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The Influence of Dr. Bowen: An Interview with Roberta Gilbert, MD

One question of historical importance is how Dr. Bowen managed himself to influence people to be able to think differently about what is a family emotional system and how do we participate in them?

I have published a few of a series of interviews with those who were influenced by Dr.Bowen.

This newest interview is with Roberta Gilbert, M.D. I asked her to reflect on how her relationship with Dr. Bowen influenced her life and her understanding of Bowen Theory.

I have known Robbie Gilbert since nineteen eighty when she first came to the Family Center. In this interview you can hear just how Bowen used himself to provoke her to question how she understood emotional systems.

From a theoretical perspective the greatest challenge is to see one’s self as part in an emotional system and to be able to take actions to become more separate from the pushes and pulls of these systems. Bowen had a unique way of enabling people to step outside their own system and to see it differently.

Dr. Gilbert is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Human Systems and is on the faculty of the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family (formerly Georgetown Family Center). She is a life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. In addition she is the author of five books that deal with applying Bowen theory to life.

Read the interview.
 

Filed under Bowen family systems theory

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