A man asked a woman: “We have been together for eight years. Do you remember when you loved me?” “First, it was amorousness. Then it was chaos and incomprehension. And only when order was set in my soul love came. I needed about five years for it” – the woman answered.
Every person dreams of love, every family wants to live at peace and in harmony. What prevents? And how can one achieve it? The answer comes together with understanding of the power of our inclusion in the backgrounds – the family where we are from by origin. On the deep unconscious level we are connected in a single whole with parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, grandparents and everybody who lived before. The influence of these relations can be seen due to the method of systemic psychotherapy “Family Constellation”.
Bert Hellinger
Bert Hellinger, the author of the method, was born in 1925 in Germany. He, being a theologian and philosopher by education, worked as a padre in South Africa for a long time. There he began to study psychotherapy. The decision to change his life came to him as the answer to the question: “What is more important for you: ideals or a man?” He chose a man and found something that helps everybody irrespective of the place and time of birth. The experience and techniques of hypnotherapy, behaviour therapy, psychodramas, Gestalt-therapy, systemic therapy, psychoanalysis are accumulated in “Family Constellation” as a new direction of the systemic and family psychotherapy. Hellinger’s theory grew up from the long-term practice. Any of its ideas is confirmed by thousands concrete examples many times. It is simple and clear as everything great.
Basic Theses of “Family Constellation”
The order notion as the first principle is at the heart of “Family Constellation”. “Order is more powerful than love” – asserts Bert Hellinger. And the therapist Marianne Franke-Griksch gives the simple image explaining the relations principle in this copula: “Order is a vessel. Love is water. If to break the vessel love will flow away”.
Order is correct when:
- A young family has a priority over the parents' families of the married couple.
- The couple relations are built in accordance with the interchange principle: if we got something we need to return something. The balance between “to give” and “to take” is the basic condition for the relations to be established.
- Parents have the priority over their children, and the first child has the priority over the second one. Parents are great, children are small. Parents “give”, first of all, life, children “take” life and, growing up, transmit it further.
- In the system everybody has his place by the fact of the life existence (i.e. aborted and still-born babies are also included into this system). The basic order of the family is a semicircle where a father, a mother, children are placed clockwise in the birth order.
- Everybody who concerns the system has the right to the belonging. Nobody can be excluded. The system restores its integrity owing to newborns. That’s why the place that a person occupies in the system can be his place or another's. And then he is not free, he is in interlacing with the fate of another person. This interlacing happens on the soul deepest level that the person does not realize and obeys blindly.
Bert Hellinger considers that the following people relate to the system:
· A child, his brothers and sisters, his stepbrothers and stepsisters, alive and dead, still-born and aborted. It is the lowest level.
· Parents, their brothers and sisters, their stepbrothers and stepsisters, dead and still-born (sometimes aborted).
· Grandparents, sometimes their brothers and sisters and seldom – their stepbrothers and stepsisters.
· Great-grandparents.
· Not relatives, people who became involved in the system as a result of some events: the former partners of parents and grandparents, a father or mother of stepbrothers and stepsisters. Those who inherited a fortune as a result of an untimely death of the system member or was disinherited. Those who were treated unfairly getting a considerable profit, for example, hired workers. A victim of violence or murders that were committed by the family members. Some persons are the most important in the system. They are people who had a difficult life, who were treated unfairly or exiled, fostered by strange people, despised and forgotten and who disappeared without a trace.
Family Field
A child and his parents are connected on the cellular level. In their turn, parents are connected with their parents. Everybody, who lived before and we who are living now, presents a single whole that Hellinger calls “family field” or “family soul”. The works of the English biologist Rupert Sheldrake are the most famous in the fields’ sphere. Every structure of the Universe be it an organism or system lives in the morphic field that keeps all important information about the system. Every part of this structure, every member of the system or every individual in the organization has a part of knowledge about the whole and all important details. Sheldrake believes that as a consequence “our memory is not in our brain” but in the field of the system memory.
The morphic field has:
1. a spatial model or an order;
2. a temporary aspect (memory);
3. ability for hybridization;
4. ability for self-cure, restoration of integrity and order.
All four aspects also relate to the family field that becomes apparent in the constellation process through movements and feelings of representatives.
How does it happen?
The family constellation is usually made in the group though the individual therapy is also possible. The client chooses representatives for him and important members of the family from the group participants and places them based on the body movements and following his image. The therapist asks representatives (sometimes he does not, trusting only their movements) about their physical sensations, feelings and perception.
And then the process where the body serves as a resonator and an exact information medium about the world begins. Through movements of the body and feelings of a representative you can see where our love flows in our system, or where it is blocked, in what interlacing of the kin fates we are.
The reality of unconscious things becomes visible and obvious. Reasons of conflicts, diseases and accidents become visible. The possibility of healing and improvement of difficult situations becomes clear.
What basic problems can the constellation help to solve?
It can help to solve all the problems that prevent a person to be happy and enjoy life. They are difficult relations of parents and children, knotty relations of the couple, alcoholism, drug addiction, incest, depression, serious illnesses, suicides, sterility, adopted children, etc.
The constellation shows reality, gives a stimulus for change but the main result depends on the person, on his readiness for spiritual growth, on his spirit and humility.
I will present a few subjects frequent in constellations.
The example from the individual practice A woman appealed on account of her eldest son’s amotivational aggression. The boy is 12 years old. He attacks his mother with fists, abuses her, breaks furniture, etc. While working with her we faced a huge guilt, which turned her into a victim, besides other systemic interlacings. When she realized who was really guilty in her family the client became free, gained strength and could occupy her fitting place in the system. And the child calmed down. |
A handsome man with a strong figure is visiting a therapist. But when the man begins talking a guilty child is felt in him by his voice tone and phrase making. In his family history his father humiliated his mother, one grandfather deserted the pregnant wife, another changed the family name… This man spent a very difficult life and suffered very much trying to correct another’s unconscious guilt. The constellation let see the problem’s roots.
Guilt (as well as other feelings) can be of two kinds: individual and systemic i.e. adopted. This feeling can be passed on to a child through many generations and like some other’s feeling it is beyond analysis and control. We are powerless facing some other’s feelings. In my opinion, imitated guilt is one of the basic reasons making people neurotics. A person takes a huge inexplicable guilt upon him unconsciously and lives with this burden without being guilty.
In constellations you often face the fact that children’s incurable diseases such as microcephalia or cerebral spastic infantile paralysis are connected with a systemic guilt. The problem begins to be solved only if one manages to return the guilt there where its place is in the system with the help of the therapist.
“It is better me than you”
The inner decision made about a beloved person is often a reason of a fatal illness. It can be expressed this way: “It will be better if I die than you do!”, “I’ll do it instead of you!” During one of Hellinger’s courses a participant ill with multiple sclerosis saw herself on her knees before the bed of her paralyzed mother. She told her: “Dear mummy, it is better me than you” After that the young woman felt that she became free from anxiety and achieved harmony with herself and her life.
“I will follow you”
I heard this story from the famous German psychotherapist Gunthard Weber.
The married couple having an adopted child besides their own children came to the seminar. “Does the girl know that she is an adopted child?” – asked Bert Hellinger. “Yes, she does” – “And what did happen to her own mother?” – “She read about our family in the paper. When she left the maternity hospital she brought her baby to us and left it on the threshold of our flat. And then she committed a suicide jumping down from the bridge.” – “And did you tell the girl about it?” – “No. It is very tragic. We can’t do that…”
“She knows everything!” – said Hellinger.
And then the woman turned pale and told about the case that took place two weeks ago. The family went for the picnic to the mountains. While they were arranging everything the stepmother lost sight of the girl. And when she rushed to look for her she found her standing on the brink of a precipice. The girl stood having closed her eyes and stretched out her arms. Having seen her stepmother she said dreamily: “It would be good to jump down and fly…”
Constellations show a person his protection, illusions, self-deception and many other reasons of his problems. They give the possibility to see oneself in a different light, to see the real things. It helps to understand, experience and accept the revealed reality by the personal perception. One can understand that will be changed only after irrevocable acceptance of existing conditions of his life by heart and decision to follow the right flow of love in the basic order of the family. From the letter of a participant of the family constellation group |
Renunciation to accept (respect) one’s own parents
Hellinger says that the man who could accept his parents as they are is in harmony with him, feels entire and has the full strength of his both parents.
Not accepting and respecting parents a man cannot respect life that he got from them. It means that there is little or no sense in life. It is wasted. Only meek acceptance and gratitude to parents for life set free and cure.
Constellations results
First of all, it is a discovery of the inner position of humility and realization of one’s “fateful” inclusion into the system. It is an acceptance of parents (and life) and also everything that happened with gratitude and respect. It is an understanding of one’s place in the system and renunciation of fault atonement. It is positive actions instead of suffering. It is deliberate love and harmony with something that is larger than we are. When a person managed to introduce an order within him these beautiful fruits ripen in his soul with time.
Conclusion
The popularity of Bert Hellinger’s systemic and phenomenological approach grows continuously in our country like all over the world. Hellinger considers that “help is art” and, being a great master, often tells stories. This story is how to be useful in help.
Once an old master was asked: “When you help others how do you do it? People often come to you and ask for suggestions about things you know a little about. And nevertheless, they feel better after it.” The master answered: “If a man stopped on the path and doesn’t want to move further the point is not in knowledge. He just looks for assurance where courage is required and freedom – where right things do not give a choice. Thus, he circles. And the master does not yield to illusions and pretexts. He looks for middle and there, when he is prepared, waits – like a man who let out the sails towards the wind – until a word that has power reaches him.” And if he comes different he will find the master where he needs himself, - it is a reply for both of them. Here they are both listeners.”
And he added: “It is easy in the middle.”
1. Hellinger B. Orders of love. - Ì.: Psychotherapy Institute, 2001
2. B. Hellinger. Insights. Lectures and stories. - Ì.: Psychotherapy Institute, 2003
3. G. Weber. Family Constellation Practice. M.: International Institute of Consulting and Systemic Decisions, HSP, 2004.
4. A. Shutsenberger. Ancestry’s Syndrome. Ì.: Psychotherapy Institute, 2001
5. G. Weber. Two sorts of happiness. Systemic and phenomenological psychotherapy M.: International Institute of Consulting and Systemic Decisions, HSP, 2005.
6. B. Hellinger. The source does not need to ask the way. M.: International Institute of Consulting and Systemic Decisions, HSP, 2005.
7. Franke-Griksch, Marianne., You’re one of us. M.: International Institute of Consulting and Systemic Decisions, HSP, 2005.
8. I. Kuchera, K. Shaffler. What happens to me? Diseases Symptoms and Family Constellation. M.: International Institute of Consulting and Systemic Decisions, HSP, 2007.
Translated by Elena Valieva
