Unraveling Family Secrets
Bert Hellinger interviewed on Family
Constellations,
By
Humberto del Pozo in Santiago de Chile,
September
1999.
(translated from Spanish)
What
is the family psyche?
We observe when we
work with the family that they are
driven by a common
principle or force, and I call that a family consciousness. We can
observe
that a circumscribed number of people are subject to unconscious drives
to behave in a certain way. For instance, if in a family one member has
been excluded or forgotten, for example a child that dyed early, and is
no longer counted among the siblings, then later on in that family, in
the next generation only, another member takes up the same fate of that
child. This person then wants to die, with nobody knowing why.
And we do a family
constellation. That means that in a
group, a person
collects himself and selects
representatives for the members of his family –including one
for
himself-
and places them in a space in relationship to one another, following only his own intuition. And
as soon as those people have taken up their places they feel like the
people
they represent without knowing them. So by means of the Family
Constellation,
we get a real picture of what is going on in the family.
How
does the therapy then work for the unconscious
behaviors you
mentioned?
Let’s say
in this example, the person selects a
person for his father,
mother, his/her siblings and one for himself. Then he sets them up in a
space, and they are all looking in one direction. That is very strange,
so when we see that we know immediately somebody has been forgotten or
excluded. Then they suddenly remember, “Oh Yes! ... there was
a
sister
who was handicapped and died after three months...”
Then I
select
a representative for the dead sister and I place her in front of the
others.
And they all feel relieved for she can now be included, and another
child
who has became ill, for instance, of diabetes, has now a greater chance
to deal with that illness in a positive way.
I
have seen you require very little information from
the client before
asking him to set up his Family Constellation. Is that enough? How come?
Yes, for the
perception is helped most by asking only
for the most essential
information, and for that to be done just prior to the constellation,
not
earlier.
The essential
questions are:
1. Who belongs to the family?
2. Are there any stillborn members of the family, or any who
have died early? Has there been any special fate
in the family, for example
someone with a disability?
3. Was one of the parents or grandparents engaged, or
married
before, or in a significant prior relationship?
Any further
questioning usually hinders openness to the
phenomenological
information which emerges. This is true both for the therapist as well
as the representatives. This is also the reason why the therapist
declines
any prior conversations with the client or extensive questionnaires. In
addition, it is best if the client remains silent during the
constellation,
and that the representatives refrain from asking the client any
questions.
How
is it that somebody is selected to represent an
excluded person?
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Publicado en Constellation Solutions, London
