Some people seemed to forget they were expected to keep track of their sessions with Dr. Bowen and submit their own insurance claims. Often they expected him to keep all the records and billing information. The insurance issue was often complicated by requirements for a diagnosis for one “identified patient.”
There are a number of letters in his archives responding to these requests, stating, in no uncertain terms, his position and practice. The following letter of July 1975 is a typical one.
I refuse to provide you with a statement about your sanity, or lack of it, because I consider it ludicrous for you to even respond to anxious accusations about sanity or psychiatric diagnoses. There might be a place for such a diagnosis when one person is obviously dysfunctional, but this is not the case here. In your family, when people start hurling psychiatric diagnoses at each other, it is a name calling contest. I was so sure that the legal people would be aware of this that I refused to have anything to do with it. A few times in my life, when people have pushed to have a diagnosis made on one person, I have taken the position that I refused to diagnose one unless we also diagnose all the others.
Sincerely,
Murray Bowen