A fact of personal biography.
Three years ago I was sitting and brooding over a problem: whether or not I should try and master the systematic constellations by Bert Hellinger: one more appealing profession to acquire. Something though was stopping me: this profession occupied a wholly different territory – that of psychotherapy.
There was a whole range of reasons “for” it: the profession answered to my soul’s deepest needs, the pedagogical diploma allowed me to count on getting a Russian-international certificate, and the new kind of work could easily fit into the system of previous works without special problems and with definite use.
As a person who can be easily carried away but knows about that, I tried with the help of some friends, to look at the “contras”. The reasons not to do it naturally were found, but only one really sticks out in the memory: why should you involve yourself in the study of individual fates of people if you have been doing exactly the same thing for big cultural contexts?
Once said it sounded strange, unexpected though very probable: for behind all the general reasons I had, there lurked the very same feeling of the common nature shared by the previous and the new activity. As soon as the formula “for the life to move on” was pronounced during one of the constellations, I shuddered with recognition: this was “mine” – the very thing I felt at the core of my profession.
What did I do before? First I worked in the educational field. The authorized training of the spontaneous speech was in the center of my interest. The training was invented for the high school children, who, of course, by the time of late school had long forgotten what it meant to speak of things most essential, coming right from the heart, to speak with brightness and expression, as it is possible in childhood. Two seasons passed and the speech reopened, both oral and written. And amazingly expressive it was. Alive.
Then there were museums. And, again, what turned out to be most interesting and important about them was everything that switched on our feelings and imagination, that gave us energy for our own movement and creativity, everything that actualized Big Space and Big Time within us and made the cultural and historical legacy an important, close and essential element for us. Alive.
What has added now? Well, the intuitive feeling that had always been there was finally confirmed: memory is material. Space lives within the flows of energies, the visible world is only a part of the universe’s fullness and a great pain can turn into a big force.
(The circle really rounds up with the theme of my philological diploma: on the metaphors of memory in the Russian language. While, of course, if in those days some one mentioned I would work in the museums and for the museums I would not have believed it, not for a second. Leave alone psychotherapy. In retrospection though it all this seems like a very coherent plan).
What does unite all those three spheres for me: the cultural, educational and therapeutic? Perhaps they are united because within each of them one could discern a “parallel space”, an island of Other, that territory where the future of the profession is flaking and studying itself. And in this parallel space the foundations of the humanitarian professions are coming together into one definite entity.
One of my colleagues that came on a short yet a well prepared visit to Krasnoyarsk has noted that Krasnoyarsk is a city of practice: museum, pedagogical and psychotherapeutic practice. If I understand her correctly she meant two things at once: 1) an absolute absence of the humanitarian institutes within the structure of the local academic science and consequently the lack of any base for the development of the theoretical humanitarian knowledge – of culturology and anthropology 2) and the unexplainable richness (at least for the average provincial town) of the humanitarian phenomena – the cultural techniques and anthropopractice.
“The world as expressive and speaking being”
Why was this mission appointed to the city of Krasnoyarsk, heavens knows. But it is clearly not accidental in my individual fate: being not so very involved with theory I very much prefer practice. And since practice is always rooted in the wholesome reality, which can be dissected and fragmented but only nominally and even then through some special effort by intellect, the borders in the humanitarian field’s individual professions become nominal as well. Their difference becomes less important and essential than what they have in common.
What becomes essentially important is the life of the human being in culture – the meanings and values formative for the surrounding world, the cultural universals which answer for the wholeness and fullness of human experience, the ritualistic events that are like landmarks on the path of the human life.
And if we see a human being (say, the addressee of our cultural projects) in this particular manner then what we are facing before us is the tangible level of complexity. And if we recognize this complexity in the “inner structure” of our addressee then we are bound to recognize the necessary complexity of the cultural product.
In which care we won’t have to place our stakes on the entertainment dimension of the cultural projects. For we know that if we can offer our visitors something essential, deep and really important for them there will be no need of rattles.
What to begin with? With three principles. Space: its verticals and horizontals, its paths, its borders and centers, the flows of energy that are invisibly pulsating. Time: its connection with memory and imagination, its jumps and flows, streams and whirlwinds. Event: life and death, meetings and partings; “the world as an expressive and speaking being” in the words of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin.
And also one has not to forget oneself. To acquire that “empty middle” within which everything is light.
Why first and foremost do we have to get ourselves in order? A simple answer would do for now: if one carries a strong pain within, than in his or her every action one is bound to translate it. And there comes a moment when one will have to think of the right to do it, especially if the recipient audience of his/her activity is big enough.
Any line of psychotherapy necessarily presupposes this personal therapy. It is very clear and hardly needs explanation. With the inner problems unsolved the therapist is inclined to project them on his client: to see the world and the client in a specific light and suggest the respective interpretations of what’s happening.
But if we admit the essential kindred of all professions in the field of “culture – education – healing of soul” than we come to an understanding that the character of our cultural interpretations and the latent but deep motives for our actions must be, if possible, free of some most burdensome disharmonies.
Generally speaking the work with one’s whole family-ancestral system may be enough. The parental family the relations with mother and father do create the primary basic models. And the childish traumas contain verily an atomic energy – uncontrollable and destructive until healed. While being cured the soul acquires an enormous and practically unlimited resource for life’s stability and success.
A human being that finds himself in some several family ancestral intertwining is like holed bellows. No matter how you mend them the precious wine of life’s energy still flows nobody knows where. No matter how much of it you pour in again, it still leaves you irrevocably and hopelessly. And if a system’s order, hierarchy and balance are restored than all the ancestors behind us are not taking but giving us the energy – as much as we may need in any given moment of our life.
Order, hierarchy and balance
The deep field mechanism that works within the families is working within the organizational systems as well. Just as families the organizations need order, hierarchy and balance between “give and take”.
The difference is – we belong to the family from birth to death while our association with an organization is temporary and by choice. As for the rest the systematic approach allows us to work with people and their position within the system, with the social contexts their organizations operate in, with that which lies as a foundation of people’s professional choice and the choice of the place they want to occupy at their office or in their business field. The systematic approach allows for clarification of the conditions in which an organization may prosper and develop.
If there is some breakage in one of the three dimensions – in order, hierarchy or balance – than such symptoms as loss of energy, lack of leadership, the impossibility of reaching one’s goals, the turnover, conflicts between the personnel and departments, lack of clarity in actions and direction, emerge.
Here is the example of a constellation made on the demand of a man who works in his own business. For the sake of the benefits all his organization was ascribed to his mother, a pensioner. The client does all the work by himself, gets very tired and can not delegate even part of his duties to his younger brother who has a weakness for gambling. As it may appear the client is the main figure in that business. He is full of energy and can not understand why he can not develop it.
During the constellation it becomes obvious that all the participants of this situation are looking in the same direction showing thus that some very significant figure is still missing. With the help of the master the client manages to understand that it is all about his brother’s friend who initially came up with the idea for this business and who suggested what the first steps were to be: how to build up business, where to find the suppliers, the market, etc.
Next it becomes clear that the mother-pensioner in whose name the registration documents where signed still has to remain in the position of the head of the firm due to the difficulties with the younger brother. Next comes the understanding that the younger brother, in spite of all his weaknesses, is still a very important figure. He holds the contacts with the suppliers that were given to him by the friend who initiated the business from the start.
As a result the client found himself not in the first and leading but in the fourth and lingering behind place. First the friend who invented the business comes. Second comes the younger brother who is a part-owner of business and the holder of the key contacts. The brother has a right not to take top-managers functions upon himself, confining himself to the status of the part-owner. Which depends solely on his wishes. Third comes the mother who agreed to register that business in her name. And the client comes only fourth as the business’ part-owner. The one who seemed first and most important has found himself to be only the fourth in hierarchy.
The decision to the situation was found. The client was to recognize all those people that were “older” in the hierarchy than him with respect and gratitude. While as a top manager of the business he was to get a good salary. Than he would get half of the profit as a part-owner, plus his salary as a manager.
As a matter of fact this non-distinction between the function of the owner of one’s business and that of its top-manager is a typical trouble on the Russian scene. These two very different functions presuppose two very different sources of income and thus have to be fully distinguished between them. The fact that they lie within the frame of one business is of minor importance. Three irrevocable guards of any system demand full clarity: order, hierarchy and balance.
This simple and unpretentious example only goes to show that the reality does not reduce itself to what is obvious but is drawn by invisible and firm flows which demand due attention. Sometimes it is the lost profit at stake. Sometimes – people’s very lives and fates.
Life at stake
Here is the story that was told during one of the Russian regional trainings. One of the participants was a physiologist who worked in the military production. His plant produced enormous air-craft carriers when full-scale conversion took place after perestroika.
He told that once he had to face a series of mysterious deaths among the constructors. It was a series with its beginning and its end taking place within the scope of observable time. All the death cases were absolutely different: premeditated murder, accidental falling out of the window, being hit over by a train, etc.
But there was a striking similarity: in all those cases the body of the dead was dismembered. Why did it happen this way? And why was it to happen to the engineering constructors? The psychologist was trying to solve this riddle for many years.
The answer came within the framework of our course when we had to look at the phenomenon only too well known to the therapists, namely “to follow somebody”. For example, to follow a child killed in a crash. The human being is yielding to the subconscious desire to follow the dead, choosing the same way to die.
Thus the people of creative professions (which was of course the case of engineering constructors) put so much soul into their work and were so deeply attached to the products of their own labor that they may find themselves capable of “following them” after their perish.
The answer to the riddle lies in the way of destruction of the air-craft carriers. Under the conversion plan the laser cutting technique was used: the air-craft carriers were dismembered, cut in pieces. Following them and in the same manner did their creators, their fathers pass out of life – the engineering constructors.
It may be that this is not a full explanation. It is quite possible that in the family-ancestral systems of the people who died, some such events did take place and the perish of their creations became just a trigger, coming to resonate with what perhaps did once, several generations before, happen in the family.
It is quite possible but only after we finally decide to admit: the fullness of the universe and the depth of the human being is not exhausted by the economically grounded, natural, physical, visible world. When we allow ourselves to be instruments of powers stronger than ourselves – and because of it to be able to expand the creased folds of being.
For life to move on.
Translated by Ksenia Golubovich
