The Origins of Family Psychotherapy: The NIMH Family Study Project
The Origins of Family Psychotherapy: The NIMH Family Study Projectby Murray Bowen provides an intimate and detailed picture of Bowen’s early thoughts on systems theory. . .Bowen’s original works provide an interesting and informative read.(PsycCRITIQUES)“Dr. John Butler’s commentary on original papers takes the reader on to the research ward of Bowen’s NIMH project and into the staff discussions and observations. How the research operated, difficulties encountered, and how the ideas were presented within NIMH and within the field of psychiatry can be found in these papers. Discovery awaits the reader in matching the observations and understandings with the first seven concepts of Bowen’s theory. Using Dr. Bowen’s own words, this book fills the knowledge gap that prompts the question ‘Where is the research?’ It is here thanks to Dr. Butler’s quest.”(Catherine Rakow, MSW, Western Pennsylvania Family Center)"Dr. Jack Butler’s collection of original writings of Dr. Murray Bowen from 1954 to 1959 is a goldmine for undergraduate and graduate students, clinicians, researchers, and serious students of Bowen family systems theory. Through compiling Dr. Bowen’s papers, Dr. Butler illustrates how the development of family systems theory was influenced through research in hospitalizing families of schizophrenics in The Family Study Project at NIMH. Particularly significant from this period is the groundbreaking idea of the family as an emotional unit, the development of family psychotherapy, and the emergence of a new role for the therapist. These writings provide a fascinating look at a new paradigm about human functioning which was divergent from traditional psychoanalytic ideas. This book is well worth the read to track a period of immense creativity in family theory, to observe how new ideas develop, and to learn more about the foundations of Bowen family systems theory."(Anne McKnight, PhD, Director of the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family)“Dr. Butler’s compilation of seminal papers from Dr. Bowen’s family study project at the NIMH represents a major contribution to the literature available on the origins of family psychotherapy, and specifically on the origins of the Bowen theory. The clinician may find the theoretical explanations of the family as a unit or single organism linked to specific descriptions of the goals and behavior of the clinician helpful. The description offunctional helplessnessand the shifting patterns of strength and weakness in family relationships conveys familial struggles far more accurately and efficiently than the more conventional diagnostic schema still currently employed. This volume conveys to the contemporary the excitement of discovery and of new approaches that energized Bowen’s research effort, highlights the value of observational research for the clinician, and provides theoretical challenges to the modern clinician to expand thinking and to consider the family as the unit of treatment.”(Dan Papero, PhD, the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family)