In this video excerpt Dr. Bowen describes some characteristics of the relationship between two people. As long as one person can “meet the needs of the other” then everything is fine. This is an idyllic and wonderful relationship. The problem comes when either one of these people is incapable of giving this much of self to the other.

Clip from The Basic Series #2: Nuclear Family Emotional System and Family Projection Process | 1970

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Transcript:
"First I'd like to go to some of the characteristics of the relationship say between two people. It is impossible for any two people to engage in any kind of task or activity without one being impinged by the other. There are all kinds of things that come up in which one has to give way to the other. So that that this is so in any family system two-person system and then when you make it into a multiple-person system. There are a lot of variations of the same thing. Let me put up a diagram of say an intense two-person system and this would be characteristics say of a husband/wife. Now if you'll keep in mind the kind of a diagram I did in the other session which would think in terms of a scale of a scale of differentiation of self. People lowest on the scale have very little self. Their self sort of fuse into the selfs of those about them. And as you go higher up the scale there is less of this stuck-togetherness and more individuality in the people here would be one with a an example of a kind of interdependence in an intense twosome. Husband and wife. Now we can think of kind of an energy system. Last week I drew a diagram which shows the people's selfs fusing together. I think of this energy system in which the husband invests a certain amount of psychic energy of himself into his wife and she and this an equal amount back him. And it's an amazing thing how you can ask husbands and wives what percentage of their psychic energy of their self is devoted to being the kind of a person the other wants them to be. Or what percentage of self is devoted in the self of the other and the ability of people to give you a percentage figures on this. And they'll give you figures all the way up to 95 and 100 percent. So that this life stays in equilibrium here when she is devoting this amount of her self to her husband and he is devoting this much back to her. People speak of this and one of the concepts that I've sort of discarded in my family work is the concept of giving and receiving. I don't know what that means anymore but if you ask people, husbands, and wives it's it's the giving of self somehow to the other self and it's receiving the self of the other. I think of this in terms of psychic energy thinking time and anything from positive and negative thinking energy, fantasy energy, action energy. The devoting of one's self to another self. Well as long as two people can do this and they each quotes meet the needs of the other then everything's fine fine. This is a idyllic a a wonderful relationship. The problem comes when either one of these people is incapable of fulfilling the contract in this, is incapable of giving this much of self to the other. Actually I've seen husbands and wives in which the goal, I remember one in which the husband said his goal was to be able to give all of himself to his wife and the wife sort of had the same goal. I mean this was devoting all of self to the other. Well if one devotes all of self I don't know how one would diagram it here. I mean it's then how much self does one have?"

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