("Family therapy," Therapist Profiles, 2005).

             Conceptualization of the Jones Family in a Bowenian Perspective.

             Bowen was one of the first family therapists to realize how individuals, such as the Joneses are affected by past familial situations in their collective creation of their present familial situation. Consider the fact that like his father, John Jones, works very hard and many long hours, as he saw his own father was apt to do, as a manager in a car dealer store.  John is emotionally withdrawn from his family, even though he sees himself as 'the breadwinner" and man of the house. (Nichols, 1999) His father Albert drives a cab, thus both men work with cars, rather than people for much of their consuming working day.

             Also, to refer to the individual whose situation caused the family to seek counseling in the first place, Cindy Jones, Cindy has the same name of her paternal grandmother Julie Jones"s enemy in high school. The first Cindy got better grades than Julie and married a famous athlete. The paternal grandparents Charles, age 65 and Julie age 60, live close by in the city, and thus affect Cindy"s self-perception. Although Cindy is very bright her parents John and Mary are concerned she is failing in school and socializes with peers who are known to be deviant. Cindy is beginning to stay out late at night, experimenting with alcohol and marijuana, stealing money from home, and is sexually active. The grandmother Julie says she is certain that Cindy is a delinquent and will always be a delinquent, thus perpetuating the self-defeating association of Cindy but also the family pattern of male emotional withdrawal and female over-involvement in parenting and children"s definitions of themselves. .

             Cindy"s grandmother"s Julie"s feelings could also be said to be part of the family projection process, the process by which emotional processes are passed on from one generation to the next.