This is the last and most recent concept in Bowen theory, although it captured his attention early on. During the 1960’s there was growing evidence that the emotional problems in society were similar to those in the family. The actual observations made centered on problems with delinquent teenage youngsters and what happened when the youngsters became the responsibility of the society.The concept conveys the thinking that a family subjected to chronic, sustained anxiety begins to lose contact with intellectually determined principles and resort to more and more emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment. The end product of the process is symptom development and eventually regression to a lower level of functioning. To apply this to a society, he postulated that the same process noted in families is evolving in the population which is in a period of increasing chronic anxiety. Thus, society responds to this with emotionally determined decisions to allay the anxiety of the moment and over time results in symptoms of dysfunction. The efforts to relieve the symptoms result in more emotional “band aid” type legislation which increases the problems, and that the cycle keeps repeating itself just as the family goes through similar cycles and comes to the state called “emotional illness.”

Dr. Bowen considered the chronic anxiety as a product of the population explosion, decreasing supplies of food and raw materials necessary to maintain man’s way of life on earth, and the pollution of the environment which is slowly threatening man’s existence.