ce of respecting hierarchical relationships. Such traditions also provide a platform for looking at individual development within the family structure in terms of Bowen's articulation of "two counterbalancing life forces: individuality and togetherness" (Nichols & Schwartz, 2004, p. 119). This is true even though Bowen says that hierarchical structures are not the only framework for systems.
Indeed, according to Bowen's theories, although hierarchy and authority may be elements of the personality equation, a better way of looking at systems, including family systems, is to consider networks and interpenetration, with multiple influences and cues informing individual experiences and responses. The most powerful influences, cues, and inputs to receptors' self-image, self-esteem, or behavioral pathology are felt to come from family, with family being defined not only in terms of immediate blood relations but also in terms of significant others, which may include extended family, friends, or even the social environment. In this view, highly personal internal experience, which is relevant to the clinical situation, is ultimately not as important as the results of communication content and strategy that, as it were, trickle down through family history, across generations, in an "undifferentiated family ego mass" (Bowen, 1978) to become part of psychology and behavior.
In my case family values were pretty much absorbed because I was the firstborn of all of the cousins of my generation and in spite of the fact that my childhood years were the 1960s in Southern California. The priorities of my parents as Greek immigrants who identified with their own parent culture decisively won out where family expectations and planning family actions were concerned. Such priorities help explain why, when I was 14 and my sister 12, my parents decided to uproot us from Southern California and temporarily relocate to Greece for several years to run a resta...