Family Systems
A Journal of Natural Systems Theory in Psychiatry and the
Sciences
Current Issue: Volume 7, Number 1
ARTICLES
The New Leaders: Leadership Transition in Family Businesses
Kathleen Riordan, MSW
pp. 7-27
This is an anecdotal report of a two-year study of eight second-generation business leaders in family owned businesses. The eight leaders were interviewed over a two-year period. These second generation leaders were heading up small-to medium-sized copier dealerships in various parts of the United States. The businesses were all privately held and were either started by or purchased by a family member of the previous generation.
Family Psychotherapy in Office Practice
Murray Bowen, MD
pp. 29-43
This paper will describe some experiences with family psychotherapy for a wide range of problems treated in the office practice of psychotherapy. The starting point was a formal family research project in which fathers, mothers, and normal siblings lived on a research ward with tpsychotic patients in a continuing “in residence” observation and treatment situation. A few months later, I began using it with an increasing number of families in my part-time private practice. The research provided the ideas, and the practice provided clinical experience with different kinds of problems. In five years, this method of family psychotherapy was used with ninety-four families, for problems ranging from those with an overtly psychotic family member to those with fairly simple neurotic problems. The group included sixteen families with an overtly psychotic offspring, nine families with delinquent or near delinquent problems in teenage children, twenty-one families with behavior and learning problems in pre- or post-adolescent children, and forty-eight husband-wife families with problems ranging from those in which one spouse was overtly psychotic, to those that began with intensive analytic treatment for one spouse and terminated with family psychotherapy (it would really be more accurate to call this family psychoanalysis) for both. Treatment course have ranged from brief family psychotherapy of six to twenty hours to fairly long-term psychotherapy of 200 to 300 hours extending over two to three years.
Heroin Addicts, Family, and Recovery: A Pilot Study
Joan Jurkowski, LCPC
pp. 45-66
Using Bowen family systems theory as a guide, the researcher examined whether or not frequent family contacts correlated with successful recovery from heroin addiction. In addition to family relationships, other demographic and treatment factors were compared. Bowen theory was used as a model for a theory of addiction. This theory views symptoms as influenced by a multitude of factors including anxiety, family relationship patterns, and position in the family. Emotional cutoff, one of the theory's concepts was addressed in the study. One hundred and ten heroin addicts were interviewed and admitted to a small residential drug treatment program in Baltimore, Maryland. Many of the subjects had daily contact and/or lived with their mothers, indicating a strong attachment to the mother. Contact with their fathers and extended family was comparatively limited. Despite the hypothesis, frequent family contact did not seem to influence, either positively or negatively, whether a subject was abstinent after treatment or relapsed. In fact, most people did not complete treatment. Subjects who completed treatment were all drug free at one month follow-up. Previous employment and absence of prior psychiatric hospitalization also correlated with abstinence. Ultimately, it appeared that treatment effectiveness was associated with individuals with responsible and independent behaviors, regardless of their family contacts.
FACULTY CASE CONFERENCE
A Methodological Experiment with a Quasi Mother Child Relationship
Presenter: Kathleen B. Kerr, MSN, MA
pp. 66-82
This case represents a methodological experiment. The two people seen
together are first cousins once removed. The older female is the younger
male’s guardian and emotional mother. Theoretically based methodology
does not suggest seeing a financially dependent young person with his
mother. All too often in such an arrangement the mother comes to help
the therapist fix the young person and is unwilling to look at herself.
For a number of reasons the therapist didn’t think it would be efficacious
to see these two separately. Yet while seeing them together, could the
therapist address the emotional mother’s part in their reciprocal
relationship equally to the symptomatic young person’s behavior? It seems
it has been possible to do so.
Book Reviews
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Steven Pinker, PhD
reviewed by Carolyn Jacobs, PsyD
pp. 83-90
Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection
Deborah Blum
reviewed by Ann D. Bunting, PhD
pp. 91-96
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