Family Constellation is a therapeutic method developed by Bert Hellinger and practised by psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and alternative practitioners. Its objective is to release profound tensions within and between people. Those tensions may lie in a personal or professional context.”
THE METHOD
A group (typically strangers) is led by a facilitator. In turn, members of the group can explore an urgent personal issue. Generally, several members will be given an opportunity to set up a Constellation in each session.
After a brief interview, the facilitator suggests who will be represented in the Constellation. These are usually a representative for the seeker, one or more family members, and sometimes abstract concepts such as “depression” or a country.
The person presenting the issue (seeker or client) asks people from the group to be representatives. He or she arranges the representatives according to what feels right in the moment. The seeker then sits down and observes.
Several minutes elapse with the representatives standing still and silent in their places. Unlike psychodrama, the representatives do not act, pose or role play.
Emphasis is placed on intuition in placing the representatives and in subsequent steps of the procedure. The aim is to tap into what the psychiatrist Albrecht Mahr describes as the Knowing Field (Mahr 1999). The Knowing Field is claimed to guide participants to sense and articulate the feelings of the real family members they represent. This is inexplicable because the representatives have never met these people, have been told little or nothing about them and those family members may no longer be living. Nevertheless, the representatives usually will experience feelings or physical sensations which inform the process.
The facilitator may ask each representative to describe how it feels to be placed in relation to the others. At this point, the facilitator, seeker, and group members may perceive something in the spacial relationships and feelings held by the representatives that is informative regarding an underlying dynamic that relates to the presenting personal issue.
A healing resolution for the issue generally involves the repositioning the representatives and for the facilitator to suggest one or two sentences to be spoken aloud. If the representatives do not feel better in their new position or sentence, they can move again or try a different sentence. Sometimes the process ends before a full resolution is achieved.
A healing resolution is achieved when every representative feels right in his or her place and the other representatives agree. This is claimed to represent, in an abstract way, a possible resolution of the issues faced by the subject of the session.
Along the way to finding this healing resolution, particular attention is paid by the practitioner to configurations of the group that do not feel right or which generate negative feelings or physical sensations. This is because it is claimed that such configurations may represent systemic entanglements between the seeker’s family members. Systemic entanglements are said to occur when unresolved trauma has afflicted a family through an event such as murder, suicide, death of a mother in childbirth, early death of a parent or sibling, war, natural disaster, emigration, or abuse. Proponents claim that the negative legacy from such events can be passed down to succeeding generations, even if those affected now are unaware of the original event in the past. The psychiatrist Iván Böszörményi-Nagy referred to this phenomenon as Invisible Loyalties (Böszörményi-Nagy & Spark 1973)
………………..Extracted from Wikipedia, 2008 May 31.
FOUNDER
Bert Hellinger is a renowned psychoanalyst, systemic psychotherapist, poet, philosopher and best-selling author in Germany. He created, over many years of clinical practice, a genuine model of psychotherapy in which psychoanalytic, spiritual, primal, family- and hypno-therapeutic elements flow together into a multigenerational, system related way of group work. His method of Family Constellations is rapidly revolutionizing the field of psychology in Europe and is now gaining recognition internationally.
………………..Extracted from here .
Considered one of the most respected psychotherapists in the world today, Bert Hellinger has revolutionized the heart and soul of family systems therapy by illuminating the hidden, and often destructive, loyalties within families. While much of psychotherapy concentrates on exploring the conflicts in one’s childhood, Hellinger’s work examines the tragedies in one’s family spanning back several generations. Hellinger has observed that traumatic events, such as the premature death of a parent or sibling, a stillborn or a suicide, can exert a powerful force affecting later generations. Entangled with unhappiness from the past, we can find ourselves suffering with a former family member’s feelings of anger, guilt, fear, anxiety, depression, chronic illnesses or unfulfilled relationships.
………………..Extracted from here .
HOW IT WORKS
In working with several thousand family systems, renowned German psychotherapist, philosopher and author Bert Hellinger discovered age-old, hidden “Orders of Love” that operate in the depths of family organisms. Violation and disrespect of these natural laws due to tragic circumstances and unconscious behavior in the generations that came before affect the lives of later members of the family.
Workshop participants are frequently amazed and deeply touched when the hidden love connections and entanglements within their systems are revealed.
For instance, could we ever imagine that unhappiness or health problems could be connected to a stillborn child of our grandmother? Or that difficulties with a current partner could be related to an abortion 15 years ago, or even to the former partner of one’s mother? That the severe illness of a child might be caused by an adoption?
Hidden entanglements of this kind are found behind most personal and even professional issues. Restoring balance and harmony to the family system is equally important for addressing physical illness – from lower back pain to cancer – as it is for emotional and mental suffering.
The family constellation is the main technique for revealing the hidden dynamics in a family so they can be worked with and healed.
Release begins with the participant stating his/her issue or problem and some factual information about his/her family (i.e. sudden or early deaths, severe illness, miscarriage, divorce, etc.). Then she/he chooses from the other workshop participants a representative for certain family members- alive or dead – and places them in relationship to each other according to his/her inner picture of the system. This creates an energy field in which all involved participants begin to receive information (physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc.), related to the family member whom they are representing. Every change in position within the constellation affects the information received. As a result, previously sub-conscious, often tragic family ties are made perceptible and the dynamic that caused the participant’s issue can be discovered.
With the information provided by the representatives, and using steps such as appreciation or detachment rituals, the constellation can now be restructured according to the “Orders of Love” into a balanced family system where love, flowing consciously and unimpeded, heals, and guilt, once acknowledged, can turn into energy.
………………..Extracted from here .
References
::: Family Constellations USA
::: Wikipedia reference links
::: Bert Hellinger Homepage
::: Family Constellations UK & International
::: French Institute of Family and Systemic Constellations
::: More than 200 links for Constellations sites all over the world
::: 2nd USA Conference on Systemic Constellation Work
Further Readings
::: Bert Hellinger: Lectures and Articles
::: Article on Bert Hellinger and his method
::: Article on the workings of the method
::: Article from ANZJFT providing an overview of the model
Books
::: Google Books by/about Bert Hellinger
Trainings
::: The Hellinger Learning Center
Relevant Readings
::: Systemic Constellation
……………………………………….Post updated: June 01, 2008
