4.4.2. Triangles

Multi-sided relationships beyond the dyadic take on repetitive patterns of a three-way interaction known as triangling. The dynamical repetitive nature of such recurring patterns serves to create a structure or order for family interaction that operates in a predictable fashion beneath the sometimes turbulent surface of family relationships. Triangling appears in a relationship network as tension develops between two individuals. When that tension exceeds the person's ability to maintain differentiation of self, he or she predictably moves to involve a third person. Within the family the third person chosen is one who has emotional significance to the tense twosome. For example, as tension mounts between siblings in a family, typically one of the siblings will move toward a parent with a complaint or story about the other child. The movement occurs with a communication to the third about the difficult other person or about the difficult relationship. The communication includes content (the story being conveyed) and emotion (a valence or charge the communicating individual injects into the communication). For example, the child attempting to involve the parent presents his or her tale with a whining, complaining voice tone, stressed countenance, and a quality of demand that the parent finds difficult to ignore.

With the involvement of the third, the anxiety and tension between the original two now can move among three relationships instead of the original single one. The initiator of the triangling move now has an ally in the parent, and the tension shifts to the relationship between the second child and the parent. The pattern can shift again, with the alliance reforming between siblings and the parent again placed in the outside position. It can shift ye<sup>t</sup> again, leading to a closeness between the second child and the parent, leaving the original child who complained to the parent in the outside position. The triangle allows stress and tension to shift among the various relationships, fending off the stress-based impairment of any particular person. When tension decreases overall, the patterns of the triangle recede as if dormant, emerging again when tension inevitably increases.

Predictable movements occur within the triangle. When the tension between two is high, one of the two will attempt to attain the outside position and involve someone else in the tension position of the twosome. For example, when tension develops between a parent and a teenager, the teenager can complain to the other parent about the situation. This complaint can transfer the tension to the relationship between the parents, leaving the teenager in the outside position and relatively free from the tension between the parents. When the relationship system is relatively calm, the outside position is less comfortable, and the outsider will make some effort to draw another out of a perceived closeness with a third and create a new close twosome with him-or herself. For example, a daughter sensing an outside position with her mother can gossip with her mother about the mother's sister, her aunt. Mother and daughter form a close temporary alliance focused on the shared perceptions of the aunt. Tension now shifts to the relationship between the aunt and the mother. There are myriad variations of these basic triangling patterns that can be observed to predictably occur and reoccur in a particular family in conjunction with levels of tension. When the effects of anxiety, stress and ultimately tension cannot be managed within a single triangle, one of the threesome approaches a fourth, creating an exponentially larger set of triangles through which various inside and outside positions allow the effects of the tension to be managed with as little impairment as possible to any given person.

#### 4.4.3. Family Projection Process

An important triangle involves parents and a child. Among a group of siblings, generally one child appears to be more emotionally involved with the parents than the others. That child monitors tension in the parents, responding to increases in that tension with shifts in behavior that draw the worried attention of the parents. The parents, equally attuned to the child, focus anxiously on the child. In that worried focus, the parental tension decreases as the parents appear to cooperate in order to address the "problem" in the child.

For example, a mother of three worries frequently about her oldest child, a son. She perceives him as less able to look after himself and in need of her guidance. She and the father, who shares the viewpoint, attempt to remove challenges from the son's path, fighting his battles for him, interpreting his actions to others, attempting to prop him up and shield him from distress and from failure. The son reciprocally presents himself as frail and incompetent, reinforcing the parents' perspective. The parents see the other two children as more robust and competent, and they have less worry about their development and life choices.

The relatively fixed nature of this particular triangle constrains a child's separation from the parents. The child in this position emerges from the developmental process with a less well-developed level of differentiation of self than his or her siblings. Bowen singled out this particular triangle as a central mechanism in the transmission of varying levels of differentiation of self from parents to children and called it the family projection process. Said somewhat differently, differential parental involvement with their children transmits varying levels of differentiation of self to the next generation.

#### 4.4.4. Cutoff and Contact in the Multigenerational Family

A broad pattern concerns the connection between generational units in the extended family. The connections between parents, their grown children and their grandchildren reflect the experiences of the family system over time. The degree of connection between a nuclear family and its extended families appears to play an important role in the functioning of a nuclear family [1]. Families vary significantly in the degree of connection maintained with their extended families. Some are in good contact broadly across generations. Others maintain infrequent and limited contact with duty visits occasionally. Yet others display full cutoff with no contact whatsoever. Where families retain good connection and contact between generations, nuclear families appear to develop fewer dysfunctions or symptoms than in families where connection is weaker [13].

#### *4.5. The Effects of Stress on Relationship Patterns*

Much like the predetermined movement sequences of a dance, these patterns emerge and recede in the family marking surges in stress and anxiety. Some appear and shift rapidly in a dynamical kaleidoscopic fashion. Some patterns become fixed, losing their flexible response capability. As patterns become more fixed, participating family members appear more susceptible to the development of symptoms. With study and experience, an observer can predict the emergence of sets of reciprocal patterns within a specific family. While the issues or challenges (content) of the family shift across time, clinical observations sugges<sup>t</sup> that the response patterns (process) appear to repeat in their linkage with varying degrees of tension in the family.

#### *4.6. The Clinical Approach*

The clinical efforts derived from family systems theory aim to assist the functioning of the family unit and not simply the behavior of a symptomatic individual. The clinician and the family work to shift focus from the individual family member to the context and processes of family relationships. Families are encouraged to observe first how the family system behaves and the conditions of that behavior. Who is involved, where does the interaction occur, what happens, and when does it happen? Facts become important, and people work to separate factual information from opinion and belief.

Motivated family members begin to identify reciprocal and repetitive patterns of interaction in which a particular symptom or difficulty is embedded. The family member attempts to recognize and slowly modify his or her own automatic participation in that pattern. He or she works to remain present in the tense relationships by managing his or her own emotional reactiveness to others. He or she develops plans for the managemen<sup>t</sup> of self in family process and to follow through on those plans. Small sustainable changes in one's own functioning become the goal. Such small shifts appear to have long range effects on the functioning of the FES.

Family systems therapy, based on this model, brings the potential of natural systems thinking about the family to the domain of psychiatry and the helping professions. The principles and method generalize to other large groups and organizations where consultants and coaches attempt to apply systems thinking to their work.

#### **5. The Potential of Natural Systems Thinking for the Human Condition**

#### *5.1. Principles of Functioning in the Family System and Other Natural Systems*

Natural systems thinking in the Bowen theory has advanced our understanding of the family as an emotional system. It has illuminated how the family emotional system produces problems of health, behavior, and relationships. Principles for guiding behavior have emerged from this systems view to ameliorate the emotional and behavioral processes in the family that produce problems that originate in the family. The principles of how the family emotional system functions also appear in patterns of functioning in other natural systems. It is hypothesized that the family system and how its co-regulation of parts and the whole could serve as a model for scientific theorizing and research into other natural systems beyond the family. Knowledge of human systems could benefit in turn from what is learned about what is the same and different in other natural systems. This is what is referred to as natural systems thinking and it is consistent with Bowen's vision for a vibrant science of human behavior that could guide progress in psychiatry, medicine, and other applied disciplines.

Bowen identified a predictable relationship between how the family unit functions and the adaptiveness or level of functioning of each of its members. When similar processes between the social group and its members are observed in other natural systems it contributes to the progress in science that E.O. Wilson calls consilience. Consilience occurs when observations "jump together" across the boundaries of scientific disciplines and become the basis for a solid theory that integrates existing knowledge to provide a strong foundation for ongoing investigation and discovery [14]. The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr wrote that scientific progress is based more on progress in

conceptualization than it is on new facts [15] (p. 23). Along this line, Bowen believed that schizophrenia and severe emotional illness would not be fully understood until the biological and social science disciplines could all be understood within a single frame of reference.

Bowen also believed the study of living systems would lead to an overarching natural systems theory ([1] p. 46, p. 354 and [16]). He went on to bring together two broad classes of behavior recognized in psychology and the behavioral sciences—reflexive and stimulus bound behavior and behavior with greater flexibility that is potentially under the individual's control [17–19]. The scale of differentiation concept reflects people's variation in the mix of these two classes of behavior and the corresponding differences in their levels of adaptive functioning. Questions for research include how the concept of differentiation relates to adaptive behavior in other species and to what extent the concept of differentiation of self in the emotional system can serve as an integrative framework for the study of interactions between the functioning of the individual and the group across the range of adaptive behaviors in the behavioral sciences.

Principles regulating interaction of individuals in social units of other species appear to be based on processes related to the individuality and togetherness processes observed in the human family system [1]. In the human family, behavior driven by emotional reactiveness in relationships reflects family togetherness pressures that erode the emotional autonomy, self-regulatory capability, and thoughtfully guided behavior of family members. If that erosive process goes too far, the viability and stability of the entire family becomes compromised. Evolutionary biologist John Bonner surveyed species from amoebae to humans looking at the integration and isolation of organisms from the larger groups of which they are a part. He observed across all the levels of life he studied, that the viability of individuals depends on their functional integration as part of the larger system and that the viability of the group depends on the functional integrity of its individual constituents in the larger system [20] (pp. 229–246). Both the loss of connectedness and too much of it undermine the functioning of the whole and its parts.

The attrition of individual fitness of some that benefits the functioning of others and the group as a whole appears to operate in other social species as well, especially when stress increases the intensities of relationship patterns. In the human, some family members absorb the family tensions and are more vulnerable to breakdowns and clinical symptoms. This leaves others in the family freer of the tensions and able to function at a higher level, which benefits the group. This channeling of tension in the system towards some more than others is common in both human societies and other primate social groups that transfer anxiety, often to reactive or isolated individuals who are lower in a stable social hierarchy [21]. This process of channelizing stress reactivity is found in natural systems far removed in evolution from the human. The process can be found in principles that regulate the functioning of slime mold amoebae. When the individual slime mold amoebae congregate, those that are more reactive to adaptive stresses as they increase become non-reproductive individuals. These individuals die as they form a stalk that supports the fruiting body of the collective where other individuals survive and reproduce [22,23]. Many relationship processes in other species seem closely related to principles of functioning that underlie the human family and also lead to variation in levels of adaptive functioning within and between functional units of social systems in nature [24].

#### *5.2. Principles of Functioning in The Family System and Society*

Natural systems thinking about the family has produced a way of understanding the conditions under which successful relationships and high levels of functioning are sustained for more family members. Viable relationships with the larger extended family can help the family to manage anxiety. The larger the whole network of interlocking triangles, the greater number of pathways for the transfer of anxiety to move in the system without fixing upon and impairing any one family member or relationship. This is one way that the intactness of the whole extended system impacts the individual. Additionally, the automatic tendencies to polarize and cutoff can be moderated and the advantages of connectedness sustained when the relationships are based on differentiation of self. With increased

levels of differentiation, relationships are more likely to be maintained even when stress strains relationships and anxiety is heightened. With the broader view characteristic of higher levels of differentiation, thinking predominates over emotional reaction. Relationship tensions are taken less personally, blame is assigned less freely, and tolerance of difference is achieved more readily. Clinical experience has provided persuasive evidence, in addition to Bowen's original observations, that individual efforts toward increasing one's level differentiation in the family contributes to the moderation of relationship reactivity and improves the chances for stability and flexibility of the family system as a whole [1].

Bowen theorized that the same emotional forces that operate in the family operate in larger society in his concept of societal emotional process. The balance of individuality and togetherness forces that constitute the level of functioning or level of differentiation in the family also constitutes the level of functioning of society. It is proposed in the theory that the way society has been interacting with nature has resulted in the degradation of the natural environment upon which we depend. As a result, chronic anxiety in society has been increasing. In society as in the family, increasing levels of emotionally reactive patterns of functioning and decreasing functional levels of differentiation produce social regressions, all of which occurs under conditions of sustained chronic anxiety. As societal levels of chronic anxiety increase family levels of anxiety also increase. The projection process is further activated in the family and negatively impacts the adaptive maturation of the younger generation. Evidence that these negative impacts are occurring is found in the rather astounding report that 75 percent of Americans aged 17 to 24 did not meet the requirements to join the United States military in 2009. That is, 26 million young Americans, because of inadequate education, criminality, overweight, obesity and physical and mental health problems did not qualify for military service [25].

Knowledge of the principles of functioning of the family emotional system contributes options for the human to chart a course through increasing chronic anxiety arising from increasingly threatened and threatening natural systems. It provides principles of functioning directed toward managemen<sup>t</sup> of self in relationship to others and using knowledge of emotional systems to guide behavior for the common good. These are the principles of functioning towards differentiation of self in the emotional system that are well known to clinical practitioners of Bowen theory. They aim to increase the functioning levels of individuals and the larger systems of which they are part and to counter the emotionally regressive impact of chronic anxiety on relationships and individual functioning in the family and society.

Understanding individuals and their groups as emotional systems in which the constant reiteration of individual emotional functioning impacting the group which impacts the individual back in return, provides a basis for the human to change the future. Larger scale societal change is theorized to be possible if enough key leaders will take on working on their own differentiation of self as a way to influence the larger systems of which they are a part. The challenge is to shift out of automatic emotionally reactive behavior patterns in spite of the chronic anxiety fueling them, towards thinking and actions based on responsible principles for the long term. This is also what we mean by systems thinking and what we believe is the potential of systems thinking for the human condition.

**Author Contributions:** All four authors contributed to the conceptualization and editing of this article. Each were responsible for particular sections, which were then integrated within the article.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
