Emotional Process: Identifiable Patterns of Human Functioning
"Emotional functioning includes the automatic forces that govern protoplasmic life. It includes the force that biology defines as instinct, reproduction, the automatic activity controlled by the automatic nervous system, subjective emotional and feeling states, and the forces that govern relationship systems. There are varying degrees of overlap between emotional and intellectual functioning. In broad terms, the emotional system governs the “dance of life” in all living things."
- Murray Bowen, Founder of Bowen Family Systems Theory
Common use of the word "emotional" refers to an individual's feelings—mad, glad, sad, afraid, or confused—and the outward or inward manifestation of those feelings. In Family Systems Theory "emotional process" is used to identify the natural and instinctive interaction that is consistent with all of nature. It is a way of viewing the contact between and among individuals as the shaping influence for how the individual functions.
Because the interaction is instinctual, one does not see or understand the interaction but experiences the results. It is like turning on a light fixture. You walk into a room and flip the switch and you see the light turn on. Most of us don't think about the flow of energy that occurred within the electrical system, let alone, the generation of that energy that came from a power plant located a long distance from the light switch. Emotional process is a way of thinking about the energy that is transmitted between and among people over the generations. The process is there all the time and knowing how to conceptualize the process can make a difference in how an individual functions.
Identifying and thinking about one's own functioning is a huge challenge. It is easier to see how someone else functions than it is to see our own. Like the proverbial bible story about the guy who could see the spec in someone else's eye and miss the log in his own. Humans are automatically entrenched in how we interact. It is the essence of who we are and it takes work to identify the part we play in a matter of relationship. So much so, that without considerable work, we cannot identify our own functioning and how our functioning is affected by emotional processes of which we are an intricate part. Family Systems Theory offers a way of looking at the emotional process that occurs between and among people. It is a view of the human family an emotional unit connected with all of nature.