The appendix of this is lots longer than the body of the paper. I put it in to give an idea of the method but not meant for careful reading for you all at this point, unless it interests you to do so. Laura
I enjoyed reading the paper which generated thoughts about my own efforts toward increasing self-regulation. Self-regulation–great subject matter–just introducing it as an idea during an ordinary day provides a little more objectivity about it, and simply more motivation to work toward it. And how our own efforts contribute to the whole. You have intriguing data about family process and ability to self-regulate, and topic of goal weight could be a way to increase awareness of family, since it is a major interest in society right now. I also liked your idea of training more people to think systems, and how the method in your research can be used to increase researcher’s abilities to see the family as a system. Did you have particular questions for readers? Laurie
Laurie, thanks for your comment and question.
My original intention was to focus this research report on how it supports the idea that self regulation and weight loss is impacted by the family emotional system for the publication in a psychology journal. My psychology colleague said that lacking a control group makes the claim weak but that having devised a method to study it is its strongest feature to put forward. Whatever works is my motto here. My purpose is in using the data and subject matter to increase awareness and interest in Psychology of the press of the family emotional system as a critical variable in how well or poorly people do, which is increasingly recognized as a matter of self regulation in the face of the press of various environmental stimuli.
In writing I found my self referring to “the family system variable” as mediating the impact of so many of the many variables being researched out there. This family system variable, as we know, is pretty complex and encompasses many variables within it. But I was pleased with finding myself in the position of using it that way for the audience in psychology because it can then fit into the conventional research paradigm in the way that social class, gender, age, marital status, educational level, health status, etc. get used as control variables . I’m curious if that makes sense to others.
The main thing that will be judged by the journal editor, I think, is does the the method live up to the claim of capturing the variable of “shifts in the family emotional system” and is there a persuasive case for it’s importance in studying weight loss or is it just a version of “life events” impacting anxiety level and emotional eating so that the family can be skipped. What I want to work on is the examples which I will be adding hoping to convey a relationship process that is the family system variable. It’s there in the transcripts like the one in the appendix, at least Kathy and I think so, but it’s a devil to summarize without losing the system. This may be hard to comment on but if anyone has any thoughts about it I’m interested. Writing it here is a nice record for me, in any case.
Laura,
This is important work in many ways. The connection between symptom development and family emotional process is one of the most potentially useful contributions of Bowen theory, but still little understood and difficult to observe and measure. People often have an intuitive sense of the stress level in their lives having to do with getting sick, but this can lead to simplistic: stress causes illness. The reality is far more complex. Family emotional process is one variable among many, and it is involved to varying degrees in illness. Your research shows a way to isolate FEP as one variable and see how it correlated with the ups and downs of weight management. Weight gain is a good symptom to track because 1) it is measurable, and 2) it is currently a societal focus. I am glad that this work is headed for the APS journal, and I hope your research method and careful data analysis will be recognized by your fellow psychologists.
Reading through the transcript, I understood that the client succeeded in losing weight after years of failed efforts. I wondered if you see her success as having more to do with differentiation of self, or with cutoff from her family of origin.
Thanks for your comments, Stephanie. It’s reinforcing when others can see what one is trying to do. We will see how it goes over in the psychology world, if it does.
As for the subject transcript.. It was true of everyone in the study, as it is in the general population that there are multiple tries and failures and regressions and infrequent complete successes in peoples efforts to lose weight. This of course, reflects that special conditions must apply for reaching goal weight to occur.
For this subject, I think the conditions were that her ability to regulate self and diet to goal weight increased as she moved out of the adaptive position with her husband and he moved into the adaptive position with her. This played out around the geographic moves to NZ for him (his family was there) at the beginning of the marriage and she was symptomatic there, then to Canada for her, and to California for her and with the last two moves she recovered her health and dieted to goal weight. I see her as more distant and cut off than differentiated from her family of origin which left her more vulnerable to the emotional process in her marriage. Let me know if you see it different.
Really interesting reading. It points to the time consuming effort of organizing a wealth of data for the purposes of research. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the case presentation, the shifts in functioning and the influence of the environment on one’s functioning. It would be useful to know more about the functioning of the kids and spouse over this period and how that influenced client’s functioning. Certainly weight reduction, something that was so important to her and the move were both important factors in enhancing her functioning. As her functioning improved, was there a change in functioning in her spouse or kids? I see you mentioned the spouse was depressed at one point as her energy shifted to relationship outside the family. There are so many factors to look at that influence our functioning….some more solid and clear and some more relationship determined. It is all so interesting. Thanks.
Hi Ann,
Thanks for your comments. It’s a nice surprise that you liked reading the case study transcripts and analysis. One thing I want to do is to make a full transcript of a couple of the interviews from this study and give them to family systems experts and see what they observe in response to the research questions.
There is no significant information about the children’s’ functioning , but at the time of the interview which was in 1978, after the moves, the wife’s improved health and functioning, her weight loss, and then her distance from her husband as she invested heavily in her new friendship, the wife reported that the husband was depressed. So there was a shift in their emotional positions and it seems that as the husband adapted to the wife, accommodating her emotional reactions with major moves, her functional level improved and his went down.
The appendix of this is lots longer than the body of the paper. I put it in to give an idea of the method but not meant for careful reading for you all at this point, unless it interests you to do so. Laura
I enjoyed reading the paper which generated thoughts about my own efforts toward increasing self-regulation. Self-regulation–great subject matter–just introducing it as an idea during an ordinary day provides a little more objectivity about it, and simply more motivation to work toward it. And how our own efforts contribute to the whole. You have intriguing data about family process and ability to self-regulate, and topic of goal weight could be a way to increase awareness of family, since it is a major interest in society right now. I also liked your idea of training more people to think systems, and how the method in your research can be used to increase researcher’s abilities to see the family as a system. Did you have particular questions for readers? Laurie
Laurie, thanks for your comment and question.
My original intention was to focus this research report on how it supports the idea that self regulation and weight loss is impacted by the family emotional system for the publication in a psychology journal. My psychology colleague said that lacking a control group makes the claim weak but that having devised a method to study it is its strongest feature to put forward. Whatever works is my motto here. My purpose is in using the data and subject matter to increase awareness and interest in Psychology of the press of the family emotional system as a critical variable in how well or poorly people do, which is increasingly recognized as a matter of self regulation in the face of the press of various environmental stimuli.
In writing I found my self referring to “the family system variable” as mediating the impact of so many of the many variables being researched out there. This family system variable, as we know, is pretty complex and encompasses many variables within it. But I was pleased with finding myself in the position of using it that way for the audience in psychology because it can then fit into the conventional research paradigm in the way that social class, gender, age, marital status, educational level, health status, etc. get used as control variables . I’m curious if that makes sense to others.
The main thing that will be judged by the journal editor, I think, is does the the method live up to the claim of capturing the variable of “shifts in the family emotional system” and is there a persuasive case for it’s importance in studying weight loss or is it just a version of “life events” impacting anxiety level and emotional eating so that the family can be skipped. What I want to work on is the examples which I will be adding hoping to convey a relationship process that is the family system variable. It’s there in the transcripts like the one in the appendix, at least Kathy and I think so, but it’s a devil to summarize without losing the system. This may be hard to comment on but if anyone has any thoughts about it I’m interested. Writing it here is a nice record for me, in any case.
Laura,
This is important work in many ways. The connection between symptom development and family emotional process is one of the most potentially useful contributions of Bowen theory, but still little understood and difficult to observe and measure. People often have an intuitive sense of the stress level in their lives having to do with getting sick, but this can lead to simplistic: stress causes illness. The reality is far more complex. Family emotional process is one variable among many, and it is involved to varying degrees in illness. Your research shows a way to isolate FEP as one variable and see how it correlated with the ups and downs of weight management. Weight gain is a good symptom to track because 1) it is measurable, and 2) it is currently a societal focus. I am glad that this work is headed for the APS journal, and I hope your research method and careful data analysis will be recognized by your fellow psychologists.
Reading through the transcript, I understood that the client succeeded in losing weight after years of failed efforts. I wondered if you see her success as having more to do with differentiation of self, or with cutoff from her family of origin.
Thanks for your comments, Stephanie. It’s reinforcing when others can see what one is trying to do. We will see how it goes over in the psychology world, if it does.
As for the subject transcript.. It was true of everyone in the study, as it is in the general population that there are multiple tries and failures and regressions and infrequent complete successes in peoples efforts to lose weight. This of course, reflects that special conditions must apply for reaching goal weight to occur.
For this subject, I think the conditions were that her ability to regulate self and diet to goal weight increased as she moved out of the adaptive position with her husband and he moved into the adaptive position with her. This played out around the geographic moves to NZ for him (his family was there) at the beginning of the marriage and she was symptomatic there, then to Canada for her, and to California for her and with the last two moves she recovered her health and dieted to goal weight. I see her as more distant and cut off than differentiated from her family of origin which left her more vulnerable to the emotional process in her marriage. Let me know if you see it different.
Hi Laura:
Really interesting reading. It points to the time consuming effort of organizing a wealth of data for the purposes of research. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the case presentation, the shifts in functioning and the influence of the environment on one’s functioning. It would be useful to know more about the functioning of the kids and spouse over this period and how that influenced client’s functioning. Certainly weight reduction, something that was so important to her and the move were both important factors in enhancing her functioning. As her functioning improved, was there a change in functioning in her spouse or kids? I see you mentioned the spouse was depressed at one point as her energy shifted to relationship outside the family. There are so many factors to look at that influence our functioning….some more solid and clear and some more relationship determined. It is all so interesting. Thanks.
Hi Ann,
Thanks for your comments. It’s a nice surprise that you liked reading the case study transcripts and analysis. One thing I want to do is to make a full transcript of a couple of the interviews from this study and give them to family systems experts and see what they observe in response to the research questions.
There is no significant information about the children’s’ functioning , but at the time of the interview which was in 1978, after the moves, the wife’s improved health and functioning, her weight loss, and then her distance from her husband as she invested heavily in her new friendship, the wife reported that the husband was depressed. So there was a shift in their emotional positions and it seems that as the husband adapted to the wife, accommodating her emotional reactions with major moves, her functional level improved and his went down.