Family Constellations

Family Constellations (a subset application of Systemic Constellations) is an experiential process that aims to release and resolve profound tensions within and between people. Bert Hellinger, the German philosopher-psychologist is considered the founder of Family Constellations in their modern form.

The process diverges from conventional forms of cognitive, behaviour and psychodynamic psychotherapy in several key respects. In a single session, a Family Constellation attempts to reveal a previously unrecognized systemic dynamic that spans multiple generations in a given family and to resolve the deleterious effects of that dynamic by encouraging the subject to accept the factual reality of the past.

Practitioners claim that present-day problems and difficulties may be influenced by traumas suffered in previous generations of the family, even if those affected now are unaware of the original event in the past. A theoretical foundation for this concept is called The Ancestor Syndrome in psychology. Recent findings in epigenetics research supports the concept that after-effects of trauma can be passed to subsequent generations. Hellinger referred to the relation between present and past problems that are not caused by direct personal experience as Systemic entanglements, said to occur when unresolved trauma has afflicted a family through an event such as murder, suicide, death of a mother in childbirth, early death of a parent or sibling, war, natural disaster, emigration, or abuse. The psychiatrist Iván Böszörményi-Nagy referred to this phenomenon as Invisible Loyalties.