What Lies Behind The Family Curse And The Crown Of Celibacy: A Psychologist's View

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Typical cases of "family curses" look like this: the life of an ancestor who has a "hard fate" ends tragically. In subsequent generations, one must appear who “copies” the plight of his ancestor: commits murder (suicide), cannot start a family, and becomes mentally ill.

Berne believed that families form their own specific stereotypes of interaction between family members, which are passed on from parents to children at an unconscious level in the form of certain rules.

Family corruption? "Ancestral curse", "a crown of celibacy", "unhappy family" … Our ancestors knew about these mysterious, mysterious phenomena from time immemorial. Only, perhaps, they were called differently, but the attitude towards them at all times was special.

Nowadays, little has changed: some believe in these things, some do not, but all people unconditionally accept the fact that sometimes so strange and incomprehensible events happen in families that they cannot be explained by coincidence or chance.

For example, if all women in a family are abandoned by men and they raise children alone. Or, say, all men in a family die at the same age with a difference of several months or even weeks: from a heart attack, cancer, committing suicide …

But more often, typical cases of "family curses" are as follows. The life of any person in the family family - a person who has a "difficult fate", tragically ends.

And then, in subsequent generations of this kind, someone must appear who, in one way or another, "copies" the plight of his ancestor: commits murder (suicide), cannot start a family, becomes mentally ill …

In other words, this person repeats the "old mistakes" of an ancestor of his kind, instead of correcting them and trying not to make new ones; he is, in fact, living someone else's life, instead of happily and harmoniously living his own.

Why is this happening? Psychologists and psychotherapists have long tried to find an answer to this question. For example, the eminent psychiatrist and psychotherapist Eric Berne, founder of transactional analysis and author of the books Games People Play and People Who Play Games, offered his own explanation of such cases.

Berne believed that families form their own specific stereotypes of interaction between family members, which are passed on from parents to children at an unconscious level in the form of certain rules.

For example, a mother throughout her life inspires her daughter not directly, but indirectly, by her behavior: “all men are dirty animals; they only want sex from us. The girl, growing up, begins to be guided by the same rules as her mother.

And then from generation to generation in this family the same situation is repeated: women raise their children without husbands, because their relationship with the opposite sex is not going well: she will not, in fact, marry a "dirty animal" ?

However, such explanations of family problems did not satisfy all psychologists, because specialists did not always manage to cope with many of these difficulties. In any case, this was the case until such an area of psychological assistance as systemic family psychotherapy appeared.

At the disposal of the family psychotherapist there are effective methods that allow solving, among other things, those problems that are called the "crown of celibacy" and "generic curse". Family psychotherapists themselves prefer to call them "systemic weaves."

What is family psychotherapy really, and how can it help people solve their family problems, unravel these interweaving?

Start

In the early 1940s and 1950s, first in America and then in Europe, a new direction of psychotherapy appeared, which in its essence was radically different from the then dominant schools, such as psychoanalysis. This area was called "systemic family psychotherapy."

Family therapists began working with families with marital difficulties; with families with "problem" children - those who ran away from home, wandered for a long time, sometimes committed crimes …

And later, with the development of a systematic approach, family psychotherapists learned to solve the so-called "generic" problems: they worked quite successfully with clients from "difficult" families - those in which there were murderers, suicides, and mentally ill people.

The family therapist has a different perspective on what counts as “birth curses”. Let's try to figure out what it is.

Family theory

The family psychotherapist does not work with the family simply as a group of people united by family relationships. For him, the family is a system that is more than just put together mom, dad, son, daughter or anyone else who belongs to it, for example, grandmother and grandfather.

Within such a family system, various complex interactions take place, and as a result, it turns out that the psychological problem of one of the family members who asked for help is in fact only a symptom that suggests that these very relationships between family members are broken. and between them there is some kind of unspoken conflict or contradiction.

And if these disturbed relationships are normalized, the conflict is resolved, then the symptom, that is, the problem of an individual family member, will go away by itself. But sometimes it happens that this conflict lasts so long that the reason for it is already forgotten.

True, they “forget” only at the conscious level - but at the unconscious level, in the “ancestral memory” of the family system, this information still remains. And therefore, some conflicts (quite often they do) can last for several decades and even centuries, and, of course, this does not go in vain for the family.

The distant descendants of those who participated in the conflict often have to shoulder the brunt of an old unsolved problem. This can lead to serious consequences: such guilt cripples people's lives, prevents them from living happily, getting married, having and raising children, or even leading to tragic death at a young age.

And in the family there is what is commonly called the "family curse", "the induction of damage", "the crown of celibacy", etc.

In family psychotherapy, such situations when descendants “copy” the plight of their ancestors are called “identifications”. If someone was unjustly “expelled” from the family system or committed some serious offense condemned in the family (we are talking about those members with whom the family for some reason did not want to communicate, or about whom it is not accepted to speak, because these conversations and thoughts cause unpleasant emotions; for example, about a family member who died early or tragically), then their children and grandchildren often have to pay for this. And they do this, making the same mistakes and creating in their lives the same situations, because of which the person “rejected” from the system suffered.

In other words, descendants repeat the mistakes of their ancestors, and their life path largely repeats the life of an unjustly exiled grandfather or great-grandmother … nothing else but to repeat the fate of his ancestor, and he will, of course, unconsciously do this.

Without outside intervention, this person will not be able to resist the forces of the family system, the "forces of fate."But he has his own life, which is worth living the way he would like … Family psychotherapists often work with such problems. Moreover, clients often come to them, completely unaware that their seemingly personal problem is actually a family problem, and its roots go back many generations in the history of the family.

Orders of love

What are family psychotherapists guided by in their work? There are certain, unshakable laws of life that have existed and will always exist, and failure to comply with them often leads to even more serious consequences.

The largest German systemic psychotherapist Bert Hellinger calls these laws "orders of love."

One of them says that the love passed from mother and father to son and daughter should "flow" in one direction - from top to bottom - from parents to children, from elders to younger ones, so that they, in turn, also transmit her to her children. And when this order is violated, then this "river of life" stops, because it simply cannot flow in the opposite direction. Its current stops, and the person who stopped this process cannot transfer this love further.

These people have a variety of problems in life (not only of a psychological nature), what is usually called a "difficult fate" arises, and then with his life this person tries to atone for the guilt of his ancestor, sometimes "copying" his difficult fate.

But even such actions are not enough to solve the problem: after all, he did not pass on his love and the love of his family further - to children, and they cannot develop normally. And then, already for this person, someone will also have to suffer: one of the descendants will again have to take on someone else's blame, imposed on him by his own family …

Systemic constellations

But can this be changed in any way? Family therapists are confident that this can be done, at least in part. In the arsenal of a family psychotherapist there are thousands of different techniques and approaches that allow you to get to the bottom of the problem and, having solved it, help the family.

One of the most interesting and demanded approaches nowadays is systemic constellations, the author of which is the aforementioned Bert Hellinger. The systemic constellation method is a group form of work.

The specialist - the leader of the constellation - after a preliminary conversation with the client asks to choose "deputies" for the role of his family members. This can be mom, dad, grandmother and other family members, depending on the presented problem and the therapist's primary hypothesis. Then the client very collected, following his “inner feeling”, the inner image of his family, places “substitutes” in the space …

And then the inexplicable happens in the work. Or so far, from the point of view of modern science, inexplicable. The “substitutes” begin to experience what complete strangers - family members of the client - felt and say words that are not related to their personal life, but which are usually recognized by the client with surprise as familiar statements of his family members.

For example, if a wife is “sad”, “lonely” without a husband in the constellation, then at that moment she will have a corresponding feeling for a complete stranger who just “replaces” her husband …

By what mechanism do “substitutes” begin to experience these feelings, which coincide with the feelings of those actually living or even already dead people?

Bert Hellinger has an explanation. He believes that all people are connected by a "common soul." One can agree with this, one can treat this with distrust, but for us, specialists, what is happening in the constellation is reality.

In the process of work, the psychotherapist begins to question the “deputies” about their feelings. At some point, the therapist puts the client himself in the constellation instead of the person who "replaced" him. Then the presenter changes the position of the “figures” in space, asks one of the “family members” to say to another meaningful words that can affect the solution of the problem: ask for forgiveness, forgive someone himself, or simply wish happiness to his child … In the process these "permutations" and comes the solution to the problem.

Die instead of mother

Let us illustrate what has been said with a case from the therapeutic practice of Bert Hellinger himself, described by him for the book "Orders of Love". Sometimes situations arise in families that a mistake made by one of the parents has to be expiated by one of the children with his own life …

So, a woman named Frida turned to a psychotherapist. Some time ago, her older brother committed suicide by throwing himself off the viaduct. And more recently, thoughts of suicide have begun to visit Frida herself.

The therapist began to question the woman, and as a result, it turned out that there was another child in her parental family, born before Frida and her deceased brother. “And what happened to him? He died?" Hellinger asked the patient. "Yes. It is not customary in our family to remember him. This child lived very little. He refused to breastfeed from birth and a few days later died of hunger."

Frida told that this child was born prematurely, and the woman's mother blamed her husband for the fact that he had recently behaved disrespectfully towards her, offended the pregnant woman and caused stress with his negative attitude, due to which the premature birth took place …

This is what lay on the surface; if you look deeper, you can see a completely different picture. A systemic placement was carried out. It was evident from her that the mother felt guilty before the early dead child: after all, she is the most "responsible" person before the child. But she could not take all the blame, the whole burden of this act upon herself: it was more convenient for her to blame her husband for everything.

A woman can be understood: “to take all the blame” meant to follow the child, that is, to die. But since the mother did not do this, it is clear that someone else had to do it … And the second son, Frida's brother, had to take the blame for the baby's death.

Indeed, in order for the family system to gain stability, someone from the family had to take the place of this deceased child in the system (he was not given respect). Frida's older brother unknowingly passed away, killing himself.

But by his death, he did not bring equilibrium to the family system, because in fact no one can replace the dead child. This loss is irreparable. But despite this, family members will still try to make amends to him. And, perhaps, if Frida had not gone through therapy, she would have faced the same sad fate.

But the therapist was able to find the right solution and find out the inner dynamics of events. Frida's parents, instead of uniting in the face of common grief and saying to each other: "Together we will withstand this blow of fate," to come to terms with the death of the newborn, preferred to simply forget about the dead child.

The solution to the problem was for the parents, at least now, to rally in front of their misfortune and always remember about the lost child, feel all the pain of this loss and take responsibility for everything that happened on themselves. When this was done, the deceased child took his place in the system, and peace came to the family.

Forgive my husband

The problems that can be presented to the therapist can be very different. As examples, we selected cases when people turned to us in connection with difficulties in relationships with the opposite sex. These examples show very clearly how the same problem can be based on completely different causes …

A woman came to a family psychotherapist with the following problem: her relationships with men were not going well. Irina did not manage to get to know a good person in any way, and if it did, then this relationship did not last long, and when parting brought our client very strong mental suffering.

The psychotherapist asked the woman to tell not only about her own life, but also about the history of her family - about her father, mother, grandmother, grandfather … And during the conversation it turned out that our patient's grandmother, Olga, had a very difficult fate. She successfully, as at first it seemed, married a wealthy man (they lived in the village).

But soon a serious conflict arose in their family life: it turned out that Olga's husband did not want to have children, because he did not want to hear their constant, as he imagined, screams in the house. And every time his wife was pregnant, he forced her to have an abortion.

Olga could not get support from her parental family, and she had no choice but to fulfill her husband's demands, and she had to do this a total of six or seven times. Irina's grandmother suffered greatly from such an attitude of her husband and felt unhappy in her family life (and it is difficult to disagree with this).

But later she managed to break the resistance of her husband and give birth to two children, to defend them, but the resentment against her husband and guilt for her weakness remained. It is clear that these strong feelings could not just disappear anywhere; grandmother Olga blamed herself for not being able to defend her children, and the blame for these mistakes passed to the granddaughter.

Irina literally became like her grandmother: she did not trust men and could not get along with them, could not get married and have children. A situation arose in her life, which is commonly called the "crown of celibacy" …

In working with Irina, a systemic constellation was also used, during which the client, with the help of “deputies”, was able to “correct” her grandmother’s mistake, “did” for her what Olga herself could not do - forgive her husband and herself for those who were not born children.

Equilibrium in the family system was restored: grandparents took their rightful place in the family, and identification disappeared. It will take some time (the client's inner work happens gradually - from several weeks to several months), and Irina will be able to learn normal relationships with men … …

The family is a special system in which each of its members should be respected and given their place. It is very important.

Because if someone for one reason or another was excluded from the family, then the stability, reliability of such a system falls. And any system, including a family one, has the ability to self-regulation: if a person important for the family leaves it, then someone else must take his place in the system and behave in it in the same way as the one excluded from systems man.

In other words, he must "copy" the plight of his ancestor, and endlessly repeat his mistakes, as was the case in Irina's case. Fortunately, she came to the attention of the family therapist, and she and her family system were helped. The psychotherapeutic work was carried out in such a way that both the client's grandfather and grandmother were given a worthy place in the system; this was the right solution to Irina's problem.

Dead children

Why are aborted and early deaths so important to the family system? It turns out that it's not just that they are also family members and must have their place in the system. Everything is much more complicated. Sometimes a paradoxical situation arises when it is the children born after abortions that are the first to suffer.

A young man named Sergei came to see a psychotherapist. His problem was that he could not create sufficiently strong and lasting relationships with women. Those girls whom he liked and whom he met, showed them signs of attention and subsequently planned a deeper relationship, after talking with him for a very short time, they abandoned Sergei, which introduced the young man into prolonged depression.

Sergei began to talk about himself and his personal life, but the family psychotherapist he turned to was quite experienced and quickly realized that the root of the problem should not be looked for at all in Sergei's relationships with women.

He asked the client to talk about his parental family. To which he replied that they had nothing particularly interesting in their family - an ordinary family: father, mother and himself, the only child. Then the therapist applied the method of systemic constellations, recreating a situation in which all family members were present.

But from the way they were placed, it became clear to the psychotherapist that there was someone else in the family system who strongly influences the family, but he was not in the arrangement. Who it was, Sergei did not know. Then, instead of Sergei, the therapist invited his mother to the next meeting, and at this meeting she admitted that she had an abortion a few years before Sergei was born. At that time, she and her father still did not earn enough to have a child, so the young family had to take such measures.

Knowing this, the family therapist was able to understand the dynamics of the patient's system without much difficulty. On an unconscious level, Sergei "knew" that he "owes" his life to the death of his unborn brother. After all, if the first child was born, the family, unable to feed two children, simply would not have a second.

And therefore, unconsciously, Sergei felt his guilt before his aborted brother, and was forced to "atone" for her with his misfortunes in his personal life. When, using the method of systemic constellations, the aborted child was found his rightful place in the system, Sergei, after a while, managed to meet a good girl and start a family.

Remember grandfather

Very often, the reason for the problems of clients dealing with family difficulties is that in his family someone was not respected as he deserved, and this person was undeservedly forgotten.

Svetlana, a middle-aged woman, turned to a family psychotherapist for psychological help, again complaining about problems in relationships with men. During the conversation, the psychotherapist who worked with her realized that “individual” techniques were not enough to solve the client's problem and that it was necessary to work with the methods of family psychotherapy.

He asked the woman to tell about her parental family, and during the conversation, quite interesting things emerged. When, during the war, the grandmother of our client had just given birth to a daughter (it was Svetlana's mother), a funeral for her husband came from the front. The family's grief was great, but some short period passed - two or three years, and Svetlana's grandmother got married again.

Just at this time, the war ended, and from the front returned … the first husband of my grandmother, Vasily, whom everyone considered dead. But when he came home and saw his wife married and with children, he was politely but decisively indicated at the door. In this family, Vasily no longer had a place - Sveta's grandmother was not going to divorce her second husband … Vasily left for another city and lived there until his death, and of course no one from the family who drove him out supported him.

What connects our client, who knew about it only by hearsay, and this story half a century ago? A systemic family therapist can see the connection quite clearly: Vasily, who, of course, was a member of the family (after all, he was the grandfather of our Svetlana), was not given due respect in his family - he was simply rejected from the family, having made a mistake for which most of his life paid, without realizing it, Svetlana.

It seems that if Vasily was alive, it would be possible to solve the problem by somehow re-accepting him into the family, and now it is too late to do this. But this problem can be solved even now. In fact, as paradoxical as it sounds, it is not so important whether such a person is alive or has already died. Even the deceased should be given a worthy place in the family. Then it will be found for the living … for Svetlana.

And if, using the method of systemic constellations, we simulate a situation when the family recognizes the importance of Vasily's role in their life and again accepts him into their bosom, asking him for forgiveness for the once committed mistake, then Svetlana will not have to keep on her shoulders this difficult, unbearable for her I bear the grievances of my ancestor. This work has been done. Now Svetlana's life is gradually improving.

"Pay for life"

Here's another example. At first glance, the problem seems very similar to the previous one, but in fact, its cause is completely different.

A young woman named Galina with difficulties in relationships with the opposite sex turned to us at the Institute of Integrative Family Therapy for help. Simply put, men did not love her (including her husband) and did not respect our client as she thought she deserved.

In addition, Galina did not communicate with her father for many years, and now she would like to resume communication with him. Taking into account the specifics of family therapy, at our request, Galina in her story focused not only on the problem, but also on her parental family.

And as she talked about herself, a very interesting situation opened up: on the maternal side, almost all family members died during the blockade of Leningrad (the client came from St. Petersburg), while on the father’s side everyone remained alive, which, by the way, have always been very proud and emphasized this fact at every opportunity.

Thanks to the systemic constellation, within a few minutes, many moments of this family history began to become clear for the therapist. “You don't seem to have much respect for men? - Asked Galina psychotherapist after a while. - But it seems to me that it is not your feeling. Let's try to figure out where it came from."

The work continued, and the specialist, slowly but steadily moved towards his goal of unraveling this systemic interweaving, which led to Galina's problem.

What was the matter? We already understand that just like that, out of thin air, that disrespect for men, which the psychotherapist discovered during a conversation with Galina, could not be taken. There must have been some reason for this, which the psychotherapist began to look for.

Let us remember that on the part of the father, all members of his parental family remained alive during those difficult years of siege. It seemed rather strange: probably, there was not a single family in the besieged city, and in our entire country, which during the war years did not lose a single member. Someone's father died at the front, their sister died of hunger … But nothing happened to the grandfather's family …

And then Galina suddenly remembered: “I’m not sure, I don’t remember exactly, but it seems that during the war my grandfather was not at the front, but, as they say, sat in the rear. He had access to the food reserves of the city, and took advantage of this: he sold bread for gold. It was not customary in our family to talk about it."

Let's analyze this information, it is one of the key ones in solving this problem. What does this mean from the point of view of family psychotherapy? We see that our client's paternal grandfather has made a lot of money from the war. True, thanks to this, he saved all members of his family from starvation.

It was not customary for the family to talk about this out loud (it is understandable: they were shot for this without trial or investigation), but, nevertheless, all members of this family and subsequent generations knew about it (Galina is no exception). Without consciously realizing this to herself, she knew that although she owed her life to her grandfather (she would not have been born without him), nevertheless, she understood that she lived thanks to the misfortunes and deaths of other people.

In other words, they lacked the bread that the family members of their grandfather ate. Therefore, despite the fact that Galina lives thanks to her father's father, she could not respect him. A man who, according to a client, “sat in the rear and profited from the deaths of other people,” is difficult to respect, even if he gave you life. And this disrespect for Galina's grandfather soon passed on to all males …

This example clearly shows how the broken relationship between the granddaughter and the grandfather affects Galina's entire life. Having learned to respect and accept her grandfather, thereby correcting, in fact, the mistake of her grandmother, Galina was able to normalize her relations with men, including her father, and raise them to a qualitatively different level.

Someone else's mistakes

Sometimes, in order to solve a serious "generic" problem, one meeting with a specialist is enough, who will immediately work with the method of systemic constellations. But more often it happens that the family psychotherapist, having already held several meetings with the family and having achieved a certain result in work, directs the family to a specialist in this method, and then, after placement, continues to work with the family again.

In this case, the effect of family therapy will be much higher, and in the future, perhaps, the family will no longer need help: she will have enough strength to learn to live harmoniously and not repeat other people's mistakes.