IntroductionMurray Bowen was born in 1913 in Tennessee and died in 1990. He was the eldest child of a large, close-knit family. He trained as a psychiatrist and originally practiced according to the psychoanalytic model. In his practice he involved mothers in investigations of schizophrenic patients. He thought that the cause of schizophrenia began in the mother-child symbiosis that created an anxious and unhealthy attachment. His devotion to his psychoanalytic training was put aside after his move to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 1954, when he began to shift from an individual focus to an appreciation of the dimensions of families as systems. He began to include more family members in his research and psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients. In 1959 he moved to Georgetown University and founded the Georgetown Family Center of which he was director until his death. It was here that his theory was extended to less severe emotional problems (Nichols & Schwartz, 2004, p. 120). In 1962, he undertook detailed research on families across several generations. Rather than develop a theory of pathology, Bowen focused on what he considered to be the common patterns of all “human emotional systems.” With such attention to the qualitative similarities of all families, Bowen was known to often say that there is a bit of schizophrenia in all of us. In 1966, Bowen published a presentation of his developing ideas and, around the same time, used his concepts to guide his intervention into an emotional crisis in his extended family that he described as a spectacular breakthrough (Kerr & Bowen , 1988). Theoretical Concepts Bowen introduced eight interconnected concepts to explain family development and functioning. ...... half of the article ...... stems.ca /bowen Theory and Research/Bowen TheoryBowen, M. (1971). Family therapy and family group therapy. In Comprehensive Group Psychotherapy, H. Kaplan and B. Sadock, eds. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. New York and London, Jason ArosonBrown, J. (1999). Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy (ANZJFT) 20(2), 94-103. Excerpt: http://www.familysystemstraining.com/papers/bowen-illustration-and-critique.htmlGuerin, P.J. (1976). Family therapy: theory and practice. New York: Gardner Press Kerr, M., & Bowen, M. (1988). Family assessment. New York: NortonNichols, M. P., & Schwartz, R. C. (2004). Family therapy: Concepts and methods (6th ed.). Pearson Education Inc. USRabstejnek, C. (2010). Family systems and Murray Bowen theory. Network. August 13, 2015. http://www.houd.info/bowenTheory.pdf