3/25/2023 0 Comments System lens in osychologyThis research assumes that perceptions of meaning in life depend on experiences inside and outside the relationship making sense. My current research integrates relationship goal pursuits with the broader existential goal to perceive life as meaningful. I am interested in the mechanisms that govern behavior in specific situations (e.g., a conflict, a support encounter) as well as the processes that forecast the relationship’s eventual fate. I take a person by situation perspective, examining how features of the person (e.g., self-esteem, trust) and features of the situation (e.g., risk) interact to guide perception, inference, and behavior. Using the lens afforded by motivated cognition, I examine both the automatic and controlled processes implicated in the pursuit of safety and value goals. Knowledge of how the emotional system operates in one’s family, work, and social systems offers new, more effective options for solving problems in each of these areas.My research generally examines how the motivations to (1) feel safe and protected against harm and (2) perceive meaning and value in the partner shape affect, cognition, and behavior in adult close relationships. The emotional system affects most human activity and is the principal driving force in the development of clinical problems. People have a “thinking brain,” language, a complex psychology and culture, but they still do all the ordinary things that other forms of life do. A core assumption is that an emotional system that evolved over several billion years governs human relationship systems. He formulated the theory by using systems thinking to integrate knowledge of the human as a product of evolution with knowledge from family research. Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist, originated this theory and its eight interlocking concepts. The one who does the most accommodating literally “absorbs” the system’s anxiety and thus is the family member most vulnerable to problems such as depression, alcoholism, affairs, or physical illness.ĭr. For example, a person takes too much responsibility for the distress of others in relation to their unrealistic expectations of him, or a person gives up too much control of her thinking and decision-making in relationship to others’ anxiously telling her what to do. These members are the people who accommodate the most to reduce tension in others. Eventually, one or more members feel overwhelmed, isolated, or out of control. ![]() As anxiety goes up, the emotional connectedness of family members becomes more stressful than comforting. ![]() When family members get anxious, their anxiety can escalate by spreading infectiously among them. Heightened tension, however, can intensify these processes that promote unity and teamwork, and this can lead to problems. This emotional interdependence presumably evolved to promote the cohesiveness and cooperation families require to protect, shelter, and feed their members. Families differ somewhat in their degree of interdependence, but it is always present to some degree. A change in one person’s functioning is predictably followed by reciprocal changes in the functioning of others. This connectedness and reactivity make the functioning of family members interdependent. ![]() Families so profoundly affect their members’ thoughts, feelings, and actions that it often seems as if people are living under the same “emotional skin.” People solicit each other’s attention, approval, and support, and they react to each other’s needs, expectations, and upsets. Often people feel distant or disconnected from their families, but this is more feeling than fact. It is the nature of a family that its members are intensely connected emotionally. Bowen family systems theory is a theory of human behavior that views the family as an emotional unit and uses systems thinking to describe the unit’s complex interactions.
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