see it as "just another method" and go back to their simplistic "find the problem and fix it" techniques.

Reading this book has helped me understand myself, my family, my work environment, my social environment, and human culture.

Dr. Bowen begins by exploring the mother/child bond to understand human functioning. Soon fathers are seen as vital to this understanding, then the nuclear and extended family. Multi-generational patterns, cutoffs, sibling positions, and triangles are some of the family issues explored. Bowen shows how this broad family perspective inpacts family therapy, as well as understanding societal emotional process.

The scope of the thinking that went into producing "Family Therapy in Clinical Practice" is phenominal and rare. I have thought this book to be a seminal study of the intricate relationship patterns that existed and repeated with more or less intensity over multiple generations. But more than that, it presents a way of thinking that is very different and ambitious for a layman like myself. It requires looking at relationships, whether in the family or among friends, in the workplace or at school, or in a social setting, in an entirely different way than I had been taught directly or indirectly throughout my life. I found the clear thinking and lack of jargon helpful and refreshing. Dr. Bowen's theories have helped me think through my own relationship systems and given me many clues that helped put systems thinking into practice at critical times -- wishfully, it would have been at all times!

It's rare to find books that are both academically credible and accessible to the layperson. This book is the exception, and the content is truly life changing. It is unfortunate that most of the people who read this book are psychologists or psychiatrists who see it as "just another method" and go back to their simplistic "find the problem and fix it" techniques.

Reading this book has helped me understand myself, my family, my work environment, my social environment, and human culture.

The beauty of Bowen's theory of family dynamics is it's simplicity. Long before the terms codependent were ever written, Bowen used the terms Fusion and Differentiation to describe the human dance in separating emotion and logic. Bowen's concepts are not only applicable to families but are applicable to organizations and even relations between nation states. I give great credence to many postmodern philosophies that have developed in the field of Marriage and Family therapy, however I do not think that we can ever underestimate the enormous contribution that Murray Bowen gave to us in understanding how individuals develop within the family system!

Very good discussion of family systems, and problems and resolutions for dysfunctionality.Family Therapy in Clinical Practice