Combining Theory with the Human Family

– [Dr Murray Bowen] There was the theory and I knew it within my bones, I knew it. There is a new theory that will replace Freud The world still doesn’t know it Because they all act as if it all came from Freud And when you put Freud in, you destroy the -isms of a new in theory And it’s gonna take us a hundred years to get out of that Because some people will continue to think Freud a hundred years from now. Freud is that accepted. So that’s one of the problems that goes with that Now, anyway I knew there it is The problem then, has been adding new concepts to it And I wondered, when I try to tell people this new theory they’re not interested Nobody was interested, nobody wants anything to do with it So I thought, there’s enough to it and I know it’s gonna be a theory Might be two hundred years before it’s accepted But I know it’s there in the basics So I moved to NIH. Of course those were golden years And that way of thinking enabled me to spin out one after another after another They came so fast that I couldn’t do any more than write ’em down. And that had to do with combining theory with the human family I just named it Family Systems Theory So that the average professional finds all they have to do is to look at the human family through Freudian Theory and they don’t have the systems theory. When I moved from NIH to Georgetown, incidentally, by that time I’d become fairly well known. I got lots of propositions for government work here and it went all the way from the west coast to the east coast and up and down. And you know one of the best ones came from George Reins at Georgetown George said, you’ve been working with schizophrenia I had, not because I was interested in schizophrenia but because schizophrenia had the kind of family that would lend itself to all families. that’s why I was there. I didn’t care nothing about people, or what is. You know, as far as I’m concerned, a schizophrenic is a human being! He’s not an object, the profession treated him as an object Why? Good question. Anyway, so that was the reason I got into that. At Georgetown I’ve now been thirty years extending the theory all kinds of extensions Which included the subject of this meeting which is, has to do with attachments of people to each other. Let me back up a minute, and get into some of the things about symbiosis. Back in the early days, I considered the intense attachment between mothers and patients as central to it. An awful lot had been written about about symbiosis And there exists in the literature as far as I was concerned, I found it back in the 1950’s one a book written in England which lists about thirty eight stages between parasitism and symbiosis. And what is symbiosis? That is when one in which the presence of one form of life makes a contribution to the other form of life. And when you start talking about the attachment to each other, reminds me of a popular song that’s been written by one of the folk singers; “Everybody needs somebody” If they don’t have somebody, they will find somebody And they’re gonna find somebody who has about the same level of differentiation as they have. Now to my satisfaction, I worked that out back at NIH. If you’re attached to somebody, they’re gonna have about the same level of differentiation that you have. And this has to do, gets into all this business about Individuality and togetherness. Togetherness is the, holds us all together. And you make the decision, in terms of what the group likes. Differentiation comes from Individuality. You don’t come from nobody except yourself! And if you don’t know the answer, you’ve got a problem And you don’t take it to the group to find out. So that that is the opposition, that’s the opposition at my NIH that was the opposition of many years And that’s the opposition at Georgetown. If you can’t solve your problem by deciding where you stand, then ask your neighbor Do a poll, all the people in your town, in your state, in your country. Send it around the world, who you going to put it in? I ain’t got group, one of them organizations How are you gonna stand up and be an individual unless you bother to know it yourself? And most people don’t want to bother. So that has to do with togetherness and individuality.