How are constellations performed, why are they called “spiritual practice”, why Bert Hellinger was expelled from the German Constellation Association, and why are some psychologists and psychotherapists very ambiguous about this technique?
What’s this
In the 1950s, psychotherapist Virginia Satir developed the «family sculpture» technique. At consultations, family members took certain places in space — so that others could see him. This helped to see the family as a system, to determine personal boundaries and the degree of closeness of the participants.
The German philosopher, theologian and psychotherapist Bert Hellinger went further: he replaced all family members with «actors». In his opinion, this gives the client the opportunity to see the family history from the side and discover repetitive scenarios. In the 2000s, the German Constellation Association removed Hellinger’s name from its name, considering his approach to be directive and unsafe, and Hellinger created his own school.
Family Constellations is Hellinger’s original term. It reflects the essence of what is happening: the leader “arranges” the group members (“deputies”) in the space in accordance with what the client (one of the group members) says about his family. Thanks to this, he supposedly gets the opportunity to see all the members of his family, including himself, from the outside.
Operating principle
Each of us is part of the family system (relations with parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, grandparents, husbands and wives). Any changes (death, birth, marriage and the appearance of a new family member) affect the balance in relationships.
According to Hellinger, if someone in the family is “forgotten” and no longer communicates with him, then a failure occurs. It is involuntarily repeated by subsequent generations. Family constellations operate with the concept of hierarchy, which means subordination. For example, parents are always ranked higher than children because they are the ones who created the family. The arrangement helps to return to the «natural hierarchy of relations», according to the adherents of the method.
How does this happen
Bert Hellinger described the course of work as follows: “A person chooses from a group of completely unfamiliar people who will replace his parents, brothers and sisters, including himself, arranges them in space relative to each other and sits down in his place. And suddenly an epiphany descends on him: “What, is this my family? I had a completely different idea of her in my head.”
Usually, constellation is a group work, but it can also be done one on one with a psychotherapist, and, for example, sheets of paper laid out on the floor with designations of who is who will serve as substitutes for family members.
What is the danger?
Hellinger called his work practical philosophy. His followers consider this a spiritual practice, and the “performance” in the constellations of deputies, who play the roles of deceased family members, sometimes resembles seances.
The popularizer of the method, Elena Veselago, who studied spiritual constellations with Bert Hellinger, writes: “In this practice, we sometimes reach the limits: frightening, unacceptable, wrong, “immoral” movements (events, stories). After all, if there is neither good nor bad, and everything moves as it moves, then what about, for example, situations of incest? Violence, murder, abortion? Fascism, genocide?
Many times, witnesses to Hellinger’s constellation work have encountered the unacceptable: for example, in the constellation, a daughter who is in a sexual relationship with her father says to her mother: «Mom, I’m glad to do this for you.» Through this phrase, uttered in constellation, the spirit of «sighted» love and reconciliation comes, the connection reveals its meaning and ceases to be necessary.
Experts in the field of psychology emphasize that the Hellinger constellation method cannot be called harmless. At a minimum, this can be a useless loss of money, and in some cases it can lead a person away from a real problem, re-traumatize (activate a previously suffered trauma and not give support in living it). The leaders of the semi-occult method receive ample opportunities for manipulation.
Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Olga Fidrya writes: “Basically, Hellinger’s ideas about “orders of love” reproduce patriarchal models of gender and intergenerational relations, in fact prescribing certain (and rather rigid) principles of perception and behavior to clients.
Hellinger’s sensational interpretation of incest as a mother’s fault for not satisfying her husband’s sexual interests sufficiently, resulting in him having sex with his daughter, not only sets the stage for cultivating guilt in the mother (which, perhaps separated from her husband for reasons), but also forces the victim of incest to “accept with respect” the act of violence against herself. Not to mention the fact that for the rapist himself, such an interpretation does not give any chance to realize his responsibility for what he did and work out the reasons that led to this act.
Obviously, constellations according to Bert Hellinger are an ambiguous method and not accepted by the entire psychological community. Is it worth experimenting with your psyche? Everyone decides for himself.