Why We Love Cats

Why We Love Cats

Dr. Murray Bowen invented what has come to be referred to as "Bowen Theory" or Family Systems Theory. Dr. Rabbi Friedman put Bowen's theory to figure for rabbis, pastors and other religious professions in Generation to Generation and his posthumous work Failure of Nerve.

This theory of family behavior is predicated on several key concepts about why people act like they are doing in groups, not supported mechanistic roles but on how people in groups act emotionally. This theory thinks in terms of emotional processes and not in hierarchies or intellectual terms.

This article examines why most of people love cats as a way to elucidate several of the most ideas in Murray Bowen's theory of Family and Societal Systems.

We irrationally love cats--those folks who do. those that hate cats hate them irrationally. Why all the emotions about cats? Because they expose the reality about human emotional systems by introducing catlike emotional behavior!

The cat, any cat, introduced into the human emotional system, will cause the human emotional system to rearrange. Not because the cat does anything but due to how the cat is emotional.

Why We Love Cats

1. Cats Tend to Be Emotionally Self-Differentiated

Self-differentiation is the goal and high water mark of maturity for the Bowen Theory. Cats have it.

They know what they like. They know who they like. They know what they're going to and can not do and refuse to be trained. they need no desire to win approval but seek emotional support (petting) once they want it and from whom they need it.

Most humans call this independence or detachment. it's the position of self-differentiation to which we all aspire. We admire cats for having the ability to be aloof and standoffish. What we truly admire is their ability to shamelessly self-differentiate.

Those who hate cats presumably are uncomfortable with others who refuse to participate in emotional hubbub within the human system too.

2. Cats don't Accept Anxiety from Others

When there's "drama" between humans, cats usually escape or exclude of the fray by hissing and going into fend-off defensive mode until they will escape. Cats refuse to simply accept anxiety from others.

They may prefer to purr around you once you are upset, but that, we all know, is pure coincidence. Cats lookout of their emotional distress. they are doing not invite help. They fight their fights and never seek to recruit the "gang" or "herd" effect as humans do.

3. Cats Have Learned an ideal Balance Between Closeness and Distance

Cats never become so attached that they can't do without you but never so distant they do not search for you after you've got been gone a short time.

They have found the right balance of distance and closeness that humans rarely find. Most humans become so on the brink of one another they fuse either by loving or fighting. Or humans distance from one another in response to anxiety thus keeping the fusion on a distance level.

Not cats.

If you're gone a year or an hour it makes no difference. they're going to react an equivalent to your return in predictable patterns. The longer you're gone the less they'll react upon your return.

Most humans respect the boundaries of a cat far more than the emotional boundaries of other humans!

4. Cats Are Distant but Connected

They never "leave" the system. they are doing their own thing then, suddenly, it seems, they're going to arrive into the emotional system with purring and a desire to be petted on their terms. attempt to coax them and you'll only get disdain and disinterest. attempt to stop them once they WANT strokes and you'll need to get out a brush.

5. Cats Learn This Behavior From Parents

While kittens, they show no self-differentiation except once they will pitilessly shove the runt out of them thanks to getting the last suck of milk albeit the runt could also be starving to death.

Cats are social animals like humans, but even the mother is self-differentiated. She feeds when she seems to like it and defends the litter if she is within the mood.

Humans are fascinated by this closeness/distance balance but we admire it too.

The kittens learn it from their parents. the daddy stands off to the side as a sometimes protector of the litter and therefore the mother attends the small ones without asking a thing more from the daddy.

If a kitten acts up, the mother never threatens the kittens with the return or retribution of the father: she does the swatting herself.

6. Cats May Feel Anxiety During Times of Change but They Handle Their Own - they are doing Not Triangle

In Bowen's theory, humans always triangle. We cannot handle the common anxieties of life then we hunt down someone to share our anxiety. The anxiety producer--whether it's a situation or an individual or a pressure--is always the person within the triangle.

Cats don't do that. They handle their anxiety just like the elder leader of a lion pride. When the young lion challenges the Pride leader the leader may put up a ceremonial fight but handles the anxiety. He doesn't seek to share the anxiety with anyone. He pops into space and watches the Pride advance without him.

Humans admire this and fear it at an equivalent time. Someone who is self-differentiated is frightening to those that aren't. the rationale for this is often because humans tend to be a herding species, especially when there's change or upset within the "normal" way anxiety is handled within the system.

7. Cats prey on Herds They Never Form Herds

Cats eat from panicked herds. they are doing not form herds. They form Prides. Even the name suggests independence and positive attributes.

When humans experience anxiety, they tend to herd together to expel the anxiety by attacking it or running from it rather than handling it.

For instance, consider the distasteful images on the tv documentaries of lions eating water ox or gazelles. Notice, if the herd suddenly turned on the cats, the cats would lose. albeit several, maybe just a couple, of the thousands-of-pounds beasts turned on the cats, the limber but vulnerable-to-stomping cats would flee in panic.

Herds "group think" and panic. They run from anxiety or mindlessly attack one another trying to seek out the panic-making culprit, but they rarely attack the important predator which has been stalking them for days.

They fail to ascertain the important danger: the cat within the room.

8. Cats Can Switch points of pride supported Their Self-Interest

Cats can go from owner to owner, Pride to Pride, without loss of self-differentiation. provides a cat away and it'll adapt immediately to the new situation because it had been not emotionally fused with the last one!

Humans may experience this as selfishness on the part of the cat or self-absorption. It's adroit emotional adaptation. Some cats will leave one household and adopt another with seemingly no regrets if the new situation is within the best interest of the cat. and therefore the cat knows.

Selfishness and self-differentiation aren't an equivalent and cats seem to know this. Cats aren't selfish. They share once they plan to share. They show affection once they want to and not once they need to.

They don't NEED humans. they will hunt if they need to. If they are doing prefer to hunt, they typically bring the poor beast to their humans to supplement the foodstuffs the humans gather from God knows where.

9. Cats Can Act Like Kittens if They Desire It

Cats can, delightfully, from time to time suddenly act sort of a kitten! --Playing with balls and dancing after laser lights moving from a person's penlight. Cats can regress once they feel playful or curious.

This ability to regress isn't an emotional weakness but the willingness to be emotionally open once they desire it. there's the key: once they desire it.

Their unpredictability is delightful to most humans. Some humans hate cats. they are not needy enough. they do not fuse. they're worthless anxiety receptors. An angry human may kick a dog and therefore the dog will cower. Kick a cat and see what happens. they're going to not share your anxiety.

Conclusion:

These are only a couple of reasons why humans love cats. They reflect the emotional health described in Bowen's Family System Theory and this causes an excellent division among humans.

Some hate cats for an equivalent reason some people dislike self-differentiated people. sort of a cat, a self-differentiated person can't be emotionally manipulated, doesn't fall easily into triangulation, and seems uncaring and selfish to someone who is begging for a partner in anxiety.

Some humans hate this.

They want herd members who will feel pitying them, spread the anxiety, start a panic and leave in attack or flight from an unseen and unknown enemy.

The sad truth is that self-differentiated people tend to hold together and watch from a distance the weird behaviors of the herds below. Emotionally non-self-differentiated people tend to hold together too. they tend to herd together, serve the anxieties of the weakest members of the herd, and seek togetherness and agreement over anything.

It would be an honest idea to recollect this: cats devour herds; herds run from cats.

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