Malcolm in the Middle and Bowenian Therapy, Essay Example

Before introducing the case study, it would be best to take a look at the model. Bowenian therapy is fundamentally a product of systems theory. As such, it focuses on emotional processes within the psyches of individuals, as well as the ways in which individuals interact in a family system. For Bowen, the family was a complex system, with many interrelated and interacting factors determining the relations between its members. Rather than rigid, linear causality, Bowen saw interdependence and complex webs of causality. Bowen differentiated, importantly, between three inter-related systems that drive human behavior: first, the emotional system, which encompasses evolutionary and instinctual functioning; secondly, the intellectual system, which encompasses the human ability to reason and think, and thirdly, the feeling system, which serves as a kind of bridge between the first two by attaching meaning to emotions (Crossno, 2011, pp. 41-42; Kottler & Montgomery, 2011, p. 254). For Bowen, emotion was automatic, reflexive, instinctive, while feeling is something more reflective, and in some ways more complex.

Differentiation of self is a critical concept in Bowenian therapy. There are two essential kinds of differentiation, intrapersonal and interpersonal. Intrapersonal differentiation is the ability to separate thoughts from feelings, enabling the individual to respond as opposed to merely reacting. Individuals with fusion between their thoughts and feelings lack intrapersonal differentiation, and tend to be reactive. They are very poor at dealing with anxiety. The second kind of differentiation is the differentiation between self and others: in other words, someone who is differentiated here knows where they end and someone else begins. Someone who is well differentiated will be better able to reflect on hurts suffered, for example the kinds of wounds that are inevitable in any relationship, without immediately acting on the pain that they feel. Someone who is poorly differentiated, on the other hand, will be more inclined to react automatically, instinctively (Crosno, 2011, p. 43; Gehart, 2014, p. 230; Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013, p. 209).

In families, differentiation of self is crucial to determining what kinds of selves people will exhibit. Differentiation is always a lifelong process, since it describes a very dynamic process that occurs between two or more people, who are themselves changing. When differentiation occurs in a healthy fashion, those involved have a good balance between their needs for autonomy and their needs for closeness and togetherness: they are capable of differentiating between their thoughts and their feelings, and between themselves and others. To use Bowenian terminology, they have solid selves. On the other hand, poorly differentiated people project pseudo-selves as a result of the dynamics of their relationships, and their own internal processes. Where the solid self is capable of respecting boundaries, and recognizes both responsibilities to other people and reasonable expectations from other people, the pseudo-self lacks good boundaries between self and others, and is fundamentally driven by the relationship. The pseudo-self will accommodate itself to the parameters of any relationship: in effect, it tells the other person, ‘Tell me how you want me to be and that is how I will be’ (Becvar & Becvar, 2013, pp. 145-146; Crosno, 2011, p. 43; Gehart, 2014, p. 230).

Triangles are another crucial concept in Bowenian therapy. Triangles characterize the fundamental building block or template for any given emotional system. Bowen believed that triangles, conceptualized as three-way interactions between three different parties, were the smallest relationship units that could be said to be truly stable—in general. While Bowen recognized that some dyads could be relatively stable, he thought the ways in which they could be stable, or at least their potential for stability, were much more limited in scope. Stability in the dyad, Bowen believed, was easy enough so long as the dyad remained calm. Transitory stresses or at least non-chronic stresses could be managed (Becvar & Becvar, 2013, pp. 146-147; Crosno, 2011, pp. 43-44; Titelman, 1998, pp. 11-12).

However, chronic stresses, Bowen believed, could destabilize the vast majority of dyads, namely those dyads that are anything less than consummately differentiated. Triangles are much more stable, and frequently result from a process of triangulation in which one member of the dyad seeks a confederate, who becomes embroiled in the relationship accordingly. Of course, the other member of the dyad is likely to retaliate by doing the same thing, with the result being two interlocking triangles. Triangles are more stable than two-person systems (dyads) assuming the same levels of differentiation for comparison. A dysfunctional triangle is rigid in its dysfunctional qualities: all members are effectively locked into a system with a lack of openness and at least a relative lack of differentiation. Such a triangle can be stable, but if stress and the effects of undifferentiation continue to mount, it will become unstable. The contrast is with a “threesome,” a three-person system that is open, not locked, and characterized by a high degree of differentiation and low levels of stress (Becvar & Becvar, 2013, pp. 146-147; Crosno, 2011, pp. 43-44; Titelman, 1998, pp. 11-12).

The Wilkerson family from the hit show Malcolm in the Middle are an almost text book case of a family with severe stress and differentiation problems. It is very clear that Lois and Hal have a high degree of fusion. Their anxieties and stresses are a recurrent theme in episode after episode of the show, and they both evince coping styles associated with a high degree of fusion. Lois has a tendency to lash out verbally, with great anger, whenever Hal or the boys commit some transgression. Her relationship with her oldest son, Francis, is fraught with tension and anger on both sides. Commentary by Lois and Hal both over the course of the series repeatedly establishes that Lois is the backbone of the family in more ways than one—indeed, in practically every way.

Lois is the sole disciplinarian of the boys, meting out punishments that are often very harsh. She makes the decisions, and Hal usually follows her without question. When he does stand up to her, he is almost always upset with her because he feels she has treated him unfairly. Other times he drags his heels out of fear. Lois sometimes takes issue with the rest of the family’s lack of initiative, but this does not stop her from taking control over any number of decisions. Malcolm in particular objects to the way she has attempted to micro-manage his life, and Francis, who no longer lives at home, resents her for sending him to military school and generally having been a terrible mother, as he sees it. Lois seems to feel that it is necessary for her to exert this kind of control over her sons’ lives in particular, no matter how much they hate her for it, but does not as a rule attempt to give them more leeway in order to make their own decisions, including their own mistakes.

This systemic perspective of Bowenian therapy is rooted in systems theory. Systems theory breaks with the ideas of linear causation that used to characterize psychology and other social sciences. Indeed, it was quite the paradigm shift when thinkers like Bowen first began to implement it in the context of therapy and social work. Systems theory goes as far back as the work of the late 19^th-century economist Herbert Spencer, and was applied to the emergent information technology sector in the early 20^th century. During the Second World War it was applied to weapons systems. What distinguished systems theory was its break with linear causation: systems theory is capable of handling multiple causes due to interconnectedness of the parts. Thus, systems theory provides frameworks of analysis for modeling complex systems in which all parts interact with each other through webs of interdependence. This is the common thread that made a theoretical framework originally used for information technology systems ultimately applicable to the human brain and then to interactions between members of a family or other complex social grouping (Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2013, pp. 91-92; Walsh, 2013, pp. 115-116; Winek, 2009, pp. 7-8).

Applying systems theory, as practiced by Bowenian therapy, to the case of the Wilkerson family reveals a great deal. The fusion between Hal and Lois is what enables Hal to defer to Lois and allow her to be the backbone of the family, at the cost of his own considerable passivity. In a couple of episodes in particular, Hal’s anxiety, indecisiveness, passivity and general lack of maturity are revealed to have deep underpinnings in his own background. For example, in the episode where the family goes to celebrate Hal’s father’s birthday, Hal’s father uses silliness and childish behavior to avoid having any kind of serious discussion with Hal—particularly about how the rest of Hal’s family are treating Lois. Hal’s indecisiveness is explained in a flashback: as a boy, Hal was given the choice between a petting zoo and a clown for his birthday. Unable to decide, he asked for both. The camera cuts to a clown being strangled by a snake. Ever since, Hal has been extremely indecisive, and afraid of both clowns and snakes. In that episode, Hal’s chronic indecisiveness was a major plot point when a neighbor went into a coma. The man’s will gave Hal power of attorney, meaning Hal had to choose whether to pull the plug or leave it in and hope the man would make a recovery. He found a third option of some kind, though in humorous fashion it was not specified.

As a young man, Hal was something of a rebel. He smoked cigarettes, listened to rock music, and was generally ‘wild.’ Lois says that she ‘tamed’ him, and in one episode when Lois is out Hal has an irresponsible friend over. Within a few days, he regresses from a more or less responsible adult (under Lois’s supervision, at any rate) to not going into work because it doesn’t sound like fun, and smoking, listening to rock music, building a killer robot, and not bothering to wear pants. This speaks to profound issues resulting from the projection process that occurred in his own upbringing, since his father generally didn’t have much of a real relationship with him.  He also has an anger streak, one which manifests itself in the occasional penchant for aggressive behavior.

Lois, too, had many issues with her family, and these issues inform her behavior with her own family. Her mother, Ida, is easily the most unpleasant person on the entire show: bitter, angry, unkind, and self-centered, Ida is despised by the entire Wilkerson family. Lois’s father Victor, who dies later in the show, is similarly self-centered and unpleasant. He also later turns out to have secretly had another family—and, moreover, genetic testing establishes he was not Lois’s biological father. Lois’s parents (counting Victor as her father, as she herself does) were callous toward her, favoring her sister Susan as more talented and more well-mannered. Lois has replicated some aspects of her own upbringing in her family: the strict discipline, the anger, the arguable emotional abuse.

These troubled upbringings for both Hal and Lois, then, have a great deal to do with their parenting styles. Hal is more loving than his own parents seem to have been, but his passivity and indecision seem to be quite solidly rooted in important aspects of his upbringing. Lois is the backbone of the family because Hal needs her to be, and because she is drawing upon some important aspects of her own upbringing. Their relationships with their sons are fraught with anxiety, drama, and conflict of all kinds. Francis in particular is obsessed with how terrible he considers Lois to have been as a mother. Both Lois and Hal have low expectations of Francis at the beginning of the series, having packed him off to military school after a string of misadventures and behavioral problems. Hal is able to patch up his relationship with Francis when he learns that Francis stands up for other cadets at the military school, but the Lois-Francis dynamic remains a difficult one.

Reese, the second son, is considered a ne’er-do-well throughout the series. He is a bully and a social outcast, completely unconcerned about the future or about the needs of others. He too has a fraught relationship with Lois, though over the course of the series it is clear that he gets away with a great deal behaviorally and academically, since Lois and Hal expect so little of him. Short on intelligence or regard for consequences, Reese will sometimes get into trouble simply because he refuses to be quiet or comply with Lois when he should. In the series finale, Reese is elated to land a job as a janitor at his high school.

Malcolm, on the other hand, is the ‘smart one’: discovered to be a genius in the series pilot, he enters a gifted program, and promptly becomes the focus of his parents’ aspirations and hopes. On many an occasion throughout the series, Hal and Lois make it clear to Malcolm that they expect a great deal more from him than they do from his brothers: in season one, Hal tells Malcolm he expects Malcolm is the only one in the family who will amount to much, and he hopes Malcolm will look out for his brothers. In one episode, Lois mandates Reese and Malcolm get jobs—and while Reese finds a job at a meat packing plant, Lois promptly fulfills her own requirement for Malcolm, by getting him a job at the Lucky Aid where she works. In the series finale, Lois forces Malcolm to turn down a six-figure job offer, and to go to college instead. She says that he wouldn’t suffer enough unless he went to college as a gifted but underprivileged student. Malcolm, she explains, needs to go into politics and eventually become president of the United States, because ‘people like us,’ i.e. regular people, need someone in high office who will truly understand them. Malcolm understandably resents this, and it occasions some of the worst friction between him and Lois throughout the series.

Dewey is the overlooked one. Youngest of the lot until Jamie is born at the end of season four, Dewey is the picked-on little brother, hectored and manipulated by Malcolm and Reese in the earlier seasons. When he takes a specific test for intelligence, Malcolm convinces him to throw the test so that he won’t have to deal with the social stigma of being a Krelboyne (member of the gifted program). Unfortunately, Dewey ends up in the emotionally disturbed class. There, however, Dewey finds his niche, as the leader of the class. He even sabotages an attempt to put him back in the regular classes after he realizes that his friends in the emotionally disturbed class, the Buseys, need him. He also discovers a love of the piano, and practices diligently until he becomes very gifted indeed. And yet, he finds it fiendishly difficult to get attention from his parents. When Lois is going to deliver Jamie by caesarean section, they schedule the delivery for Dewey’s birthday, not remembering the date’s significance. In one episode, Dewey discovers to his chagrin that Hal and Lois have no baby pictures of him. As a result, he hatches a plot to force them to start doing better for Jaime.

By any measure, then, this family needs help. In the context of family therapy, systems theory conceptualizes families as rule-governed entities. Using this approach, the therapist can help the family to ascertain the rules that govern their behavior, and why these rules function as they do. For example, the rule that Lois is the disciplinarian functions in part to save Hal from having to be tough or make decisions. It also functions to keep Lois at the center of the family, in control, which she clearly wants at some level just as Hal does. The rule that Malcolm is the hope of the family has the marks of a triangle all over it, one involving Hal’s and Lois’s anxieties about the family’s finances and the various issues that they have with Francis and Reese in particular. With a high degree of fusion, both Hal and Lois project their anxieties onto Malcolm to provide the family with some kind of salvation in the future (Becvar & Becvar, 2013, pp. 145-150; Crossno, 2011, pp. 42-46; Gehart, 2014, pp. 229-235; Klever, 1998, pp. 119-123).

The role of the therapist, fundamentally, is to help the Wilkerson family see how and why they are acting as they do. The therapist must help them to understand the consequences of their lack of differentiation: Lois’s anger and authoritarian discipline, Hal’s passivity and indecisiveness, the boys’ resentment of their mother, all of these are connected due to the family’s high degree of fusion. Health, in this context, means a degree of separation that is sufficient to allow them to respect each other’s needs. In essence, it is sufficient differentiation of self to be able to tell thoughts from feelings and self from others. The theory of change is that as the family understands the deleterious patterns of behavior they are replicating and makes the effort to fix them, they will discover the ways in which they need to respect each other and differentiate. They will write new rules to govern their family system, and this will facilitate a process of change that will help them to discover a new and healthy mode of existence (Crossno, 2011, pp. 42-46; Klever, 1998, pp. 120-125; Titelman, 1998, pp. 51-56).

This, then, is the underlying rationale: know the rules of the system, begin to understand it. Understand the system, and you can begin to change it. By helping the Wilkersons to understand their family system, I the therapist can help them to change it. A good starting point, since Bowenian therapy is all about multigenerational processes, would be a genogram. A genogram is a roadmap for change: it takes the form of a mapped out history of the family, with significant life events for different members (Gehart, 2014, p. 231). This can help the family to see how the ways in which Hal and Lois were brought up have affected how they raise their sons.

Another aspect of intervention, which I would implement throughout the process, is to ask important questions of each member of the family about how they see themselves and the other members of the family. The therapist needs to understand each member’s story if they are to be of help. Here the focus is on helping the members to understand their actions: why do they do what they do, and how do others see them—and how do they see others? The goal is to help all members understand the unproductive and mutually frustrating ramifications of their behavior, so that they begin to change it. Other than these basic concepts, there is no one single way to do Bowenian therapy. In my questions, I would try to draw Hal’s attention to the ramifications of his lack of decisiveness, and the pressures that this places on Lois. I would try to help Lois understand that she is effectively enabling Hal by making decisions for him and being sole disciplinarian. I would try to help both of them understand how their relationships with their sons are sometimes hard because they do not sufficiently respect their sons’ needs. For the boys, I would try to help each of them understand how they can better communicate their needs, and how they can participate in creating interactions with their parents that are much more productive and helpful to the family.

I would also lead them through role reversal, a favored technique of many Bowenian therapists. In role reversal, family members adopt the personae of each other. For example, Malcolm could be Hal, and Hal Malcolm. Lois could be her own mother. If it was a combined session with Francis, Reese, and Dewey as well, I would also have Francis be Lois, Reese be Dewey, and Dewey be Reese. The purpose of the exercise would be to help them start to see themselves and each other in a more complex way. For example, Francis would benefit from having to pretend to be Lois, and Lois would benefit from having to see Francis pretend to be her. Francis would also benefit from watching Lois pretend to be Ida, since so much of Lois really does come back to Ida. Malcolm would benefit from pretending to be just anybody else in his family, since he can be rather full of himself and has trouble relating to the rest of the family due to his intelligence. And so it goes: Reese would benefit from pretending to be Dewey because of the way he picks on Dewey, while Dewey would benefit from pretending to be Reese for the same reason. Roles could then be switched over the course of sessions as needed. In every case, the benefits are compounded because each individual gets to play a role, and potentially every individual gets to see themselves played by someone else. This exercise in perspective-taking can serve as the grounds for all members to gain some much-needed empathy and sympathy for each other, which can help them to devise new and better rules to govern their family interactions.

Over the course of the sessions, the techniques could be modified at need. For example, questions can always be asked in more open-ended ways, which is sometimes needful: ‘Malcolm, how do you feel about the way your parents are raising you?’ versus ‘Malcolm, tell me more about some of the problems you have with your parents’, for example. In some cases it may be necessary to point out specific aspects of behavior that reinforce each other: for example, Lois metes out harsh punishments, which encourages the boys to resent her; resenting her and not especially respecting her, they are keen to devise fresh mischief, and so on. The trickiest part would be helping them overcome their high degree of fusion, since this is so integral to their troubles. This would be a long process, but it would be helped by showing them how they can separate feelings from thoughts and self from others, using perspective-taking and thinking about things carefully. By helping the Wilkersons to understand these things and improve upon them, I would be able to help them begin to create a new and more productive family life for themselves, one that is based on mutual respect and understanding.

References

Becvar, D. S., & Becvar, R. J. (2013). Family therapy: A systemic integration (8^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Crossno, M.A. (2011). Bowen family systems theory. In L. Metcalf (Ed.), Marriage and family therapy: A practice-oriented approach (pp. 39-64). New York: Springer Publishing Company.

Gehart, D. (2014). Mastering competencies in family therapy: A practical approach to theory and clinical case documentation (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Goldenberg, I., & Goldenberg, H. (2013). Family therapy: an overview (8^th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooke/Cole Cengage Learning.

Klever, P. (1998). Marital fusion and differentiation. In P. Titelman (Ed.), Clinical applications of Bowen Family Systems Theory (pp. 119-146). Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press.

Kottler, J. A., & Montgomery, M. J. (2011). Theories of counseling and therapy: An experiential approach (2^nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Titelman, P. (1998). Family systems assessment based on Bowen theory. In P. Titelman (Ed.), Clinical applications of Bowen Family Systems Theory (pp. 51-68). Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press.

Walsh, J. (2013). Theories for direct social work practice (3^rd ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Winek, J. L. (2009). Systemic family therapy: From theory to practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.