Starting This Fall: Clinical Consultation Seminar in Bowen Theory

9 Monthly Seminars & Individual Coaching

CSNSF INVITES YOU TO

clinical consultation

Starting This Fall: Clinical Consultation Seminar in Bowen Theory

September 2025-June 2026

CSNSF will offer nine monthly 2-hour seminars online via Google Meet with individual coaching sessions for up to 6 Bowen theory students who want to develop expertise in clinical applications and their family work. The program is organized so participants can build on their knowledge and skills sequentially through thoughtful applications of Bowen theory. Participants will present clinical cases in the seminar and work on differentiation of self in their family of origin with monthly individual coaching.

Each month’s suggested reading and viewing material will expand upon Murray Bowen’s quote from Family Therapy in Clinical Practice: “A major effort went to the development of a theory that moved toward the sciences, rather than the ‘therapies’ that were so responsive to media and popular approval.”

Questions to be addressed in this series include:

  • What is science? What is not?
  • How is individual theory, as advanced by Freud and his “descendants,” incompatible with science?
  • What is emotion?
  • What are genes?  How does the field of epigenetics change the equation?
  • Do triangles exist among other species?

STEPS TO TAKE:

  1. Contact Lorna Hecht-Zablow, MFT, at lornahechtzablow@csnsf.org to learn more about this program
  2. Complete Application
  3. Lorna Hecht-Zablow will contact you to confirm acceptance into the seminar
  4. Send Registration Deposit
Register

MONTHLY SEMINAR

Lorna Hecht-Zablow, LMFT, designed this clinical consultation seminar and will serve as faculty, consultant, and coach.

Two participants will present family diagrams of clinical families at each meeting, using Murray Bowen’s natural systems theory to conceptualize symptoms and family dynamics. Forty-five minutes will be dedicated to each presentation for questions and discussion. The last thirty minutes of the sessions will be reserved for questions and discussion of recommended reading and videotapes exploring what it means to develop a science of human behavior.

The presentation structure will be based on the Bowen Center Postgraduate Program supervision format established by Dr. Bowen. One person will present to the seminar chair, Lorna Hecht-Zablow. Observers will direct comments or questions to the chair, who will turn them over to the presenter for continued thinking.

INDIVIDUAL COACHING

The seminar series will also include monthly individual coaching with Lorna Hecht-Zablow. Each participant is expected to set concrete goals and methods for working on differentiation of self in their family of origin. There is an additional focus on how emotional reactivity in one’s family shows up in clinical practice.

LORNA HECHT-ZABLOW, MFT

Lorna Hecht-Zablow, MFT, is a family systems psychotherapist in private practice in San Diego, CA. She has also conducted workshops on individual and systems thinking differences by comparing John Bowlby’s attachment theory and the Bowen theory. For several years in her private practice, she chaired a monthly consultation group for laypeople and professionals motivated to apply the Bowen theory in their personal and professional work.

Mrs. Hecht-Zablow serves on the Board and Faculty of CSNSF and regularly contributes to its publication, Family Systems Forum. She also maintains a blog, writing articles that illustrate concepts in Bowen theory by applying them to familiar situations from daily life. She draws upon a wide range of experiences in her family, clinical practice, and the broader world to stimulate thinking through the family systems lens.

SEMINAR TEXTS

Bowen, Murray. (1985) Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: Lanham, Maryland

Kerr, Michael. (1988). Family Evaluation. Norton Press: NY.

Harrison, Victoria. (2018) The Family Diagram and Family Research: An Illustrated Guide to Tools for Working on Differentiation of Self.  Center for the Study of Natural Systems and the Family.

Noone, Robert, Papero, Daniel (2017) The Family Emotional System: An Integrative Concept for Theory, Science, and Practice 

Articles curated from the natural sciences.

REGISTRATION FEE:

$2250 for nine monthly seminars and nine individual coaching sessions.

Please get in touch with Lorna Hecht-Zablow with questions about the program.

Please get in touch with Victoria Harrison to discuss scholarships or payment plans at vaharrison@csnsf.org.

Register