Bert Hellinger: Family Conscience

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

German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger was born into a Catholic family on December 16, 1925 in Leimen (Baden, Germany). He became widely known for a therapeutic method called systemic family constellations … Many practicing professionals around the world continue to successfully apply and adapt the constellation method to a range of personal, organizational and political situations.

At the age of ten, Bert Hellinger left home to attend school at a Catholic monastery. Bert was later ordained and sent to South Africa as a missionary, where he lived for 16 years.

He was a parish priest, teacher, and finally director of a large school for African students, with administrative responsibility for the entire area of the diocese, which had 150 schools. Hellinger became fluent in the Zulu language, took part in their rituals, and began to understand their special view of the world.

In the early 1960s, Bert Hellinger took part in a series of interracial ecumenical teaching in group dynamics conducted by the Anglican clergy. The instructors worked with the direction of phenomenology - they were engaged in the issue of isolating what is necessary from all the available diversity, without intention, fear and prejudice, relying only on what is clear.

Their methods showed that there is an opportunity for the reconciliation of opposites through mutual respect. … One day, one of the instructors asked the group, “What is more important to you, your ideals or people? Which of this would you sacrifice for the sake of another?"

For Hellinger, this was not just a philosophical enigma. - acutely felt how the Nazi regime sacrificed human beings for the sake of ideals. “In a sense, this question changed my life. Since then, the focus on people has become the main direction that has shaped my work,”said Bert Hellinger.

After he left his job as a priest, he met his future first wife, Gert. They got married shortly after his return to Germany. Bert Hellinger studied philosophy, theology and pedagogy.

In the early 1970s, Hellinger took a classic psychoanalysis course at the Vienna Association for Psychoanalysis (Wiener Arbeitskreis für Tiefenpsychologie). He completed his studies at the Munich Institute for the Training of Psychoanalysts (Münchner Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Psychoanalyse) and was accepted as a practicing member of their professional association.

In 1973, Bert traveled to the United States to study with Arthur Yanov in California. He intensively studied group dynamics, became a psychoanalyst and introduced elements of primary therapy, transactional analysis, Ericksonian hypnosis and NLP into his work.

By the 1980s, Bert had identified patterns that lead to tragic conflicts between family members. Based on his discoveries, he developed effective methods of overcoming family conflicts, which are gaining more and more popularity, going beyond the scope of family counseling.

Bert Hellinger's insightful eyes and actions are directed directly to the soul, thereby releasing forces of such intensity that are rarely seen in psychotherapy. His ideas and discoveries in weaving, spanning several generations, open up a new dimension in therapeutic work with tragic family histories, and his solutions through the family constellation method are touching, startlingly simple, and highly effective.

Bert agreed to record and edit a series of recorded material from seminars for the German psychiatrist Günthard Weber. Weber published a book himself in 1993 titled Zweierlei Gluck [Two Kinds of Happiness]. The book was received with enthusiasm and quickly became a national bestseller.

Bert Hellinger and his second wife Maria Sophia Hellinger (Erdody) are the head of the Hellinger School. He travels a lot, lectures, conducts training courses and seminars in Europe, USA, Central and South America, Russia, China and Japan.

Bert Hellinger is a special, iconic figure in modern psychotherapy. His discovery of the nature of the adopted feelings, the study of the influence on a person of various types of conscience (child, personal, family, tribal), the formulation of the basic laws governing human relations (orders of love), puts him on a par with such outstanding researchers of the human psyche as 3. Freud, C. Jung, F. Perls, J. L. Moreno, C. Rogers, S. Grof, and others. The value of his discoveries has yet to be appreciated by future generations of psychologists and psychotherapists.

B. Hellinger's systemic therapy is not just another speculative theory, but is the fruit of his many years of practical work with people. Many patterns of human relations were first noticed and tested in practice and only then generalized. His views do not contradict other therapeutic approaches, such as psychoanalysis, Jungian analysis, gestalt, psychodrama, NLP, etc., but complement and enrich them.

Today, with the help of the systematic work according to B. Hellinger, it is possible to solve such human problems that ten years ago baffled even the most experienced specialists.

The method of systemic placement according to Helinger

Family constellation becomes the main method of work of Bert Hellinger and he develops this method, combining in it two basic principles:

1) Phenomenological approach - following what appears in the work, without preliminary concepts and further interpretations

2) Systematic approach - consideration of the client and the topic declared by him for work in the context of the client's relationship with members of his family (system).

The work by Bert Hellinger's family constellation method consisted in the fact that participants were selected in the group - substitutes for the client's family members and were placed in space using very restrained expressive means - only the direction of the gaze, without any gestures or posture.

Hellinger discovered that with the slow, serious and respectful work of the leader and the group, the substitute family members feel the same as their real prototypes, despite the fact that they are not familiar and there is no information about them.

In the process of accumulating experience and observation, Bert Hellinger finds and formulates several laws operating in systems, the violation of which leads to phenomena ("dynamics") presented by clients as problems. Following the laws, the first experience of which the client receives in the constellation, allows to restore order in the system and helps to facilitate the system dynamics and resolve the presented problem. These laws are called Orders of Love.

The accumulated observations show that the systemic approach and substitutional (field) perception are also manifested in non-family systems (organizations, “inner parts of the personality”, abstract concepts such as “war” or “fate”), and not only with direct substitution in group, but also with other methods of work (working in an individual format without a group, working with figures on the table or with large objects on the floor). Increasingly, the family constellation method is used for business decision making and organizational decisions ("organizational constellations" or "business constellations").

What problems does the Hellinger Constellation Method work with?

First of all, with the adopted feelings - repressed, not fully experienced, blocked or prohibited by society, the feelings that our ancestors experienced.

The adopted feelings are stored in the family system, as in the "information bank", and later can be manifested in their children, grandchildren, and sometimes even great-grandchildren.… A person is not aware of the nature of these feelings, he perceives them as his own, since he often simply grows up in their "field", absorbs with mother's milk. And only as adults, we begin to suspect that something is wrong here.

Many of these feelings are familiar, they visit us as if spontaneously and are not associated with the events that are currently taking place around us. Sometimes the intensity of the feelings we experience is so great that we realize that our reaction is inadequate, but often, alas, we cannot do anything “with ourselves”. We tell ourselves that the next time it will not happen again, but if we loosen control and everything will repeat itself again.

It is also difficult for a psychologist or psychotherapist, if he has not undergone systematic training, to understand the nature of the adopted feelings. And if you don't understand the cause of the problem, you can work with it for years. Many clients, not seeing the result, leave everything as it is, suppressing the feeling, but it will reappear in some of their children. And it will appear again and again until the source and addressee of the adopted feeling is found in the family system.

For example, a woman's husband died early due to some circumstances, and she is sad for him, but she does not openly show her sadness, because she thinks that this will upset the children. Subsequently, this feeling can be adopted by one of her children or grandchildren. And the granddaughter of this woman, from time to time experiencing "causeless" sadness towards her husband, may not even guess about her true reason.

Another topic that often sounds in systemic work is the contradictions between the individual and the family (system). Bert Hellinger calls this working with the boundaries of conscience. It is generally accepted that conscience is an exclusively individual quality. But it is not so. In fact, conscience is formed by the experience of previous generations (family, clan), but it is only felt by a person belonging to a family or clan.

Conscience reproduces in subsequent generations those rules that previously helped the family to survive or achieve something. However, living conditions are changing rapidly, and modern reality requires a revision of the old rules: what helped before is now becoming a hindrance.

For example, the conscience of many Russian families keeps a “recipe for survival” in times of repression. We remember from history what fate befell many bright and extraordinary personalities. In those difficult years, in order to survive, a person had to not stand out, be like everyone else.

Then it was justified and entered into the "memory bank" of the family as a rule. And conscience monitors its implementation. Nowadays, the same mechanism continues to operate and leads to the fact that a person does not realize himself as a person. Conscience blindly controls us with the help of feelings of guilt and innocence, and a person from a family that has survived the fear of repression will experience inexplicable discomfort (feel guilty) if he seeks to realize himself.

Conversely, he will feel comfortable if he does not strive for anything. Thus, personal aspirations and the conscience of the family come into conflict. And if you do not take into account the past of the family, it is difficult to understand why this is happening.

Separately, I would like to say that B. Hellinger indicates the path to the spiritual, accessible to many. After all, liberation from the adopted feelings is tantamount to the end of the struggle in the soul of a person, and he begins to live his own life, to realize his own goals. And accepting a sense of humility and gratitude to parents, family and clan provides a reliable rear and allows us to use the accumulated generic resources and energy to realize these goals, which greatly increases our chances of success.

This gives us the opportunity to explore new horizons of life, gain new experience, discover new opportunities. And in case of failure, a loving family provides us with a “safe haven” where we can heal wounds and recuperate so that we can sail again through the boundless expanses of life.

The family constellation method allows you, as it were, to return to the past and re-experience the feelings that our ancestors experienced. It makes it possible to take an impartial look at what was happening, return our ancestors to their dignity and see a solution to the problems that we are experiencing now. Constellations will help you understand relationships with loved ones, improve them, avoid mistakes and, perhaps, make your life a little happier.

Practicing a phenomenological approach, Hellinger points to various aspects of conscience, which acts as an "organ of balance" with the help of which we are able to feel whether we live in harmony with our system or not.

The key words in Hellinger's family therapy are conscience and order. Conscience protects the order of life together within the framework of personal relationships. Having a clear conscience means only one thing: I am sure that I still belong to my system. And a "troubled conscience" means the risk that I can no longer be allowed to belong to this system. Conscience responds not only to the right to belong to the system, but also to the balance between the amount that the individual gave to other members in his system and what he received from them.

Each of these functions of conscience is guided and carried out by different feelings of innocence and guilt. Hellinger highlights an important aspect of conscience - conscious and unconscious, unconscious conscience. When we follow a conscious conscience, we violate the rules of a hidden conscience, and although according to a conscious conscience we feel innocent, the hidden conscience punishes such behavior, as if we are still to blame.

The conflict between these two types of conscience is the basis of all family tragedies. Such conflict leads to tragic entanglements that lead to serious illness, accidents and suicide in families.

The same conflict leads to a number of tragedies in the relationship between a man and a woman - for example, when the relationship between partners is destroyed, despite the strong mutual love between them.

Hellinger came to these conclusions not only thanks to the use of the phenomenological method, but also thanks to a large practical experience gained during family constellations

It is a surprising fact, obtained through participation in the constellation, that the generated force field or “guiding knowing Soul” finds solutions that far exceed those that we could have invented ourselves. Their impact is much stronger than what we could achieve through planned actions.

From the point of view of systemic family therapy, feelings, thoughts, and actions of a person are determined by the system. Individual events are determined by the system. Our ties are expanding in increasing circles. We are born in a small group - our own family - and this defines our relationship.

Then other systems come and, in the end, the turn of the universal system comes. In each of these systems, orders operate in their own way. Some of the prerequisites for a good parent-child relationship are: attachment, balance between giving and taking, and order.

Affection is the first basic condition for a relationship to work out. Primary love, attachment of the child to his parents

The balance of "give" and "take"

Relationships between partners can develop normally, if I give something to you, you return a little more as a token of gratitude, in turn I also give you a little more, and so the relationship develops cyclically. If I give too much, and you cannot give me that much, then the relationship falls apart. If I don’t give anything, then they also disintegrate. Or, on the contrary, you give me too much, and I cannot return so much to you, then the relationship also disintegrates.

When balance is impossible

This balancing act of giving and taking is only possible between equals. It looks different between parents and children. Children cannot return anything of equal value to their parents. They would love to, but they can't. There is a gap between "taking" and "giving," which cannot be eliminated.

Although parents receive something from their children, and teachers from their students, this does not restore balance, but only softens its absence. Children are always indebted to their parents. The way out is for children to pass on what they have received from their parents, and first of all to their children, that is, to the next generation. At the same time, the child takes care of his parents as much as he sees fit.

An example is the Georgian parable:

The mother eagle has raised three chicks and is now preparing them for flight. She asks the first chick: "Will you take care of me?" “Yes, mom, you took care of me so well that I will take care of you,” the first chick replies. She lets him go, and he flies into the abyss. The same story with the second chick. The third one answers: "Mom, you took care of me so well that I will take care of my children."

Compensation in the negative

If someone does me harm, and I do him exactly the same, then the relationship ends. The biblical "eye for an eye". If I do him a little less, then this is due not only to justice, but also to love. Gospel: If you get hit on the cheek, turn the other one. Sometimes getting angry is necessary to save a relationship. But here it means - to be angry with love, because these relationships are important to a person.

In order for the relationship to continue, there is a rule: in a positive attitude, they return a little more out of precaution, in a negative attitude, out of precaution, a little less. If parents do something bad to their children, then the children cannot return it as compensation, do harm to them. The child has no right to this, no matter what the parents do. The gap is too great for that.

However, you can solve the problem at a higher level. We can overcome this blind compulsion to balance through the bad with a higher order, namely one of the orders of love. Not just love, but a higher order of love, within the framework of which we recognize our own fate and the fate of another, beloved person, two different destinies independent of each other and submit to both of them with humility.

In the process of settling the family, Hellinger restores balance, the order that was violated in the system. At the same time, he describes the existing orders:

1. Accessories

Members of the same genus, whether they are alive or have already died, generally include:

• The child and his brothers and sisters;
• Parents and their brothers and sisters;
• Grandmothers and grandfathers;
• Sometimes some of the great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers.
• In addition, stillborn children, unborn children due to miscarriage or abortion may belong to the parenting system.

Usually the victims belong to the rapist's system and vice versa

In order for a personal relationship to develop successfully, three conditions must be met: affection, balance between giving and taking, and order.

Everyone belonging to the same genus has an equal right to belong, and no one can and does not have the right to deny them this. As soon as someone appears in the system who says: "I have more rights to belong to this system than you have," he disturbs the order and introduces discord into the system.

If, for example, someone forgets an early deceased sister or a stillborn child, and someone, as if by itself, takes the place of the former spouse and naively assumes that now he has more rights to belonging than someone who vacated space, then he sins against order. Then it often affects in such a way that in one or the next generations someone, without noticing it, repeats the fate of the person who was deprived of the right to belong.

Thus, belonging is violated if a person is excluded from the system. How can I do that? You can take to a psychiatric hospital, write a waiver of parental rights, divorce, abortion, emigration, disappeared, lost, died and forgotten.

The main fault of any system is that it excludes someone from the system, although he has the right to belong to the system, and all the above members of the genus have the right to belong.

2. The law of the whole number

Any individual member of the system feels whole and complete if all those who belong to his system, to his family, have a good and honorable place in his soul and heart, if they retain all their dignity there. Everyone should be here. The one who cares only about his "I" and his narrow individual happiness feels incomplete.

A classic example associated with my patients from single parent families. In Russian culture, it is accepted that after a divorce, children most often remain with their mother. At the same time, the father is, as it were, excluded from the system, and often the mother tries to erase him from the child's consciousness. As a result, when a child grows up, he knows little about his own father, who has lost the right to belong to his system.

The situation may also be aggravated by the fact that the stepfather will try to claim the place of his own father in the soul of the child. Usually, such children are constrained and unsure of themselves, weak-willed, passive, have difficulties in communicating with people. The feeling from such a patient that he has little energy to achieve something in life, this energy should have come from his own father and his family, but it is blocked.

Hence the task of psychotherapy: to find a person against whom injustice was committed, and to restore it, to return him to the system.

3. The law of the priority of the earlier

Being is determined by time. With the help of time, it gains rank and structure. The one who appeared in the system earlier takes precedence over the one who comes later. Therefore, the parents go in front of the children, and the first born - in front of the second born. The first partner has an advantage over the second.

If the subordinate intervenes in the area of the superior, for example, the son is trying to atone for the fault of his father or to be the best husband for his mother, then he considers himself entitled to do what he has no right to do, and this person often unconsciously reacts to such arrogance with the need for a crash or death.

Since this is mainly due to love, it is not recognized by us as guilt. Such relationships always play a role where there is a bad ending, such as when someone goes crazy, commits suicide or becomes a criminal.

Suppose a man and a woman have lost their first partners and both have children, and now they are getting married, and the children remain with them in a new marriage. Then the husband's love for his children cannot go through the new wife, and the wife's love for her children cannot go through this husband. In this case, love for one's own child from a previous relationship takes precedence over love for a partner.

This is a very important principle. You can't get attached to this as a dogma, but many violations in relationships when parents live with children from previous marriages are due to the fact that the partner begins to be jealous of the children, and this is unjustified. Children's priority. If this order is recognized, then in most cases everything goes well.

The correct order is almost intangible and cannot be proclaimed. This is something other than a rule of the game that can be changed. The orders are unchanged. For order, it doesn't matter how I behave. He always stays in place. I cannot break it, I can only break myself. It is set for a long or short term, and obeying order is a very humble execution. This is not a limitation. It is as if you are entering a river and it carries you. In this case, there is still a certain freedom of action. This is something different than when order is declared.

4. The hierarchy of family systems

For systems, subordination is the opposite of the hierarchical order in developed relationships. The new system takes precedence over the old one. When a person creates a family, then his new family has priority over the family of the spouses. This is how experience shows.

If a husband or wife, while they are married, has a child from another partner, then he or she must leave this marriage and move in with a new partner, no matter how difficult it may be for everyone. But the same event can be viewed as an extension of the existing system. Then, although the new system appears last and the partners must remain in it, this system is ranked lower than the previous one. Then, for example, the former wife has priority over the new one. Nevertheless, the new one replaces the old one.

5. Family conscience

Just as a personal conscience monitors the observance of the conditions of attachment, balance and order, so there is a clan or group conscience, the authority that guards the system, is in the service of the clan as a whole, makes sure that the system remains in order or comes in order. and takes revenge for violations of order in the system.

She acts in a completely different way. While individual conscience is manifested through feelings of comfort and discomfort, pleasure and displeasure, tribal conscience is not felt. Therefore, it is not feelings that help to find a solution here, but only recognition through comprehension.

This family conscience cares about those people whom we have excluded from our souls and our consciousness, either because we want to resist their fate, or because other family members or family members have been guilty before them, and the guilt was not named and even more so was not accepted and not redeemed. Or maybe because they had to pay for what we took and received without thanking them or giving them their due.

6. Love and order

Many problems arise because we believe that it is possible to overcome the order that reigns in families through inner reflection, effort, or love - for example, as instructed by the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, order is the principle on which everything is built, and does not allow itself to be replaced by love.

Love is part of order. Order was established before love, and love can only develop within the framework of order. Order is the original principle. Every time a person tries to reverse this order and change the order with love, he fails. It's unavoidable. Love fits into a certain order - where it can develop, just like a seed falls into the soil - a place where it can germinate and develop.

7. Intimate sphere

The child should not know any intimate details of the parents' love affair. This is not his business, it does not concern third parties. If one of the partners tells someone about the details of his intimate life, then this is a violation of trust, leading to bad consequences. First of all, to the destruction of communication.

Intimate details belong only to those who enter into this relationship. For example, it is unacceptable for a man to tell his second wife intimate details of his relationship with his first wife. Everything that belongs to an intimate relationship between a man and a woman must remain a secret.

If parents tell their children about everything, it turns out to be bad consequences for the children. So, in the event of a divorce, the child is presented with a fact, and the reasons do not concern him. Nor should a child be forced to choose which parent to live with. This is too heavy a burden for him. It is better when the child stays with the parent who respects the partner more, since he can pass this love on to the child.

If the mother had an abortion, then the children should not know anything about it. This is part of the intimate relationship between the parents. As for the therapist, he, too, needs to be told only what would not lose the dignity of the partner. Otherwise, the connection will be destroyed.

8. Balance

The system seeks to align the balance: the children seek to align it first. They seek to protect or start to hurt. The disease often represents an excluded family member.

When the balance is poorly aligned, we understand where love goes: love leaves, and it is directed to another object.

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