ABSTRACT
Psychiatrist Murray Bowen (1978) discovered from clinical practice and clinical research that the family is the basic unit for understanding human functioning. Family is broadly defined by the author to include every person emotionally attached to one individual. Bowen viewed the family as an emotional and relationship system. Emotional is synonymous with instinctual, specifying that the family is a biological unit. System denotes the interdependence of the family unit, distinguishing it from a collection of unconnected individuals. Bowen saw the emotional system as the force that motivates and the relationship system as the way the emotional system is expressed.
