Murray Bowen's Family Emotional Systems

Murray Bowen theorizes specifically about family relationships, the interactions between the members, and emotions that arise during the interactions (Knauth, 2003). Bowen’s family emotional system theory proposes the concept of a nuclear family emotional system. “This concept describes the patterns of emotional functioning in a family in a single generation” (Guerin, 1976). The concept of a nuclear family emotional system can be broken down into two basic areas: the nuclear family and the emotional system that manages how the family interacts with each other. These are the emotional patterns in a family that continue over the generations. The emotional system is how the family interacts with each other when anxieties arise in the system. It is the idea that whatever affects one member of a family affects each member of the system.

The more anxiety one person or one relationship absorbs, the less other people must absorb. This means that some family members maintain their functioning at the expense of others. People do not want to hurt each other, but when anxiety chronically dictates behavior, someone usually suffers for it” (“Nuclear Emotional Family Approach”, 2014).
The Moore family appears to be a cohesive family during periods of non-transition in the life cycle stages, however the family is in transition and this transition within the family is marked with increased stressors due to a history of trauma within the family. The Moore family trauma began early in the marriage when Ed and Jessica were unable to conceive a child of their own. They eventually adopt a then two year old son, who is the biological son of one of Ed’s distant relatives. While the Moore’s celebrate the adoption of their son, the years of unsuccessful fertility treatments and acknowledging they are unable to conceive on their own is a