From 1959 to 1990 he worked at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC as a clinical professor at the department of psychiatry, and later as director of family programs and founder of a Family Center. He had a half-time research and teaching appointment. His research focused on human interactions rather than symptomatic cubicles. Bowen even focused on the prodromal states that precede medical diagnoses. For Bowen each concept was extended, and woven into physical, emotional, and social illness. Bowen criticized psychiatry's penchant for diagnosing and treating mental illness as of limited usefulness and ultimately a dead end. This new work went beyond other family systems theories, and contrasted sharply with Freudian theory.