If you decide to see a therapist with expertise in Bowen theory, on your first visit you will be asked to create (with the therapist’s help) a family diagram. As Victoria Harrison, a faculty member at the Bowen Center, explains, the “family diagram is a graphic depiction of facts of family functioning over several generations.” Using symbols for various family members and relationships, the diagram is much more than a simple family tree. Instead, it portrays the emotional connections within and across the generations, based on the assumption that the history of the family lives on in the
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