FEST Writing Group

June 1^st  2021.  (If you would like to see the photos please let me know and I will send you a copy with photos)

 

Introduction:     From the focus on the  individual to learning about the family as a system 1-5

Prologue: An overview: The many ways I learned from Murray Bowen, MD  6-8 –

 

Chapter One:     Before Bowen: Living in a family that is falling apart. 11 –

 

Chapter Two:    After Bowen: Encountering Murray Bowen, MD  16–

 

Chapter Three:  Stories I remember: Bowen and his way of teaching: 14-17

 

Chapter Four:    Own Family and the science of human behavior. 17 –

 

Chapter Five:    Welcome to science: conferences and the audiences

 

Chapter Six:      What do mice have to say about the future for the human?

 

Chapter Seven:  Where Now: A time line of the Development of  Bowen Theory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction: From the individual to learning about the family as a system

 

Two very different parts of my life nurtured and challenged each other.  First, the reason I became interested in understanding human behavior – my brother Butch, went “crazy” in 1974.

 

Most people so enjoy the funny story of how my brother outwitted his family and friends as his brain became hyper-focused on becoming a savior for us all.

 

And in this case, a bit of mania woke at least my part of the family up.

 

 

What was going on?

 

 

How did my brother fall apart?

 

 

To find the answers to these questions required the good fortune to meet Murray Bowen M.D. and be open to a new way of thinking and being.

 

After six months of working in a psychiatric hospital in 1976, I met Dr. Bowen at a conference on alcoholism that the hospital sponsored. Luck was on my side.

 

After listening to his talk about life-long learning and de-twitching mice to cure alcoholism, I was hooked, and afterward, went up to him and said,   “I want to learn everything there is to know about families, but I am officially uneducated. I have only two years of college. What kind of courses do you have for someone like me?”

 

Bowen took my name and then they sent along application form and despite or because of my lack of a terminal degree, they accepted me into the postgraduate training. Talk about luck! My life changed course through a lucky break.  For the next fourteen. years, I was able to learn from and work for Bowen.

 

Then after four years of post-graduate work, Dr. Bowen hired me as his audio-visual coordinator. I moved to Washington DC from Virginia Beach and started a new adventure.

 

Perhaps Bowen picked me to be in the post-graduate program as he sensed my family was a good one to research and I had high motivation. Of course, it was the seventies. Many families were in trouble, but our family was special, we had high-level emotional issues, not easy going problems.

 

 

Photograph by Andrea Schara    Copyright NLM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were many other people  celebrating that hot day in Richmond.  I had arrived early and went in to have breakfast at the cafeteria, not knowing who was who?  I just  happened to sit with Henry Letter, MD who was trying to get Bowen to run the mental health clinics in the state of Virginia. He leaned over towards me and pointing at Bowen he said “That man is a genius”

 

After the conference I waited around as people were talking about going to someone’s house.  I asked if it was an open invitation and Bowen said yes, and then he and another faculty member made a map so I could find the way to the party.

 

The only one I really knew there was  Michael Kerr as I had talked to him on the phone about my acceptance into the post graduate program.

 

 

I am a natural observer and photographer.

I lived with symptomatic parents for a few years after WW II.

 

 

 

 

Frank Giovie and Dan Papero.                                   Dr Bowen and Mike Kerr

Photographs by Andrea Schara    Copyright NLM

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I would  say, “All this awful stuff happened but without awfulness there would be no motivation to learn, to understand.

 

Without my brother falling apart, would I have ever met Murray Bowen, MD?  The curious man with a deep and abiding interest in understanding the family as an emotional unit.

 

Would I have ever questioned the ways of psychiatry and mental health?

 

Would I have been led to observe the secret language of the family’s emotional system?

 

The need for knowledge was high as this first-hand account of a family story tells you. 

 

Overwhelmed with problems the small family unit was striving to manage a time of increasing anxiety.  There had been the death of three grandparents (1964, 1967, 1971, 1974,  and one parents over the last few years.  The one parent who was left, my mother, and she was on the verge of death and died the day Butch was sent to the hospital by a judge.

 

 

 

 

 

Just to give you a few phots of the circles and squares: My maternal grandmother. Anna Wales married Walter Maher at the start of  WWI. 1917

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These two grandparents were kind enough to adopt us in 1952.

 

Both parents looked very capable before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Still My grandfather does not look as interested in the baby as the woman.  Walter  appears to be more interested in my father who took the photo. You see how easy it is to bring subjectivity into photographs.

What happens when you put in dates?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is one photo of my mother  as a small child with her grandfather, Nicholas Dominic Maher. As the President of the Norfolk and Western Railroad, he was “blamed” for spoiling my mother and his other grandchildren.  But that is a story for another day.

 

 

My mother had been cut off from her family for years, her death would coincide with my brother spinning out of control.

 

With just myself and my maternal grandfather as the function ones, well, there were just not enough people to bail out the boat. And my brother Butch somehow knew that, and he was bailing the boat the only way he knew how.

 

For those who could observe family struggles, they might have been able to observe how the anxiety in the family was wrapping itself around the most vulnerable one in the family, Butch.  On the day my brother Butch announced, he is Jesus Christ, it was clear that the anxiety binder for the ages had appeared in our weakened family.

 

My grandfather and I were both taken aback and unprepared to deal with so-called mental illness.  The story of Butch’s unwinding shows the creative nature of those labeled as mentally ill. Perhaps this story hints as to what makes mother nature keep these genes alive and well in the pool of life.

 

After two years of dealing with mental illness in all of us, I was able to get a job in a psychiatric hospital. A perfect place to learn, to see what they thought were the best treatments. I quickly saw that hospitals were not capable of enabling families to deal with alcoholism much less manic-depressive or schizophrenia illness.

 

The people were hard to relate to, especially if you thought you could control them and make them grow up. Instead, the hospital offered a shelter, a place to get sober, and some basic solutions as to taking Valium or Librium instead of cocaine or alcohol.

 

One continuing bonus for me, the hospital had a library so here during the night shift I could read about the history of psychiatry and what others were described as family therapy.  NO one talked about a theory until I met Bowen.

 

 

The start of photographing Bowen.

 

When Bowen’s book was published in 1978, I decided to go up to NY for the publishing event and took some candid photos, which I gave to him.

 

Following that at another meeting Bowen was at the board, drawing families and I took Bowen’s favorite picture of himself.  You might notice I moved around to get Bowen closer to the circle than to the square.

 

 

Photograph by Andrea Schara    Copyright NLM

 

 

Bowen then invited me to take photographs to gain free admission to his monthly clinical conferences and other programs.

 

Then in1980 he hired me to be his audio-visual coordinator.  As he noted.  It is a lot easier to train someone who knew Bowen Theory to run a camera, than it is to train someone who knew how to run a camera, Bowen Theory.

 

Andrea “Punkin” Schara, 1977.

As the Audiovisual coordinator 1980

Human Family Conference

 

Initially, I took photographs of Bowen’s many conferences while interacting with him and his group at the Georgetown University Family Center.  Then I began to video tape all his conferences. Once a month we went to Walter Reed where Dr. Bowen would interview families. One family was seen for eleven years, and two others were seen for fifteen years.

 

As an outsider and a insider I was able to questions and learn more about how to think systems,

and how to manage myself with family, friends and co-workers.

 

All this took place from 1976 to 1990 when Dr. Bowen died.

 

 

 

 

Since then, I have worked with the Murray Bowen Archives Project to keep his original work available to others.  This book is my journey of learning as an apprentice.

 

Prologue: An overview of learning from watching and listening to Murray Bowen, MD

 

 

Most of what I am writing about is formed by memories of the past.  What was it that stood out that seemed to be so important that  gave me some kind of grounding?

 

All to say memories are not video cameras. Therefore, the distortion and bias are part of this story. There are facts and I am sure you the reader can separate fact from subjectivity.  Hopefully each will find, in between the covers of this book, a few ideas as to the challenges that life presents. Perhaps one can see how Bowen and his theory point to a deeper understanding of human behavior.  There will continue to be the ever-growing challenge of learning Bowen family systems theory in a world governed by individual thinking.

 

Bowen seemed to have a single focus – he was in search of a scientific way to understand human behavior.

 

Science had a way of separating subjectivity from facts. This made sense to Bowen, who  based his observations of the family over may years, to an emotional unit, that was part of evolutionary forces.

 

The emotional system, a complex guidance system that was ancient, with all kinds of emotional feelings that could overwhelm the more rational guidance system that was also present in the human.

 

Writing many papers, Bowen was describing brand new observations as to how the emotional system worked. Few of his collogues were interested in a family systems view of human behavior.  People were satisfied to find a few tricks to solve the immediate problems.

 

This short-term fix did not give people the time to think deeply about the nature of systems.  Bowen attracted large audiences as he could ask amazing questions revealing how people functioned in relationships but who really cared?

 

Was anyone interested in knowing the secret language of the emotional system? As a participant/observer in his own family and organization, Bowen wrote, spoke and revealed his understanding of the family as a multigenerational system.  But that did not indicate that everyone who read what he wrote would get what he was trying to communicate.

 

Each of us have blind spots, and beliefs that make it hard to hard to unlearn, or even questions the common and accepted way of seeing. Therefore, IMO very few really understood what Bowen was describing.

 

His observations were too far away from conventional psychiatry, which saw the problem in the individual and the family as a confounding variable.

 

Bowen saw a family in a regression but with natural leaders in the family who with a little coaching and a lot of motivation could lead the family out of disaster.

 

Instead of being guided by Greek plays to describe the family, Bowen saw the family as an emotional unit under the guidance of evolution.  Therefore, all kinds of social systems, like primitive bacteria, bees, ants or even slime mold and monkeys could shed light on social systems.

 

I thought his life work was to observe, describe the human family, develop his theory as an open system and then challenge people to see if they could perceive how the system functioned.

 

Therefore, my reason for videotaping and photographing Bowen.

 

His way of interacting and teaching needed to be preserved, as Bowen had a unique way of seeing the human and a unique way of “teaching.”

 

The photographs give those interested a snapshot of  life in the late seventies and eighties.  .

then sparked Bowen’s idea of an exchange. Photographs for admission to the Family Centers various programs.

 

Photographs are magical. They allow anyone to slow down time and to observe and consider for one’s self what is going on here?

 

Perhaps photographs allow you to see the way Bowen was, and hint at the way he related that made such a profound difference in so many people’s lives.

 

I recall when he was awarded an award from the Medical College of Virginia for being the first psychiatrists to videotape live sessions with real clients.  As I was taking photos, he came up to me and said “You see that guy, Allan Entin? Yes, you see his wife?

 

Well then, tell me who is leading in that marriage?”

 

I photographed those attending conferences and those who were making an effort to have the Family Center become a beacon for differentiation of self.  Some were looking for miracles and a new way of treating families with mental health issues.

 

But eventually the crowds diminished when the miracles weren’t forthcoming and those who remained were moving towards science.

 

Each person at the Family Center was challenged by Bowen to understand human behavior in light of a more scientific understanding of the emotional system.

 

There was seriousness to all of this, but there was also a small group that could challenge and celebrate and to some extent learn from each other. I am so grateful that I got to be part of a great real-life experiment.

 

 

Chapter One: Living in a family that is falling apart.

 

One coolish day in April of 1974 I got a call from my brother Butch. He was on his way over with some good news.  Butch arrives in his old blue surfing van, jumps out and excitedly told me his very good news.

 

“I am Jesus.”

 

Yes, Butch has come to heal us all.

 

Although there was some underlying truth to him being a healer, at that moment I simply panicked.  All of a sudden, I was dragged into his crazy story that made no sense.

What was he talking about?

 

Butch goes on to say as Jesus, he will save us by going into politics. Yes, now he was going to rent the convention center and run for state senator of Virginia.

 

Not to worry about money as a famous singer, Linda Ronstadt would come and sing her famous song: “When Will I Be Loved.” Clearly, this would make Butch a ton of money, enough to finance his run for the senate.

 

OK maybe Butch, like her song says, had been cheated and mistreated.  And now he was going to rise up and save us all.  Clearly, he was talking nonsense.

What could I say?  What could I do?

 

Yes, Butch had been living far outside the traditional path.  Surfing gave his life meaning, direction and purpose. Golfing, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and loving woman, that was his life. But in the midst of his mother’s illness and soon-to-be death, Butch had done a complete change.  From being a freedom-loving person now he was the commander of our salvation.

Holy cow!

 

Of course, there had been slow changes since my mother’s last visit but nothing alarming.

 

I thought Butch was getting ready to settle down and maybe marry this new woman from Australia, Evonne.  She was a great catch and they had been traveling.  In fact, they had gone to his first AA meeting right after his mother left.  He even quit smoking.  Yes, Butch seemed on a new and better path.

 

Until that fine day in April he had never thought he was a healer, nor had he ever wanted to run for political office.  It seemed like his brain was melting and someone new was inhabiting his body/mind.

 

I tried to reason with him, using logic. I tried to explain that he was not Jesus.  But he just got so mad that I didn’t agree with him.  He scared me.  What was the matter with me that I didn’t see Moses and the burning bush?  All this was way over my head.

 

Clearly this was such a big change it was forcing everyone to notice and to realize Butch was in big trouble. What was happening to him?  How could I relate to him?  I had no idea, but I knew that this was not just a bump in the road. This was the beginning of a new way of life.

 

.

Who could help me?  I turned to Butch’s friends.  I thought he would listen to Tommy Casey, (a psychologist, and the grandson of Edgar Casey, a real psychic healer.) Butch was willing to talk to Tommy.  But he was not listening when Tommy said Butch had too much energy and he would not be able to heal people in the state he was in and suggested that I take him to the local psychiatric hospital.

 

I had been emotionally blind to what was going on. I was in shock and it took a while before I could begin to understand that Tommy was saying Butch was having an acute psychotic attack.

 

That was worrisome because all I knew about psychiatric hospitals was from Ken Kesey’s  One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1962 novel.

 

But there was no Nurse Rachet at Tidewater Psychiatric Hospital.  In fact, Butch after his diagnosis and dinner easily walked out.

 

They were not equipped to deal with him since they didn’t have a locked ward.

 

The psychiatrist called me in and told me Butch was in a  psychotic state and either schizophrenic or bi-polar and a danger to himself and others.

 

And guess what?   Butch could not be held against his will unless he broke a law.  Butch was free to leave but he was a danger. What a double bind.

 

They gave me a letter containing this warning. Butch was a danger to himself and others and needed to be hospitalized.  He was my responsibility. So, I went back to his friends, telling them that Butch had escaped in his blue van. Who knows where he was going but I was sure he would call to tell us about his healing adventure.

 

I gathered three of his friends and we concocted a plan.  One of the guys had access to a drug called Haldol which could help reduce psychotic symptoms.

 

Simple plan: find him, convince him we are coming to listen to his new knowledge, bring his favorite beer, Budweiser, and put the Haldol in it. Then when he gets groggy put him in the car and take him to a hospital with a locked ward.

 

And sure enough, Butch called me to say that he was in North Carolina as that is where the good Lord told him he needed to go. Butch said, “If you don’t believe me, just listen to this miracle. The clerk without knowing who I am, gave me room three, representing the Father, Son and Holy Ghost!”  Well, I told him, three of his friends were with me, another miracle. His friends were ready to party and be saved.

 

When we got there, Butch welcomed us with open arms and opened the beer cans.  After a while, as predicted, Butch got groggy from the Haldol.  Two of the guys put him in the back seat of the car.  One of the guys drove the blue van and the rest of us went to Norfolk General Hospital, where they were to keep a bed for Butch.

 

But of course, no such luck.   By the time we got there, the beds were full. There was no choice. We had to drive him another hour to Bayberry Psychiatric Hospital in Newport News, Va.  By this time Butch was wide awake and mad.  His friends keep him as calm as possible.

 

We arrived at about 3:00 AM, and I was exhausted.  It was so dark and scary to drive into the hospital grounds.  Maybe Butch had mercy on me as I told him: “If you’re Jesus there are a lot of people to heal in there.  I think this is where you were meant to be to save us all.”

 

Butch agreed to go, and as I filled out paperwork, they showed him to his room. On the way back home, I realized that it was not just Butch who was in trouble, but all of us who cared about him.  Of course, I knew that Butch was not about to accept his fate in the locked ward of the hospital. And there would be more trouble to come.

 

Yes, one night there was the not very surprising phone call. Butch had escaped.  I  am not sure how he escaped but the hospital personal were more upset than I was. This was a good sign.

 

If I was on a merry-go-round at least I could be calm about the up and downs of the ride and not have it ruin my life or throw me into a tizzy.  I knew Butch would be in touch and tell me that he was on some grand adventure. It was funny in a way as I just had not realized there was a mental health label for extremely adventurous people.  Did these people really know how to help him?

 

Predictable Butch called to tell me he had escaped the kookie psychiatric world and hitchhiked to his apartment in Virginia Beach where he found his blue van. Now he was driving down to Florida, where Drew our other sibling was born.  Drew had nothing to do with it Butch said.  Butch was going to have fun and then he would get back to healing.

 

A day later I got a call from a guy who said, “My friend and I were hitchhiking to Florida and your brother picked us up and you know he is off the deep end.  I am afraid for my life and his.  You need to come and get him.”   I told them I would talk to my grandfather and figure out when to fly to Florida.

 

I would have to get my grandfather to pay for this adventure.  There was no way I could do much but beg for understanding.  I convinced him that it was better for us to have Butch close rather than leave him to whatever might happen to him in Florida. My grandfather was sure it would not do any good.  He was tired of rescuing people. He had been rescuing my mother for 20 plus years. But he could not say no and leave Butch down there.

 

 

All that done, I told the guys that I would meet them in Florida.  And best bet, ask Butch if one of them could drive.  Maybe you might have to bribe him with a beer.   But if Butch wanted to drive well, they would have to go with just getting out of his van, abandon ship. But if Butch will let you drive then I can meet you and bring Butch back home.  What a plan, what a relief for them, but not for me.

 

The next day, I flew down to Daytona Beach, Florida, and took a taxi to the Elbow Bar, where I meet the two guys who of course were standing by the blue van. We talked about them driving the van back to Virginia Beach when they were ready to go home.  They were free to use it while on vacation.  That was a good deal for all.

 

Then they looked at me and said, “Buch is in there.” As I walked into the packed club Butch spied me. I was full of trepidation and fear.  Butch was looking happy, not one bit mad. Relief, for a moment.

 

Butch walks over, beer in his hand, suntanned and kind of handsome in his surfing outfit.  Giving me a big hug, he looks at me and says: “ I am so glad to see you.  I just did not know what to with my last dollar. What should I do?   Do you think I should spend it on his last pack of cigarettes?  Or the last beer? Or should I flush the damn dollar down the toilet?

 

At that moment, I knew NOT to tell him what to do.  I told Butch “You can decide. It’s your dollar.”  He turned and walked into the crowd.  A few minutes later Butch came out smiling from ear to ear. I decided to flush it, he said.

 

Butch was not crazy about the idea that he would fly back to Virginia Beach, with his sister to boot. But the cold facts were that he had flushed his last dollar down the toilet.   And I was the only person who had money.

 

 

The plane ride, a velvet Jesus and the motel

 

The guys drove us to the airport and said, “Good luck mate!” Sitting in the comfortable seat I was thinking this has not been too bad of an adventure.  The only real problem was the decision about the dollar. Not bad!

 

Just about when I was relaxing on the plane, eyes shut, Butch leaned over and said, “You are not taking me back to that hospital.”  What was I going to say?

 

I started with logic: “Butch, no one knows what to do. The doctors say you need medication.  And they need to look after you to make sure that medicine is right”

 

O.K. that was a mistake. And yes, we had a small fight. I cried. Well, you get the idea.

 

The plane, meanwhile, was getting ready to land in Atlanta and we had to go to a new gate and board another plane. “Lord have mercy on me.”  OK, let’s see what happens.

 

Butch was happy to leave the plane.  “See you,” he says. I had his ticket for Wilmington, North Carolina, and then Norfolk, Va.  But Butch would have none of it.  What was I going to do now as Butch faded into the crowd?

 

Nothing to do but carry on, so I went down to the gate. As the time ticked by, I was getting more upset.  Seeing a policeman, I showed him the letter, asking if he could help me find Butch to get him on the plane. But just as I was getting into telling this poor man about my problem, Butch jumped out from behind a pillar.  “I am here, ha, ha, ha I tricked you.” 

 

Lucky me!

 

We boarded the plane. And once again Butch was telling me. “NO HOSPITAL!”

 

By the time the plane landed I knew I was in for trouble.  I had asked the stewardess if they could just keep Butch on the plane and of course, that was not allowed.  So Butch gets off first, and I am running to try to catch up when the security guard stopped me.  “That man told me that you were chasing him, and he wants you to stop harassing him.”  So, I pulled the letter out of my pocketbook.

 

“Oh my gosh,” he says, “Let’s go find him”. And so, we both ran around looking everywhere.  The policeman returned to the front desk telling me that Butch had climbed out of the bathroom window.  Just then Butch comes wandering back in smiling, “The plane left.”

 

Now what?  How to get Butch out of North Carolina. How to get him to the hospital, which I was sure was the answer to my problems.  Possibly a false hope?  But how was I or anyone to know?

 

I asked about the next plane, but no other plane was scheduled for Norfolk. How about renting a car?  I was a bit hesitant, as that would be four hours in the car with Butch.  But there was no other way.

 

I rented a car. Butch was in the passenger seat talking about God and first thing you know I had run the car up on the side walk.  I was a wreck.  Butch took over.  First, he told me to get in the passenger side as I was not fit to drive. Actually, at that moment, he did seem more capable of driving than I was.   Then he went into the 7-11 and got some beer.

 

Butch was happy and in charge. The sun was shining.  See, that was a sign God loved him.  By this time, he had read and knew by heart several chapters in the Bible, and would repeat them to me.   And yes, I needed to pray too that my children would not miss their mother too much. But Butch reassured me that all was well.

 

After a couple of hours driving Butch stopped at a gas station.  Beside gas and cokes there was a man there selling paintings of Jesus on velvet.  Butch, insisted that I buy one for him.  OK, I gave up, again.  And once more Butch steam rolled over me. What harm would it do? Maybe Jesus would help me get him to the hospital.

 

We got back on the road with Jesus in the trunk.  All was good. The afternoon sun was bright and then all of a sudden Butch pulled the car over.  There was the hitchhiker standing on the road with his backpack.  The man runs over and jumps in the back seat. I was already feeling sorry for this guy.  He says he wants to go about 30 minutes down the road to his home.  Butch asked do you believe in God and Jesus Christ?  Yes, he was a Christian, and he was carrying his Bible.  Well, Butch quoted his favorite  Biblical passage and began to tell him a few secrets of the universe.  But most of his thinking at the time, since he had no money, was to repeat this verse:

 

Philippians 4:19 says, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” God is our all-powerful, all-compassionate, all-wise and all-loving heavenly Father.

 

You never have to worry about money, or anything .  Look at me, he says.  By then the guy is ready to get out of the car, just pull over he says and Butch drove on.  Possibly the longest 30-minute drive he had been on.  When Butch pulled over to let him out, near his home, the guy says, “Please take my Bible with you”, and he looked at me and said, “There are other passages in the Bible.” 

 

To Butch this was even more proof that he was on the right path, and I was simply a doubting Thomas.  As evening approached, we were in Chesapeake, Va. and I was driving.

 

Butch was drinking beer.

 

I was hoping that he would not notice that I was taking the road to Newport News instead of Virginia Beach but of course he did, and when I took that fateful turn, he got mad and took the keys out of the car.

 

I managed to steer the car to the side of the road. Darkness had descended but there to the east was the light of a motel.

 

I told Butch I had enough and was going to get the guy at the motel and tell the police that he was taking my velvet Jesus.

 

The lights were on at Motel 6.   I walked over to the motel and explained what was going on.  He looked skeptical but I showed him the letter.  Finally, the motel man was willing to call the police.

 

When we walked back over there, Butch was very busy trying to get the picture of the Velvet Jesus out of the trunk. I said that is my Velvet Jesus, I had paid for it after all.

 

And of course, as predicted, Butch pushed me away from the velvet Jesus. Then Butch grabbed  the painting and headed out into the woods.

 

Of course, when the police came, they were very interested in what Butch did that was wrong. Pushing his sister.  This bothered them more than the letter saying Butch was a danger to himself or others.

 

After the police left, I looked around but could not find the car keys.  Had Butch taken them? I called the rental company and according to them, I had insurance and they would send a tow truck

 

They acted like this happened all the time and so although the world had changed I rode back to my house in the tow truck.

 

The next morning the police called to say they had found Butch. They reported that Butch was naked running around in the woods when they found him.  They could not find  The Velvet Jesus.  They also notified me that Butch was to have a trial in two days.

 

I asked if they could take him to a hospital.  They said: “No,  not without a judge sentencing him.”

 

Lucky for me I had a good friend Ricard Glasser, who was a well-known lawyer in the community.  I called him and he said no worries.  Richard usually dealt with asbestos cases, but he would do this as a favor, no charge.

 

Richard and I met at the courthouse. We waited for the courthouse doors to open.  When they did there was Butch and seeing me, he called out loudly, “There is Judas. Look what you have done, Judas!”

 

Butch held his chained arms over his head.  The judge was not impressed.  He had the letter and after a couple of questions he told Butch he would be in the confined to a psychiatric hospital for the next 30 days.

 

Mother dies….  Yes, the same day Butch was committed our mother died.

 

The shaking of the family tree

 

 

Our family, like many others had the aging cycle.  Yes, grandparents die, making room for the next generation. But what if the next generation has not grown up, is not able to function?  What if no one can take over the job of the grandparents who die?

 

This was especially problematic in that our parent had not survived the aftermath of WW II. They were both arrested for drinking and myself and my two brothers were then adopted and raised by my maternal grandparents.  My maternal grandparents were wealthy and organized and responsible in their community. Their worries were unseen, just silently focused on their only child, born during WWI, Anna Maher, nicknamed Puddney.

 

Perhaps it was impossible to see or plan for the changing of the guard?  Could it be that we were forced, by what I do not know, but forced, perhaps by fear of the coming future, we were there just living moment to moment.

 

How could any of us talk, as often after death comes chaos?

 

When my maternal grandmother, Anna Wales Maher died, December of 1972, the family came unglued.  After all she was the glued. She was the one who had held everything together.  Why yes, she even wrote my applicate to college. Yes, Anna was a highly organized and non-emotional human being.

 

 

Most all of the family fear and worry had gone into the relationships between my grandfather, my grandmother, and her only child, my mother, Anna Maher Maloney.

 

My grandfather had been in France fighting WW I when she was born and that relationships was always strained.  Later on we will uncover more about this amazing triangle.

 

In December of 1972, after my grandmother’s death, the family struggled to maintain itself. I can barely recall the patches that were made for that first Christmas after she died. But I was divorced from my husband three months later. Somehow no one connected these two events.

 

The second Christmas I arranged for the visit of our mother for the first time since my daughter was  a year old and my son three.  Now they were teen agers. My mother got off the plane and into a wheel chair. She had an enlarged belly and clearly was suffering from cirrhosis.  She had come to say good-by.

 

My grandfather had agreed to pay for her visit, as he had the finances necessary to do most anything, but he limited her visit to two weeks and then she was to return to Portland, Oregon, her home away from home. The place where she would die and be buried.

 

I knew seeing her would be hard on my grandfather but had no idea her visit would coincide with my brother falling, falling, slowly falling apart.

 

Yes, families implode, and people have a hard time putting the piece together.

 

What I have discovered is that the more I write about these events, the clearer I get, and the more I understand the emotional forces that we all live with and at times can barely see.  But back then, I was trying to survive.

 

Chapter 2:  My first encounter with Murray Bowen, MD

The first time you meet someone it often sets the stage for your future relationship. The first time I met Bowen he was ready to test me or probably anyone who was willing to approach him.  The psychiatric hospital where I was working, had invited him to speak on families with alcoholism.  During the night shift I had read his paper on alcoholism and The Anonymous paper.  Both were mind boggling.  What planet was he living on?

 

What I got out of reading was that there was variation in families and each of us had something to discover as to how their family was stuck relating in very mixed-up ways, as most of us were perceptually blind to the family emotional system.

 

I was not at all sure what an emotional system was but something like an automatic guidance system.  It made sense to me coming from this peace-agree family that there was a force operating outside of awareness.

 

Clearly, there were things I could learn that were totally different than anything I knew about from working in the psychiatric hospital.

 

Apparently, families with alcoholism were the more aggravating,  stuck together families, the messy families, like mine.  They were not like schizophrenic families which were often more orderly and unsuspecting of the cost of a child focus orderliness.

 

I just realized my family had a little bit of everything in it and that at the moment we were in the midst of an emotional shock wave, suffering from multiple losses in just a few years.

 

I knew that this man, Bowen, had found a way to make sense of families and to free people from psychological blindness.

 

Before the program began a couple of us went over to talk to him.

 

Bowen was drinking coffee and eating a powdered donut.  My friend, Lina, put her hand up and wiped the powder off his face. I was shocked but  unable to stop her, instead I said, “Maybe you should ask him first?”  Everyone laughed but me.

 

Then I guess Bowen decided to find out more about me as he asked me to take him to the stage.    Halfway down he stopped, turned and said: What should I say to the audience?  After all you know the people and have read my chapter on alcoholism.  I confessed to him: Most of these people are not going to get what you are saying and probably prefer AA to your ideas, so you might as well just say what you want to say. 

 

He smiled, his blue eyes kind of twinkling, he turned and walked to the stage. Hmm, I must have passed some strange test.

 

Bowen went on to talk: If you want to cure alcoholism then you need to learn to de-twitch mice, as mice do not make up stories to tell you “why” they did this and that. Mice do not make up a story as to just how they became alcoholic.  They just get twitchy.

 

As I heard his thesis it was that the only way out of the bind we were in as humans was to encourage lifelong learning and do not get “snookered” by having a terminal degree, so that now you think you know it all.

 

Some people got up and left but I was just taken by his ideas and the challenges they posed to the way mental health was construed.

 

I waited till after the talk and asked him if he had any courses for officially uneducated people as I had only two  years of college.  He took my name.

 

In a few days I received a ten-page questionnaire for entrance into the post graduate program at Georgetown University Family Systems Post Graduate Program.  I called the director of training, Mike Kerr, MD  and told him there was a mistake.  He said “No, Dr. Bowen liked you.”

 

Now I had to jump a few hoops in my own family to be able to afford to go there. Plus, I had to arrange for people to look after my two children during the three days we met in person in Washington DC.  I lived in Va. Beach, a four-hour drive away.

 

My friend, Lina Watson, was determined that I should to  Georgetown.  Our families had been close for several generations and that may have given Lina more status in my grandfather’s eyes.

 

Somehow, she talked my grandfather into paying the $300.00 a year tuition and even encouraged him to lend me his car.  As I recall my friend, Ann Karnitschnig MD offered to look after my two children, Martin and Michelle. At that time 1976, Martin was 13 and Michelle 12.

 

Bowen clarified a new way of seeing the family unit as a part of evolution.  The first psychiatrist to write about how he managed himself in both his family and in his professional world. Bowen was the first and only psychiatrist to hospitalize the whole family at The National Institute of Health from 1956 -1960. The first psychiatrist to figure out how to observe the family as an interactive unit.

 

Describing the process of interaction with these hospitalized families required a new kind  discipline that was difficult for professional trained to focus on the individual. Bowen focused on his and the staff’s ability to be in good emotional contact, without rescuing, or blaming or getting sucked into the emotional storms all around.  Bowen, as a participant/observer, seemed to be always testing people and doing his kind of research.

 

The first psychiatrist to hospitalize the nuclear family: the parents, siblings and the one labeled schizophrenic at NIH.  Bowen began to diagram at least three generations of families in order for people to see a way out of symptoms by having better control over their emotions.

 

No one knew the way out but the person themselves.

 

The staff job was to work on their own ability to manage self.  Lead by example some have called this. The way people interact is so very basic and still challenging to be aware of automatically responding.  Bowen was demonstrating a more differentiated way of teaching and learning. That was one of his gifts.

 

After all, until I met Murray Bowen, I had no idea that a family was a system.

 

I believed there were good guys and bad guys and people who made mistakes and were forgiven, Or some were not.

 

I was 33 when my brother, Butch went psychotic. Never having met a crazy person, I felt crazier than my brother acted.  Was craziness contagious?

 

Before Bowen I had not one thought about evolution and its impact on families.  Never thought that families might have evolved to distribute anxiety unfairly.

 

Was it possible that I missed seeing and hearing what the family system was doing?  Was the family  telling me “Observe, be cool  as yes, the family system has a voice?”

 

When I met Bowen, I was  living in a peace-agree polite,  neat cause-and-effect world where you followed directions, be good, practice what you love doing, study hard. Mind your manners, look good, be polite, go to church, pray, be helpful, and just do not talk about troubles.

 

Then all will be fine.

 

I had never thought about the family as a system a guiding force that we are blind to.  How can you see when over evolutionary time you are rewarded for not seeing the system.

 

Common knowledge was and still is for the most part – someone is psychotic O.K. it is their brain, their biochemistry, and it is most certainly not the family.

 

For the most part I followed directions as I was the little mother. As an older sister of two brothers my mission was to help my grandparents corral my two younger brothers and make them behave.

 

Family history seems to be a back road to discover how the families operate over generations.  Who would think -go into the past to make better decisions about the future?

 

History says trouble ahead. After all my parent had fallen apart after the WW II and my two brothers and I were adopted by my maternal grandparents.

 

Yet, there was also strength in the family history.

 

As the older sister of two brothers, I had no choice,

 

I had to learn. I was trained to take on problems, not run from them.

 

Of course, once in a while I ran for the hills. But for the most part I was going to learn about families and the impact of history was one way to begin.

 

Meeting Murray Bowen, M. D. in 1976, was a total fluke. But now I had to learn about my family. The who, what, when, and where of people’s lives. The facts, not just their stories.

 

My parents and grandparents were my family. I knew very little about their siblings, my extended family. My parents and all but one grandfather had died before I began with Bowen.  But I had and uncle and an aunt and many cousins and great even several great aunts, that I knew nothing about.

 

Even after forty-plus years I remain fascinated in learning about people’s families and how they function as systems.  Each system has rules, often derived from past experiences.  Hard to remember but there is little freedom in doing the opposite of what your parents did.  Without thought one is pushed into reactions not thoughtfulness. How do you find your rational self in a sea of emotion?

 

The emotional system has expectations and needs, especially needs to win, to dominate.  It is part of the human condition.  Anxiety begets reactivity.  There are clues telling one to use force to win against your siblings, your parents, your children, your co-workers, and some percentage of people will do it.

 

In calm moments reason will prevail. People can be objective. But when threated by real or imagined forces appear, people react. Just like a herd of cattle might do. Humans can be stampeded too.

 

System that are anxious must get rid of the anxiety.  Anxiety encourages pushing people out, or bring them in too close or just close enough.

 

How does anyone get a bird’s eye view of the forces in the system.

 

How do you talk to your near and dear about impersonal forces.

Forces that are needed by the system. There are four of them: distance, conflict, reciprocity and child focus.
The fifth way is to define self to the system and that is the most difficult one of all to do.

 

Do you have a mind of your own? The system has a mind of its own.  If you can hold on to a systems view of your predicament, you just might make better decisions. Consider a three generational history.  What has made people anxious in the past. If you’re not sure you can consult the Holmes Ray list of events that provoke anxiety and make us vulnerable.  What are you up against can be known?

 

Will systems knowledge enhance your ability to survives or to reduce symptom?

Will it make you a better leader or a better partner?

 

I learned the hard way that families act as though they are programed to remain doing what they do despite so much evidence that they are going in the wrong direction.  They must help the wea, yet, in so doing they often make the weak-weaker, and the situation worse.  Helping the weak and that not working, can lead to people doing the opposite, being mean to the weak.

This is how systems work.  They are somewhat predictable action reactions systems.  But what happens when someone gets outside that force filed and begins thinking – what if I do this or that….

 

 

I never knew what Bowen was doing.  Were all of us research subject?  Did Bowen have some knowledge of the secrets of the universe?

 

Perhaps he would reveal the secrets, or perhaps he did,  and no one noticed.

 

Perhaps from the beginning of my relationship with Bowen, I understood, be an independent thinker, or Bowen would just mess with you, just to see what you would do.

 

I photographed and videotaped most all of his teaching sessions as I knew he was some kind of a wizard.  Perhaps if I kept watching what he was doing, I would figure it out as for sure he was not going to tell me.

 

Bowen was an expert at never explaining himself.

 

Who really knew what he was  talking about?  He was the observer of all of us: telling funny ridiculous stories,  wise stories, asking impossible questions, using paradox and all together simply asking what are you doing?

 

I had questions there were no answers. I had to answer my own questions, figure out my own principle, tell my own story and not let myself be over-whelmed by the emotions.

 

Bowen use to say he lived theory and that I believe to be true. For, the most part Bowen was guided by family systems theory. I saw him as not just as a trickster but as someone deeply curious about making human behavior into a science.

 

The only thing I really understood about that was science required  the ability, the knowledge to be able to predict. Who could do that?

 

My effort here is too weave in my own family story which has helped me to  understand how important it was to observe my family as a system, allowing me to learn by just seeing what might work in relating to people.

 

If I say or do this, how will that impact the situation?  What could be more fun, finding ways to ask questions, to relate to others, and to make human behavior more predictable, more scientific.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three: Stories I remember about Bowen

 

Triangles:

 

Not to say my memory is perfect or half way right but I will tell you the stories as I remember them. That says more about me than Bowen. Yet these are the kinds of comments that I needed to make sense of my world. These stories gave me a bit more awareness of the automatic ways of human behavior.

 

The first story I recall was after the war when many people were going into psychiatry.   The best place to train was Menninger’s Institute back in Kansas. Bowen was a trained and excellent observer who could reflect on his observations.

 

Bowen would often go to the water cooler or the coffee room and there would be some guys there talking about one of the guys.  Let’s call him Joe. The guys would start talking.  “ Joe was not right.” Joe was…and fill in the blank.

 

For no good reason Bowen would find himself agreeing. Then when he saw Joe he would look at him and think, “There’s that awful Joe.” But one day he was driving his car back home to Waverly, TN and about 2 hours out from the hospital he was thinking about Joe. Now he was thinking, “You know that Joe is not a bad guy. I kind of like Joe, he’s done some good things.”

 

With the distance Bowen would find himself just a little more neutral about Joe.  But when he got back to Menninger’s it would take somewhere between three hours and three days for him to be right back in it.  Joe was a no-good fella.

 

The other story I recall Bowen telling us was again at Menninger in the early days.  Bowen was head of a clinical research program.  He had been wondering about separating the parents from the patients. So, he decided to do some research to see what happened. He arranged to have the parents brought back and meet their son or daughter who had been hospitalized for ten years or so. In that day the family was a nuisance and you wanted to separate the nuisance from the patients. Calling it research allowed Bowen to made arrangements for the parents to come.

 

The day arrived, the parents were waiting, the son in this case was excited. Bowen was walking across the quadrangle and the guy says to Doctor Bowen, “I have something for you, a gift.”

 

Dr. Bowen looked at him, and the guy opened up his fist and there was something that looked like a little dog turd.  Bowen just put his hand on the guy’s hand and closed it and said, “I think that’s a gift for your parents.”

 

I always laughed very hard about this, and I have called this symbolic event, the end of transference and the beginning of family therapy. Of course, transference never totally ends but it’s no longer the central focus.  The shift to the family as a unit with evolutionary reasons to manage anxiety and sometimes sacrificing one or more family members.

 

When Bowen got to Washington and was doing research at NIMH no one in psychiatry had any idea of that he was doing. Bowen commented that had no friends in psychiatry, and so he joined the square dance group, and it was here that there he had friends.  People in the group were interested in dancing not in Freud versus Bowen.

 

I recall one story early on when Bowen, who wat the time was the president of a square-dancing group, said to his three friends, “You know Joe thinks he is the worst square dancer, so let see what happens if  each of us can just go up to him one at a time and say some version of:  ‘Joe your looking mighty good tonight.  Your wife must be treating you right.’  And then let us go up to Dave, who is the best square dancer by far, and say: “What is wrong? Dave, you missed a step back there?”   And so it went experiment after experiment.

 

Many of these stories point to just how many behaviors are reasonably predictable.  As one learns to be a better observer of the family as a multi-generational system.  Just like many other social animals, we too are biased, and blind to our own reactive nature.  Who among us thinks everyday about his or her automatic behavior?  You could say that we have been selected for our ability to survive, to be fit and not for our ability to see reality.[i]

 

The automatic system versus acting on principle:  Observing the system allows us to know that there are choices available.  With a bit of courage, one can make more room for us to articulate the way we see things in the system.

 

Generally speaking, we have to go along with the system’s rules and the way of being or make well thought out decision to take on the way the emotional system regulates what we can and cannot say, think or do.

 

Being able to see and understand the automatic nature of our responses it is then possible to develop principles to guide our behavior.  A principle tells you what you will do, all things being equal, what your values are, and how you will put them into practice

 

A principle might be something like this statement. Many times, Bowen said: If you learn something from me and I learn something from you, well that is how this relationship will go.

 

From principles to discovery

 

Then in 1968 Bowen’s research reached another level of understanding the system when he serendipitously discovered how to define himself in a paradoxical way to important people in his family.

 

The paper known as The Anonymous Paper, can be found in his book Chapter 21 “On the Differentiation of Self.”

in his book, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. 

 

What was the reason Bowen spoke to each involved family members as to how he saw the building of anxiety in the family unit?

 

Here is one of his answers.

 

One speculation is that it is easier to make valid observations of emotional forces in the more removed, but equally important, parental family, than in the nuclear family in which one’s needs are more intimately imbedded.[ii]

 

Bowen had discovered a completely different way of letting his family, members know the way he saw the emotional system. By seeing how the emotional system was guiding his family members into automatic behavior, he could interrupt and challenge others. Some in the family were obviously over functioning.  So he took it up with his brother that ran the family business.  Paradoxically he told his brother and other family members that if brother would just work harder, then, the family would settle down.

 

By saying the way Bowen saw it, even in a paradoxical way, the system was shocked.  But they had a great deal more information and after that, eventually, family members were in better contact with one another.

 

Bowen was communicating about the emotional system, without getting caught in its threats and anxieties, distance and anger and of course reciprocity and its other focus ways.

 

The next serendipitous event was when Bowen began to ask married students who had come for therapy, at the Georgetown University Medical School, how much do you know about your family?

 

Almost immediately the problems within the marital pair began to settle down. This is another example of how Bowen seemed to learn and researched and learn some more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven:

IDEAS ON TIMELINE FOR DEVELOPMENT OF BOWEN THEORY by Catherine M. Rakow, MSW. January 28, 2012

 

 

[i] The Case Against Reality

[ii] Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray. Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 519). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition.