Bowen Theory's Secrets : Revealing the Hidden Life of Families

Murray Bowen (1931-1990) was the first to study the family in a live-in setting and describe specific details about how families function as systems.Despite Bowen theory being based on research begun more than seventy years ago, the value of viewing human beings as profoundly emotionally-driven creatures and human families functioning as emotional units is more relevant than ever.This book, written by one of his closest collaborators, updates his still-radical theory with the latest approaches to understanding emotional development. Reduced to its most fundamental level, Bowen theory explains how people begin a relationship very close emotionally but become more distant over time.The ideas also help explain why good people do bad things, and bad people do good things, and how family life strengthens some members while weakening others.Gaining knowledge about previously unseen specifics of family interactions reveals a hidden life of families.The hidden life explains how the best of int