FEST Writing Group

To: FESTWG
From: Stephanie

This is a 6 page word document that introduces the concepts that I am developing into what may or may not result in a book. For years I have been reading the literature of evolution, biology, and related sciences, trying to see how that data and that way of thinking fit with Bowen theory.
Now I am trying to bring together the writing and presentations I have done into an integrated project. These pages would be part of the introductory chapter.

INTRODUCTION

Homo sapiens, as a species, is strikingly different from any other, even from its close primate relatives. It is not surprising that human studies have largely emphasized human uniqueness. An evolutionary perspective in no way minimizes the distinctive trajectory that human evolution has taken, but rather brings millions of years of relevant data to understanding the deeper context in which humans have been shaped.
Even as we set our species apart from all others, and often above all others, we are surrounded by evidence that we are part of all life. Here, briefly, are a few of the ramifications of this fact.
To begin with, there is the fact of genetic continuity. In his time, decades before the science of genetics emerged, Darwin was considered radical for proposing the idea of descent from a common ancestor. Now it is established science. One of the greatest discoveries from sequencing genomes is that there is a grand unity to life and all forms of life on this Earth have a common ancestor.
Human anatomy and physiology, with all of their homologous features, remind us of our ancestry. We are vertebrates; we are mammals; we are primates; we are hosts to trillions of bacteria. The human body is a highly integrated system of systems, largely self-regulating, the end product of countless adaptations that can be traced back to the earliest forms of life. Looking at the human body from an evolutionary perspective opens up a wealth of information about illness and health. We get the same diseases as animals; pathogens can migrate across species.
As part of all life, we depend on the living world for aesthetic and emotional as well as physical nourishment. Edward O. Wilson calls the human bond with other species “biophilia.” Having evolved in the natural world, humans have a deep affinity for plants, animals, and scenic landscapes. We are predisposed to affiliate with other organisms and to be fascinated by them. (Wilson 1984)
The fact that humans are part of all life has vital implications for the way we treat the Earth, the home we share with all life. The survival of our species in the long term depends on human ingenuity, responsibility and wisdom to find ways to inhabit the Earth in sustainable relationship with the other life that supports human life.
Finally, as part of all life, the human faces the same basic “facts of life,” the same biological imperatives to survive and reproduce, as other organisms. As John T. Bonner puts it, “No organism can escape its biological heritage, and human beings are no exception (1994, 30).” It is this aspect of the human’s commonality with all life, what Darwin called “the struggle for existence,” that will be the focus of this book. Within the crucible of this struggle, human social behavior and complex social systems evolved.

DEFINING THE “FACTS OF LIFE”
The ways of surviving and reproducing that brought success for our mammal and primate ancestors and relatives have been conserved in evolution. As stated by Eric Kandel, “If evolution finds something that works, it holds onto it indefinitely (2006).” Instincts and behavior patterns that have been adaptive are transmitted across generations. These time-tested ways of adapting are a major part of the human’s biological heritage, and a major part of the emotional programming that guides behavior.
What are these biologically based, emotionally programmed features of animal and human behavior? From the literature in evolutionary biology, starting with Darwin, several themes emerge repeatedly. First and most basic is that life is profoundly social. No living organism exists on its own; all are part of larger aggregations and are dependent on others for survival and reproductive success. Second is sex; for mammals, reproduction requires mating with the opposite sex, a reality that gives rise to a host of intricate and colorful characteristics, behaviors, and relationships. Third is territory; claiming and defending areas that hold the resources needed for life is a necessity for most animals. Fourth is hierarchy, nature’s way of ordering a group of animals to enable them to share the same territory with reduced hostility and conflict. Fifth is tribalism, the propensity to form groups, to take comfort among one’s own kin and kind, to be sensitive to threat from outsiders and ready to defend one’s own group against rivals. Sixth is morality which can be thought of as the capacity to regulate the social, sexual, territorial, hierarchical, and tribal dimensions of behavior by developing and enforcing social norms and principles. Seventh and finally is mortality; the life cycle ends with death for all living organisms, a fact that, for humans, is never far from the conscious mind.
Putting these seven dimensions of human social behavior in a nutshell, I propose that humans are social, sexual, territorial, hierarchical, tribal, moral, and mortal.
Human beings are all of these things all of the time. Life involves continual balancing of multiple requirements and competing interests. The literature of evolutionary biology is filled with examples of the cost-benefit trade-offs that organisms make in the process of what biologists call “optimization,” or seeking the most advantageous balance of the options available. No single anatomical, physiological, or behavioral trait, no single survival strategy or reproductive strategy, can be understood apart from the interplay of variables operating between organisms and their environments. Likewise, the seven “facts of life” do not function as separate categories but as a unified whole. Furthermore, there is no separating biology from culture. Although we tend to think of biology and culture dichotomously, they are in reality interwoven. Biology provides the foundation on which culture builds. Defining culture broadly as the behavioral transmission of information, by signs, by language, by imitation, John Bonner holds the view that “we can find the seeds of human culture in very early biological evolution.” (Bonner 1980, 3)
Each of the seven dimensions of behavior is a major subject unto itself. What I attempt here will be simply to offer a few reflections on each, to refer to some of the scientists who have provided the research and data in evolutionary biology and related disciplines, and to then look at each of the seven areas from the perspective of Bowen theory. The seven dimensions are embedded in family life; studying them brings to light a new way of understanding how families function; studying them from the perspective of Bowen theory takes that understanding even deeper.

BOWEN FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORY
Murray Bowen focused his research on one of nature’s most complex systems: the human family. His decision to focus on the family, and to design a research program that permitted observation of whole family units, was the culmination of years of preparation.
Bowen began his psychiatric career at Menninger Clinic in the 1940s. As he learned Freudian theory and psychoanalysis, he recognized its important contributions but also saw its limitations. Bowen saw that subjectivity permeated the formulations in Freudian theory as it drew from products of the human mind: literature, philosophy, mythology and the arts; he saw this as the obstacle that would keep psychoanalytic theory from becoming a science. At the same time, he was convinced that a science of human behavior was possible, that humans would someday have a way of knowing our own species that was as factual, accurate, and objective as the way we know other phenomena in nature (Bowen, 1982).
During his years at Menninger (1946-1954), Bowen read widely in disciplines related to human behavior, guided by the “background hunch” that emotional illness was a product of what man has in common with other forms of life. His mission was to identify, within the mountain of knowledge, the key facts and concepts that would fit together and create a foundation for more objective, scientific study of the human. Search of the literature convinced him that human behavior would be best understood in the context of evolution and the natural sciences. Bowen turned to biology and evolution to understand the deep roots of human nature, human behavior, and human relationships. He stated: “Man is conceived as the most complex form of life that evolved from the lower forms and is intimately connected with all living things. (1978, 304).”
Research with families provided the fertile field of observation that allowed Bowen to test the ideas that had been on the “back burner” of his mind during his years at the Menninger Institute. In 1954, he moved to the National Institute of Mental Health where he had responsibility for designing and directing a research project on schizophrenia. Consistent with the conceptual shift he had been making from focus on the individual to focus on the family, Bowen decided to hospitalize entire family units: mother, father and the adult child who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He writes of the floodgate of new data and new thinking that opened up:
The focus on the family instead of the individual provided a completely different thinking dimension. …With the families living together, I could see a completely different world. …The new view produced so many researchable clues, it was impossible to know which was most important… . A new theory might not be possible for a century, but the essential variables were all there. (1982, 2, italics in original)

The data provided by five years of observations of family emotional process at the intense level of schizophrenia provided the foundation for Bowen’s family systems theory. His thinking moved from the mother-child dyad, to the mother-father-child triangle, to the interlocking triangles that encompassed siblings and extended family. As the context broadened, he defined the characteristics of larger, more complex systems with the concepts of nuclear family emotional process, family projection process, triangles, sibling position, multigenerational transmission process, and emotional cutoff. Years later, in the 1970’s, Bowen applied family systems theory to his observations of society as a whole, and added the concept, emotional process in society, to the theory. The core of the theory is the concept of differentiation of self.