FEST Writing Group

 

Photographs were a crucial and important part of my work with Dr. Bowen. I knew he was a genius, a man beyond his time. I was curious. What was he doing? I took his photographs to study him. I needed to know if he was real. This was the late seventies when family systems theory burst into the world, gathering attention and then, over time, fading with hardly anyone noticing. At that time and still now, individual thinking is backed by the medical model. Systems thinking is too different, too hard for a mass movement, but just right for understanding mysteries. I was fortunate to have my camera and to capture some of that time.

Photographs and the importance of memories:
Everyone will see photographs through their own experiences. If our life is negative or too challenging, then the way we see the photographs will be negative or shocking until we can be less reactive.

Possibly looking at a photograph will create space for each person to think and enlarge on his or her knowledge. People might say “Wait you’re using photographs to free associate?” In a way, yes, as there is a long history of Freud’s use of dreams, free association, and even slips of the tongue plus humor to bring greater insight into one feeling and thinking for self. Bowen came along and added a new discovery about the human condition. A family is a unit dispersing anxiety as best it can automatically, no thought needed, through the emotional system. Therefore people can use photographs as one of many tools to see family dynamics. Understanding our family can enable us to grow up more than anything else we might do, claimed Bowen and I believed him.

When one looks at a photograph, the preconditioned mind tells us what to think and feel about what we see. How do you look at what you have been taught and what you now can see? After all there is just you and the photograph. There is no need to agree with others or to be in great togetherness. Instead, this is a moment where one sees and to some extent can speak to what they see. Photographs may help you to get to know these images as people. They may even enable one to overcome emotional reactions. Often one’s interpretation of a photograph or a work of art is a creative act in and of itself.

 

I took hundreds of pictures of Bowen and his group. His teaching style, his pausing to think, his joy in challenging others, his reactions to silly questions, and even how he asked questions. One purpose of this book is to allow you to get to know Bowen in photographic stillness. I see photographs as capturing Bowen’s challenging teaching style and his way of managing himself with others. While memories tell how Bowen was experimenting with me to see how I would deal with whatever “X” he threw my way. Bowen had a way of enlarging your perception of the world just by how he dealt with you. The earth was no longer flat. The system was there.

The other point is to hear my stories or memories of my early family life as a way to understand the usefulness of theory. Bowen acted with a deep compassion for the human condition. There was no judgment. His objectivity and curiosity enabled me to see and deal with myself, my family, my parents and my grandparents differently. Any of us can enter the process of seeing photographs and relationship clues. Photographs trigger memories. Stories come tumbling out as we recall what had been forgotten or ignored. Parts of a puzzle become clear. The pieces begin to fall in place, enlarging our ability to perceive the world.

 

Photographs often show us generations of important people. As time goes on the stories are briefer or perhaps fragmented. Now a sentence conveys a life. He was born here and died there. Now add a photograph. There is so much more to be discovered. You can bring someone important, your father or mother, or grandparents, back to life again. Perhaps this process of using photographs to stimulate and to recall moments is a kind of free association. Memories come to the surface and now what to make of them? Can you observe yourself reacting, wanting to know more? Do you react to some photos reminding you of hard times of pressure or failure or moments of happiness?

How does one put their memories into a better way of understanding that leads to a better future? This is the job of memory. Organize the past and thereby change your future. Always the question: Are you making sense of your world? Are you integrating your thinking and feelings into better stories, more accurate or perhaps even better memories? If so then you are free to enlarge on these forgotten and chopped-up memories. Noticing the details in the photograph may promote greater objectivity.

 

Photographs can give birth to forgotten memories that can increase positive emotions and decrease the negative side of one experience. Some things will remain mysteries. But over time we can put memories in a context, in their proper place. Perspective enables one to move from intense emotional reactivity and negativity to a state with more choices. Could it be useful to say: “These were scary times, but I survived.” How useful it can be to know more about our memories in a way that grants us some compassion or celebrates caring or turns sadness into understanding.

 

Each of us will decide where our memories belong. Shall we hold them as unmovable truth? Or are they moments of limited awareness? Where are they leading us? Is there a recognition that I oversee these memories? The reason for checking in and claiming our memories as partial truths is that they are our guide to the future. Making better memories, altering old memories, how does one change their emotional reactions to people to photographs to life itself? How does one change behavior to set others free? How important is language in altering how one thinks and speaks to or about others?

Bowen was the first person to describe the stages of differentiating oneself in one’s family. After years of observing families, he developed a hypothesis about the origin of mental illness.

In 1967 Bowen activated an experiment in reacting to his brother’s distancing by sending letters to his family, testing his knowledge of the automatic nature of human behavior. Trying to be more separate from others while being more open is one way to think about what it means to be more differentiated. Consider that if there is free will, it may only be found in separating oneself from the basic, primitive, and tribal forces, that urge us to give in to the togetherness forces, to in this case flee.

 

Bowen had a way of using language to alter how one thinks and speaks to others. After years of observing families, he developed a hypothesis about the origin of mental illness.
The over-mothering with a demand that was often unseen. His effort to be more separate from others while being more open is one way to think about what it means to be more differentiated. Consider this thought: if there is free will, it may only be found in separating oneself from the basic, primitive, and tribal forces urging us to give in to the togetherness forces, and with enough pressure from the emotional system, we may be forced to give up our own life direction.

Overall, it takes discipline to put our emotions on pause, look around, and see how we are acting out old stimulus-response patterns. Can a photograph help us be more objective and build a better future?

If so they are but one way to help us build a better understanding of people, ourselves, of nature. By re-remembering by putting people in a context, and finding a more thoughtful perspective, we may be able to be less blind to the emotional system and less sensitive to upsets and differences.

When you can move relationship reactions into a way to understand the pressure in the system, you can be a more integrated person. If one can integrate thinking and feeling, as Bowen used to say, could photographs tone down our old reactions enabling a broader perspective?

 

Seeing people in photographs can give someone who wants it more objectivity. Perhaps a breath or two of freedom exists. We do not have to react. A photograph is still. I wanted to capture people, to hold them, and to bring back important memories. Perhaps photographs can keep us moving towards a greater perspective.