The Bowen Center

Dr. Anne S. McKnight will discuss addiction as an outcome of an emotional process through which family anxiety is both generated and managed. She will address the reciprocal interactions of the family that lead to the progression of the addition as well as the anxiety that is unleashed when an addicted member stops using drugs or alcohol. Some ideas about the multigenerational nature of addiction will be explored. Anne S. McKnight, EdD, LCSW serves as the director of The Bowen Center. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on May 10, 2012.

San Lucas Quiaviní is a Zapotec community in Oaxaca, Mexico. Since the 1970s San Lucas has seen large scale migration to Los Angeles where about half the community resides. In this presentation, Dr. Gabriela Pérez-Báez will focus on the factors influencing parental language choices among migrants. With a substantial number of families settling or being raised in Los Angeles, family language planning is of relevance to the survival prospects of San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec in the diaspora and the home community. Gabriela Pérez-Báez, PhD is Curator of Linguistics in the Anthropology Department at The Smithsonian Institution. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on March 15, 2012.

Dr. Bowen defined eight concepts, two main variables, two counterbalancing life forces, numerous subvariables and one key assumption that make up the structure of Bowen theory. Randall T. Frost will examine how the parts fit together to make a coherent whole and how developments in the life sciences – such as research on the stress response and epigenetics – fit into the structure of the theory. Randall T. Frost, MDiv is the Director of Training and Research at Living Systems, a pastoral counseling center in Vancouver, BC. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on January 12, 2012.

Most people recognize resilience when they see it – the ability to “bounce back” from adversity or hardship. Is resilience “hardwired” into a person or is it a relationship process? What factors increase resilience in a person or a family? In this presentation, Louise Rauseo will pose some questions about the research on resilience over the last thirty to forty years and suggest new ways of thinking about resilience in a person and in a family in light of Bowen theory. Louise Rauseo, MS, RN has a private practice in Annapolis, MD and at the US-Mexico border. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on September 29, 2011.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders and result in considerable impairment across many areas of functioning. Dr. Bruce N. Cuthbert will present a perspective on studying emotions, particularly anxiety, empirically. This view will be exemplified by recent findings comparing emotional responses in patients with differing primary diagnoses of anxiety. Patients with greater levels of chronicity consistently show diminished fear. This apparently counter-intuitive finding will be discussed in the context of the new NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project. Bruce N. Cuthbert, PhD is the director of The National Institute of Mental Healths Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) unit. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on April 7, 2011.

Authors like Richard Russo and Anne Tyler tell stories we want to hear because they resonate with our own experience. They give us their best writing and, in return, our best reading recognizes that our own stories affect what we see and hear in the narrative. Dr. David S. Hargrove describes how Bowen family systems theory offers the reader a way to define oneself in relationship to the emotional field of the narrative, which strengthens the self and enhances appreciation of the literature. David S. Hargrove, PhD serves as a member of the faculty at The Bowen Center. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on March 17, 2011.

Can science tell us whether blood is thicker than water? Are we particularly nice to our blood kin and, if so, why? In The Altruism Equation, Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin tells the story of the fierce debate about altruism and kinship among evolutionary biologists, Before the debate was over, politics, philosophy, even religion, would enter the fray, complicating for close to a century attempts to find and settle on a scientific answer to a scientific question. Today that answer is known as “Hamilton’s Rule,” which states that relatives are worth helping in direct proportion to their genetic relatedness. The engine of goodness, Hamilton’s Rule suggests, lies in the family unit. This rule has been as influential on evolutionary biology as Newton’s Laws of Motion have been on physics. Lee Alan Dugatkin, PhD is Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Biology at The University of Louisville. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on February 10, 2011.