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Acknowledging 100 years since Murray Bowen was born

by Andrea February 28, 2013

I have been working on my book Create Your Mindful Compass:Navigating through the Social Jungle, for the past several years. This is a peek into the book which starts as it should with gratitude:

I am deeply grateful to Murray Bowen. He believed in me when I was struggling, gave me a hand up, accepted me into postgraduate training at the Georgetown Family Center despite my having only two years of college, and then allowed me to take photos in exchange for tuition to various symposiums. After four years of family systems theory training, he hired me to work at the Georgetown University Family Center as the audio visual (A/V) coordinator, saying it was easier to teach me the A/V role than teach an A/V expert Bowen theory.

I quickly recognized that what Bowen said was so far from mainstream psychiatry that taping him and re-listening would be the only way to grasp this totally new way of thinking. A/V coordinator was perfect for me. As a teacher Bowen was, at times, direct and challenging. Using metaphors, paradox, and even slights of hand as a Zen master might, he delivered his out-of-sync, interrupting messages. Each of us has our way of seeing things, our perceptual blindness, our way of getting along with others, and our beliefs as to how the world is. How does anyone interrupt,  allowing others to think differently?    Read more....

Filed under Bowen family systems theory, Family

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