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The Phenomenological Approach to Healing
Sometimes I look in the mirror and I can see the joy in my young
son’s eyes or the strength of my mother in the smile that
comes easily to my lips. Sometimes I catch a look of fear streaking
across my face that makes me think of my father. All of it’s
there I think, somewhere, all of the pain and the loss and the
high points. How much don’t I know though? How much of my
inheritance -- from those who are close and from generations back
-- have I not even glimpsed, and how strong is its hold on me nonetheless?
What will my son see when he looks in the mirror?
In a recent interview, Bert Hellinger, psychotherapist and author,
was asked to explain how systemic dynamics – often completely
obscured by family mythology or denial – come to the surface
when his clients set up family constellations in his workshops.
His answer? “I can’t explain it, but we can see that
it happens.” The phenomenological approach of Bert Hellinger,
and the family constellations that have become a hallmark of the
approach, are about “seeing.”
The approach itself, informed by primal therapy, script analysis,
and family therapy, as well as by other ways of working therapeutically,
has unfolded over many years in the hands of Bert Hellinger in
a kind of ongoing collaboration with his clients. Time and again,
the therapist, the client, and the representatives (called upon
to stand in the place of relatives), unearth the dynamics that
hold sway over wellness and disturbance, over life and death.
When a family constellation is set up, the representatives naturally
begin to inhabit the people they represent. Typically, a client
chooses representatives for his or her family and places them
in relation to one another without speaking or otherwise communicating.
Imagine a chessboard deep enough into the game that pieces are
positioned in no apparent order within in the space. And yet,
pieces are moved according to an order that exists with or without
the players. Of course, in a constellation there is no competition;
however, there is, as in chess, movement toward solution.
Then there is the picture beneath the surface. Representatives
begin to experience symptoms and feelings of the others without
having been told anything of the history, and often without the
client’s even knowing about specific details. The system
itself, which holds in parallel the past, present, and future,
which exists independently of and dependent upon its members, begins
to reveal a path toward resolution of personal struggle and entanglement
without the therapist’s, the client’s, or the representatives’ prescient
intention or design.
The notion that secrets and lies and missed opportunities of long
ago have the power to reverberate through subsequent generations
presupposes an essential idea: love fuels all human behavior, for
better and for worse. We are born out of a fundamental, biological
love, whatever the circumstances -- all other aspects of the human
condition are earned, secondary.
Bert Hellinger’s family constellations, then, are not mounted
to make people feel better so much as to bring imbalances to the
surface, to find where love is most charged, and to allow clients
to begin to loosen the grip of protective resistance so that resolution
can take its rightful place in the system, born out of love.
The collective “seeing” that happens, while often
intensely moving, is also momentary, a fleeting and profound message,
like the lightning strike that brightens the sky for just a second.
Left behind is a diffuse image of a path to a clearing, and the
profound realization that you are part of a landscape that exists
no matter where you choose to go next.
Copyright © 2001 by Suzi Tucker
Published in the July/August 2001 issue of Miracle Journeys (Vol.
5, No. 4)
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