Multigenerational Family Therapy (Bowen) -
MFT Exam UPDATED ACTUAL
QUESTIONS AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Individuality and togetherness - Correct answers✔✔Two counterbalancing forces that drive
human relationships. Bowen believed that each individual needs companionship and
independence, and that anxiety is experienced when these two needs polarize the individual.
Balance is achieved in relationship to the extent that the individual has learned to manage
emotionality - that individual's level of self-differentiation.
Differentiation of self - Correct answers✔✔Capacity to balance thinking with feeling and
thereby balance individuality and togetherness. High differentiation are able to react rationally
with anxiety, Low is highly reactive and easily driven to emotionality.
Nuclear Family Emotional System - Correct answers✔✔Emotional forces in a nuclear family
that are expressed through recurrent patterns of individual behavior and interpersonal
connectedness
Undifferentiated Family ego mass - Correct answers✔✔Term used to identify an excess of
emotionally reactivity, anxiety, and fusion within the family system
Family Projection Process - Correct answers✔✔Individuals with limited emotional resources are
likely to project their needs onto others in the family.
Multigenerational transmission process - Correct answers✔✔Refers to the emotional forces in
families that continue over the ears in interconnected patterns, transmitting down from one
generation to the next.
, Sibling Position - Correct answers✔✔Bowen endorsed that an individual personality
development will be highly influenced by his or her position in the sibling birth order. This also
plays a role in how children are chosen as the object for the family projection process.
Emotional cut-off - Correct answers✔✔Problematic manner in which individuals deal with
unresolved attachment issues through a process of separation, isolation, withdrawal, running
away, or denying the importance of one's parental family.
Societal Emotional Process - Correct answers✔✔Impact of social influences on family
functioning. Individuals with higher levels of self-differentiation are less vulnerable to
destructive societal influences such as sexism and discrimination.
Detriangulate - Correct answers✔✔Bowen believed that families will automatically attempt to
triangulate the therapist into their conflict - and if they are successful in doing so, therapy will
become ineffective. Therapist detriangulates the family's emotional process by remaining neutral
and differentiated, thereby decreasing emotionality across the family and making room for
constructively resolving conflict.
Non-anxious presence - Correct answers✔✔Bowen emphasized the importance of the therapist
remaining differentiated and providing a non-anxious presence throughout the session,
influencing the family members to become less reactive and access rationality. This intervention
served to promote higher levels of differentiation for each family member through modeling.
Genogram/family diagram - Correct answers✔✔Gather rich family history through creation of a
diagram resembling a family tree with various symbols used to identify gender and the degree of
conflict, fusion, emotional cut-off, or health between individuals. It identifies the
multigenerational transmission process and triangles among many other dynamics.
Process Questions - Correct answers✔✔Refers to dynamic aspects that are changing within the
system. Often family therapists make the distinction between process and content.
MFT Exam UPDATED ACTUAL
QUESTIONS AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Individuality and togetherness - Correct answers✔✔Two counterbalancing forces that drive
human relationships. Bowen believed that each individual needs companionship and
independence, and that anxiety is experienced when these two needs polarize the individual.
Balance is achieved in relationship to the extent that the individual has learned to manage
emotionality - that individual's level of self-differentiation.
Differentiation of self - Correct answers✔✔Capacity to balance thinking with feeling and
thereby balance individuality and togetherness. High differentiation are able to react rationally
with anxiety, Low is highly reactive and easily driven to emotionality.
Nuclear Family Emotional System - Correct answers✔✔Emotional forces in a nuclear family
that are expressed through recurrent patterns of individual behavior and interpersonal
connectedness
Undifferentiated Family ego mass - Correct answers✔✔Term used to identify an excess of
emotionally reactivity, anxiety, and fusion within the family system
Family Projection Process - Correct answers✔✔Individuals with limited emotional resources are
likely to project their needs onto others in the family.
Multigenerational transmission process - Correct answers✔✔Refers to the emotional forces in
families that continue over the ears in interconnected patterns, transmitting down from one
generation to the next.
, Sibling Position - Correct answers✔✔Bowen endorsed that an individual personality
development will be highly influenced by his or her position in the sibling birth order. This also
plays a role in how children are chosen as the object for the family projection process.
Emotional cut-off - Correct answers✔✔Problematic manner in which individuals deal with
unresolved attachment issues through a process of separation, isolation, withdrawal, running
away, or denying the importance of one's parental family.
Societal Emotional Process - Correct answers✔✔Impact of social influences on family
functioning. Individuals with higher levels of self-differentiation are less vulnerable to
destructive societal influences such as sexism and discrimination.
Detriangulate - Correct answers✔✔Bowen believed that families will automatically attempt to
triangulate the therapist into their conflict - and if they are successful in doing so, therapy will
become ineffective. Therapist detriangulates the family's emotional process by remaining neutral
and differentiated, thereby decreasing emotionality across the family and making room for
constructively resolving conflict.
Non-anxious presence - Correct answers✔✔Bowen emphasized the importance of the therapist
remaining differentiated and providing a non-anxious presence throughout the session,
influencing the family members to become less reactive and access rationality. This intervention
served to promote higher levels of differentiation for each family member through modeling.
Genogram/family diagram - Correct answers✔✔Gather rich family history through creation of a
diagram resembling a family tree with various symbols used to identify gender and the degree of
conflict, fusion, emotional cut-off, or health between individuals. It identifies the
multigenerational transmission process and triangles among many other dynamics.
Process Questions - Correct answers✔✔Refers to dynamic aspects that are changing within the
system. Often family therapists make the distinction between process and content.
