IJSP Number 7, 2025

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 7, 2025 Page | 54 intellect works but it seems that the cognitive sciences are at least trying to unravel some of the more commonly and currently accepted opinions of social psychology and anthropology. In order to gain a better understanding of how our belief system works and maybe why this pseudo-self is needed in the social psychology of all human interaction, we should consult what Bowen has to say and to infer about it. Bowen had defined this strange self-entity as a ‘pseudo-something’ or ‘pseudo- somebody’ which has a certain role to play in his theory of differentiation of the self [10]. Humans are, as we know since Aristotle’s time, social animals and, as such, they are born and raised in the midst of other humans, their parents, relatives, neighbours, etc. Consequently, the newborn infant will be under the continuous influence of others who will try to model him or her to adopt the patterns of the group, to assimilate and integrate them in order to conform and function accordingly. The end result of this insistent and persistent socialising process is a conglomerate of psychic and social fragments, key words, phrases, feelings, ideas, and expectations coming from the outside world combined with one’s own reactions to this constant feeding with opinions, believes, attitudes, or behavioural patterns. It looks as if our own parents were some ‘influencers’ who induce us with trends, orientation, or maps for what awaits us in life. The baby has to integrate what is good or bad, what it should do in order to please, and what can have unpleasant consequences; all in order to be accepted, integrated, and having its wishes fulfilled, or at least attended to. In order to create a new self , the self of a specific child, it has to be instantiated first with the models others can offer. As Bowen states it: “The pseudo-self is created by emotional pressure, and it can be modified by emotional pressure. Every emotional unit, whether it be the family or the total of society, exerts pressure on group members to conform to the ideals and principles of the group.” [11] Therefore, it is always the emotional pressure that drives the process of socialisation which tends to modify the psyche of the child by moulding it into the patterns of the family or the group where it belongs. At the beginning of that long process, it is all about emotions and emotionality, wishes and feelings that are the main drivers of our first steps into the social world of our family. This is only normal because the emotional, conceived by Bowen as a system, is our phylogenetic link with the larger animal kingdom we originate from. More so, this emotional system is not just our phylogenetic link but also our solid foundation as organic and corporeal beings that have to establish a connection with the group we are born into and the world we are living in. It is about belonging to that certain human group because our own survival depends upon them and their forthcoming care, affection, and understanding. In the history of human evolution, the emotional system was and still is undoubtedly the first violin of a psychic and systemic duet. The other ‘instrument’ of the duet is the intellectual, which was also conceived as a system by Bowen. Our intellectual growth is curdled, influenced, and moulded under the pressure others ceaselessly exert on us, and, of course, we can react one way or another to this intellectual ‘inflow’ of data, opinions, or instructions. The outcome of this process is the composite result of those influences and our own reactions to them; only as such, one can develop a new and distinctive idiosyncrasy, one that can be identified with that supreme word ‘I’. As a result: “The pseudo-self is composed of a vast assortment of principles, beliefs, philosophies, and knowledge acquired because it is required or considered right by the