What is emotionality according to Dr Murray Bowen?

Emotionality, according to Dr Bowen, is the pressure for togetherness.

Undifferentiated ego mass

The "undifferentiated family ego mass" is a term used to reflect the connected reactions of members in a poorly differentiated family. Members take responsibility (and blame) for the happiness (or otherwise) of others.

Family members are highly reactive to each other. Anxiety experienced by one member quickly escalates and spreads to other members.

If one family member experiences distress, other family members react with distress even when the situation does not affect them directly. There is no sense of emotional objectivity. Everyone is caught in the same emotional mass.

For example, one family member is injured in an accident. Although no one else is hurt, the whole family reacts as if each had experienced the same injury.

The family is directed by feelings and not thinking. They do not have control over their reactions.

Sometimes the reactive distress is so intense that the member who first got distressed is blamed for "making" everyone else feel distressed. There is intense pressure applied on the "initiator" of the distress to rectify the distressing situation.

Triangling

Emotional triangles are another way in which family members get distressed about a matter which does not directly involve them.

A simple example of a triangle is when two members of a family are in dispute. These two disputing members try to reduce the anxiety between them by drawing a third family member into the dispute. The third family member is thus triangled into the dispute.

This triangled member becomes aligned with one of the original members of the dispute to form an alliance against the other original member of the dispute. The member against whom the alliance is formed becomes the outsider.

Triangling has the effect of shifting anxiety away from the members in the original dispute. The anxiety is not reduced or eliminated. It has merely shifted to the relationship between the triangled member and the outsider.

Emotional neediness

In relationships of intense emotionality, individuals lack knowledge of self in the relationship system. They devote extraordinary levels of energy to preserving the emotional fusion. They always feel lacking in love, caring and security. They need constant reinforcement from other family members of their loyalty and love.

Seeking ideal situation

Emotional neediness reflects a belief that the ideal situation is the only acceptable situation. If the ideal situation cannot be created, life becomes intolerable and difficult.

Testing each other

Family members may run "tests" on other members to verify their loyalty.

For example, a wife asks her husband to come home early because, she says, she is feeling sick. In reality, the wife is not really sick but she wants reassurance of her husband’s caring for her. She wants to see if he "really cares about her" and fulfils her request. She is using his reaction as a "test of his love".

Hiding problems

Energy is devoted towards avoiding problems and denying their existence. A problem is hidden because the family does not know how to deal with it.

Denial of reality leads to the development of a pseudo-self. It becomes more important to project an image that impresses other people than to develop self-hood.

Communication between family members is focussed on making demands of other people and blaming. It is not about problem solving.

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This page was last updated Sunday, 07 January 2001