Speaker: John J. Engels President, Leadership Coaching Inc., Rochester, New York Beliefs about leadership govern every leader’s decisions and behavior. Some beliefs about leadership are closely aligned with reality. Others — including many widely accepted as “true” — are influenced more by emotional process and the imagination. This presentation will help leaders distinguish reality-based from emotionally-driven beliefs in an effort to maximize credibility and competence. This lecture was...

Speaker: Kelly Lambert, PhD Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology, Randolph Macon College, Ashland, VA The transformation that accompanies the onset of motherhood and fatherhood in mammals is remarkable. Based on research with rodent and primate models, Dr. Lambert will discuss the neurobiological and behavioral aspects of these transformations. Her findings suggest that the transition from an animal focused on self-preservation to one that is responsive to the needs of other animals...

Speaker: Daniel V. Papero, PhD, LCSW Faculty Member at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, Washington, DC Like families, organizations have an emotional side to them that is predictable. In today’s anxious world, filled with stressed people and anxious organizations, systems ideas can help a leader understand the terrain of leadership, the forces at work within that terrain and provide some guidance for managing oneself effectively as a leader and a follower. This talk explores the...

Speaker: Sam Pappas, MD Private Practice, Tysons Corner, VA The Mediterranean diet has received wide acclaim for the many positive health effects it exerts. Adherence to this traditional diet has been shown to reduce the risk of cognitive impairment, dementia and neurodegenerative diseases overall. This talk will explore the multiple benefits a Mediterranean diet and lifestyle has on mood, cognitive function and overall brain health. This lecture was recorded live on May 2, 2019. Can’t attend...

Speaker: Dr. Mona Sarfaty, MD, MPH, FAAFP Executive Director, Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA A family medicine physician and public health doctor who has engaged in teaching, research and advocacy for over 30 years, Dr. Sarfaty will describe her research using this background to show how climate change has affected her view of health care over the years. Her work and research were the impetus for...

How much energy and attention does a family require of its members to sustain stability? How much room does the family allow for its members to pursue their individual interests and directions over time? This presentation explores variation in goal direction and its impact on the functioning of the nuclear family by examining the findings of a longitudinal family study. Phillip Klever, MSW maintains a private practice in Kansas City, MO. This lecture was recorded live on January 17, 2019.

John Bowlby and Murray Bowen were contemporaries, each basing their ideas about relationships on clinical observations influenced by evolutionary thinking. Bowlby focused on the interactions between the mother and the infant while Bowen examined the multigenerational family system. This evening will highlight the parallels and differences in their ideas. Anne S. McKnight, EdD, LCSW is the Director of the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in Washington, DC. This lecture was recorded...

Robert Felton will describe how he attempted to use Bowen Theory as a Supervisor of Special Education in a major school system where individual thinking was pervasive. The process for defining a child’s problem for special education services was based on a medical model which tended to increase anxiety in the system and child focus. Mr. Felton will address his ability to manage self using principles of Bowen Theory in working with the triangles as the system focused on the symptomatic child,...

Dr. Murray Bowen stated: “The degree of unresolved emotional attachment to the parents is equivalent to the degree of undifferentiation that must somehow be handled in a person’s own life and in future generations” (Bowen, 1978, p. 382). He observed that all people have some degree of unresolved emotional attachment from their parents. These emotional attachments in the parental triangle formed at birth are initially necessary for survival. In the process of growing up and moving toward...

Dr. Ruff was both a partner in life through marriage and in research with Candace B. Pert, PhD., with their discovery of Peptide-T which controlled the pain and extended thousands of lives in the treatment of the HIV virus. This discovery opened the door to a non-opioid treatment for pain. Dr. Pert contributed to the founding of the field of MindBody (her term) medicine in the mid-1980’s. Her sudden death in September 2013 created a whirlpool of reactivity in the family and their business...

For the last six decades a dedicated team of researchers in Siberia has been domesticating silver foxes to replay the evolution of the dog in real time. Lyudmila Trut has been lead scientist on this work since 1959, and together with biologist and historian of science, Lee Dugatkin, she tells the inside story of the science, politics, adventure, and love behind it all. Together these two risked not just their careers, but to an extent their lives, to make scientific history. If you go one...

Rabbi Edwin Friedman was a colleague and student of Murray Bowen’s family systems theory. As a dynamic speaker and brilliant thinker, he applied systems theory to the lives of clergy and the work of congregational life. Although he adopted some of Bowen’s concepts taken from natural systems, he added his own ideas in distinctive ways. The two speakers will address their different perspectives about their similarities and differences in their ideas. Slides for Dr. Jeunnette’s talk Slides for...

The multi-faceted concept of differentiation of self includes numerous variables which, taken together, describe variation in lifestyle of individuals and families. This presentation will review and evaluate some of the ways in which the concept has been operationalized for purposes of family research. Other concepts such as resilience, coping, adaptation, and self-esteem will also be examined for their possible relevance to research on differentiation of self. Randall Frost, MDiv is a...

Like a small rowboat in a big ocean, parenting an adolescent can leave adults feeling like they are far from safe harbor with no oars. Spend any time on Facebook and a parent will encounter advice, cajoling, and even criticism about how to parent. Carpool lines and soccer field sidelines are full of stories of how parents navigate the challenges of raising children. Through case study presentations and conversations with parents, grandparents, and educators (and anyone else who encounters...

This presentation will describe the approach to preserve Dr. Bowen’s original letters and videotapes at the National Library of Medicine where they will be available for the ages and to also create an online digital database so that researchers can do their primary work. To enable both NLM researchers and the public to explore how Bowen developed his theory in his own words, The goal is to recreate the totality of each of his “laboratories,” including his family, genealogical records, and his...

Dr. Anne S. McKnight will discuss J. D. Vance’s best-selling book in which he describes his life growing up in the Rust Bowl with his addicted mother and her ever-changing partners. His grandmother played a pivotal role in providing a connection out of the family chaos and instability. He went into the Marines, and then onto the Ohio State University and Yale Law School. The story does not end there. He still had work to do on differentiation. Anne S. McKnight, EdD, MSW is the Director of...

African American Maroons (people who permanently self-removed from enslavement) and indigenous Americans founded a novel society in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia beginning with the rise of colonialism in the Mid-Atlantic region. After over a decade’s work on several sites in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, archaeology is showing how these resistant and defiant people formed communities that lasted over 250 years, what their communities were like, how...

Twenty-eight years of leadership in the Episcopal Church has provided an opportunity to think about and practice leadership principles. Bishop Stacy F. Sauls says he may have learned a thing or two, some painfully, about the relationships among responsibility, authority and power; the destructiveness of secrets; and the supreme importance of the moment of asking whether you, the leader, might be the one who is crazy. The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls is the Chief Executive Officer at Love Must Act...

In her recent book, The Beauty of What Remains, Dr. Susan Hadler reveals the details of her journey to break through barriers of absence, silence and prohibitions. This effort was an opportunity to gain strength and support to persevere in the face of reactivity to find the lost, to bridge cut-offs and to bring her shattered family together. Her husband, The Rev. Jacques Hadler, journeyed with her using his awareness of Bowen theory through his learning experience with Rabbi Edwin Friedman....

The development of higher cortical systems involved in the ability to manage self is embedded in the relationship circuitry of the family. The differentiation of the intellectual system and its relationship to the family will be discussed in its developmental and evolutionary contexts. Robert J. Noone, PhD is co-founder of the Center for Family Consultation and serves as a faculty member at The Bowen Center. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on January 12,...

Mr. Keith Tignor has worked closely with the beekeeping industry for over twenty-five years. He is coordinator of the regulatory and assistance programs for beekeeping in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This presentation will include his recent research on the beekeeping industry that demonstrates how bees are a symptom of the environment in which they live. Keith Tignor is the State Apiarist at the Office of Plant Industry Services at the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer...

As much as 8,000,000 tonnes of plastic enters the ocean every year and this amount is predicted to double within the next decade. This number keeps increasing in pace with global plastics production. Left unchecked, by 2025 as much as 1 tonne of plastic may be in the ocean for every 3 tonnes of fin fish. Plastic inputs are ultimately an unintended consequence of rapid development, with the most concentrated inputs currently generated from several rapidly developing economies. These plastic...

When Dr. Murray Bowen died in 1990, he left a vast collection of materials, (including audio and videotapes, professional and “Dear Family” letters, original research records, drafts of papers, and presentations) that documents the thinking and research that led to Bowen theory. The Murray Bowen Archives Project is dedicated to making these materials available to scientists, scholars, historians, clinicians, and the interested public. An overview of the project will be offered, with emphasis...

As the parental brain extends its attention from self to offspring, neural and physiological adaptations enhance emotional resilience and cognitive flexibility. Stress responsivity – associated with susceptibility to psychiatric illness and chronic disease – is dampened in males from both bi-parental and uni-parental primate models (e.g. owl monkeys and long-tailed macaques, respectively). Recent investigation of maternal rat brains suggests that potential mechanisms of this effect are...