Suggests close relationships like the family structure function as a coherent, interacting, interdependent system of components. Communication patterns, roles, hierarchies and homeostasis shape behavior across lifespan. Rooted in general systems theory, explains that members of that structure have circular influences on each other, i.e. how changes to one component reverberate through subsystems and the whole.
Systemic‐transactional theory is closely related to this theory.
Proposed by Murray Bowen, in the 1950’s.