BFST and individual personality theories

I’d no sooner sat down to lunch at a recent conference, at which I presented on Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST), than a participant asked, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I said, wondering what answer I’d have to compose while munching on my sandwich.

“How do you reconcile Bowen family systems theory with individualistic personality type theories like the Enneagram?”

In case you don’t recognize it, that’s a loaded question. I’d probably mentioned the Enneagram as an aside during one of my presentations. My lunch companion was echoing a question often raised in certain circles.

I playfully, responded, “Are you a BFST purist? Because I’ve heard they can be snobbish.”

She chuckled, getting the joke, which was a good sign. It meant she may be receptive to a reasoned (if not reasonable) answer.

Many folks who embrace BFST tend to be dismissive of individual personality trait theories. Familiar and longstanding personality theories, like Freudian, Adlerian, and personality typing schemas such as Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram tend to be seen as contradictory to BFST’s “systemic” perspective in which a grasp and focus “on the whole system” is primary. Individuals are understood in light of the emotional process of the whole system. When dealing with an individual in a family, for example, the focus is not on personality or individual traits, but rather, on the homeostatic and multigenerational dynamics of the family that influence the individual’s functioning.

While that is a perspective I appreciate and endorse I cannot see that it is contradictory to appreciating individual personality, or individual personality traits. I suspect that there is danger in an overfocus on either extreme. To overfocus on “the system” to the extent that the individual is reduced to a biological component that lacks volition and agency is an error. And so is an overfocus on the individual’s personality and traits to the point that we fail to appreciate that we are emotionally connected to the systems to which we belong—so much so that we often fail to appreciate how much the system is influential in our personal capacities and functioning.

That some BFST proponents are dismissive of the reality of “the individual” is puzzling given the way many who embrace BFST have embraced the reductionist tendencies of the field of physics. Or, the appreciation they show toward the microcosmic world of organic brain studies that focuses on the cellular level of brain function. Each field demonstrates a perspective that integrates a reductionist atomic analysis of the components of the system with an appreciation for how all those components are integrated in a whole (a field or an organ). Atomic structures (particles) do not exist apart from the dynamics that bind them, and brain cells do not exist apart from their integrated functioning in the organ (to the extent that some have argued that the organ is not the brain but the whole body). In other words, the insight we gain from delving into those fields is that it’s not an either-or proposition between the individual components of a system and the system itself—-it is both.

A related issue is that of “levels.” The reality is that things exist on many levels, and not in some. Certain things, like categories, components or dynamics exist at certain levels but not at others. And certain components, dynamics, and categories are only emergent and operative at certain levels, but not before. For example, we can talk about molecules, brain cells and synapses, brain chemicals and structures, but at what level are emotions emergent, as we experience them? Or, at what level—with all those components, along with their interconnecting and integrating “pathways”—is cognition emergent? Or at what level is an “idea” or self-awareness emergent?

Or, another example, at a certain level the category of “gender” is non-existent in the biological development of an individual, but becomes emergent at another level (stage) of development when the dynamic of “differentiation” emerges. And gender becomes an important component and dynamic at the individual level of identity, self-understanding, and biology, but at a larger systemic level (a cultural or organizational system) it can be appropriate to dismiss gender as a factor in functioning within a system. People who fail to appreciate this, and make gender a primary and fundamental component or trait that needs to be universally applied at all levels in the same way and with the same weight of consideration are prone to all sorts of misunderstandings and misapplications. One common misunderstanding being the confusion of “roles” and “function” when it comes to gender.

My response to my interrogator at the lunch table was that the Enneagram, like any other personality type system, was one way to work on my self-understanding, and, therefore, it is part of the work of self-differentiation. While I am a part of the systems of which I am a member, I remain an individual within those systems. The extent and capacity to understand my (individual and personal) self, to use “I” statements while remaining connected—while still distinct—within the system seems to me to be what self-differentiation is all about. I exist at both levels: as an individual who is self-determinate and has agency to pursue goals, hold values, and make decisions of volition, and as a member of a system who is integrally a part of the emotional process of the systems that may inhibit or enable my capacity to be an individual self within itself.