Dr. Jim reads About Bowen's Differentiation of Self, Part 1

            In 1975 Wilson wrote about three key properties of social organization: cohesiveness, altruism, and cooperativeness. In the animal kingdom only four groups of animals have been able to significantly develop these properties: (1) colonial invertebrates—coral/the Portuguese man-of-war; (2) social insects (ants, termites, certain wasps and bees), (3) nonhuman mammals (particularly the elephants, chimpanzees, and African wild dogs), and (4) humans. It's important to recognize that high levels of social integration are not inherently "good" for the adaptiveness of a species.

            The key to the "level of complexity" of our social organization involves our capacity for abstraction in the service of win-win social groupings and self-government. This capacity enables us to "establish long-remembered contracts and to profitably engage in acts of reciprocal altruism that can be spaced over long periods of time, indeed over generations." Our communication capacities allow us to "far exceed" the colonial invertebrates, social insects, and nonhuman mammals in social organization. This capacity combined with differentiation of self in our families of origin "have reversed the downward trend in social evolution that prevailed over a billion years of the previous history of life." 

References

Kerr, M. & Bowen, M. (1988). Family evaluation: An approach based on Bowen theory. New York: W. W. Norton & Company at p, 91

Wilson, E. O. (1975) Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press at p. 380 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Family Code 6320 and Domestic Violence / Intimate Partner Violence Through Unique Means

  I’ve been participating in the Child Custody Evaluator Annual DV / IPV update with Dr. Love today: Family Code 6320 now has new categories of disturbing the peace / coercive control over various types but also Pet Abuse, Technology Facilitated Abuse and Reproductive Coercion—see the language at Family Code 6320 in the link below: Family Code 6320 Here’s a couple of new terms for you: Stealthing: “wen a partner secretly removes a condom during sex without the other person’s consent”; Fraping: “unauthorized alteration of information on a person's online social media profile by another person.”
Read more

Attachment Trauma in Divorce

Childhood sexual abuse can in some cases particularly disorganize the growing child’s attachment system resulting in among other things for some, an ability to lie about other caregivers. In the link below I explore this observation in my practice as an attorney and now as a psychologist. In saying that, I do not mean to minimize in any way the harm caused to the child or the importance of protecting such children from further harm. The link below will take you to a paper I wrote about 9 years ago but still think it pretty good where I offer some ideas that I explored back in 2013 as an attorney working with families back then. Husen, J. (2013). Attachment trauma in divorce: Recommendations for judges, lawyers, and child custody evaluators. Paper researched and written for Bereavement Counseling with M. Woodruff Johnson, Psy.D.
Read more
Dr. Jim reads Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, Chapter 6  Difficulties of the Theory, Part 4, beginning with p. 119 to the end of the Chapter. Stayed tuned. My next reading will be from Chapter 7 Miscellaneous Objections to Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection.
Read more