Multigenerational Family Therapy

With his experience as a psychiatrist, Murray Bowen developed multigenerational family therapy to explain an individual’s dysfunction or pathology with consideration to the individual’s family. The importance of the family was virtually not considered or understood prior to the development of Bowen’s theory; thus, Bowenian family systems theory is considered a first-generation family therapy theory. This theory seeks to understand how a family’s functioning affects the family’s individual members. Multigenerational therapy has Bowenian theory as its foundation and seeks to identify how the family’s current dysfunction is a result of generational patterns. The multigenerational family therapist focuses on the facts related to the family rather than the family’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Multigenerational family therapy was the first theory to coin terms now commonly understood and ...