Red Sistémica · Interview
Systemic psychotherapy of constellations and the orders of love. Interview with Bert Hellinger
Excerpt from an interview with Bert Hellinger, creator of the family constellations method and of the “orders of love.” Questioned by Claudio Des Champs, he recounts where his way of working comes from, what leads him to think that representatives feel what the people they represent feel, and why he speaks of a field of collective family consciousness.
“It is not a theory, it is an observation. The theory arises when one starts thinking about how this can happen.”
Bert Hellinger
Editor’s note
This text is a fragment of the interview; the full text appeared in Perspectivas Sistémicas, no. 91. This article was written with the participation and under the editorial direction of Tiuu Bolzman. Perspectivas Sistémicas had published “The orders of love. Bert Hellinger’s systemic therapeutic approach,” by Tiuu Bolzman, in its no. 75 (March-April 2003).
The origins of constellations
How did the idea of working in this way come about? How did this idea of constellations develop?
Before I developed this way of working, family constellations already existed. Virginia Satir had done something similar, and others applied it in different ways; I saw some of those experiences and I also lived them as a representative. The discovery that representatives feel the same thing as the people they represent already existed before me.
How do you know that representatives feel the same thing as the people they represent?
The family members are there, represented, and if someone constellates their family, they know what their family is like. The representatives know nothing about the family, but they behave like the real family members, and it immediately becomes visible that they are, in some way, connected to them; that is what is decisive. Thus, we see that we have access to family dynamics without any information having been presented to us beforehand. It is as if there existed a field in which the family members are united, are in contact: an intelligent field. It is a collective consciousness, and from there a great many questions can arise. How is it, for example, that we can think something about another person without them realising it? How can we keep a secret? In this field, nothing can be left secret.
A field of collective consciousness
In other words, in your theory, there is the concept of a collective family consciousness?
Yes, it can be seen; it is not a theory, it is an observation. The theory arises when one starts thinking about how this can happen. To begin with, it is a reality that one observes, and anyone can see it. It goes so far that I can constellate three people without telling any of them whom they represent, and suddenly they start moving in relation to a concrete person, and a relationship begins between them; this demonstrates in an extreme way that we do not need prior information. I will go a little further still: for example, I place the client in a constellation, him alone, I have asked him nothing, I know nothing about his family, and suddenly a movement takes hold of him. From that movement, I can see his problem. And it goes even further, because the information within a family is generally limited to about three generations: the grandparents, or even the great-grandparents; but the decisive facts in a family are often located a few generations further back, and there is generally no information about them. In this field of consciousness, that information prevails. From what emerges in the field, one can obtain information about the most distant generations…
Key takeaway
For Hellinger, the constellation is not first of all a theory but an observation: representatives who know nothing about the family behave like its real members. From this he infers a “field” or a collective family consciousness, in which nothing remains secret and where facts located beyond the three known generations continue to act.
Who is Bert Hellinger
Bert Hellinger is one of the most original and creative therapists in the world today. Born in Germany in 1925, he studied philosophy, theology and pedagogy. For 16 years, he was a missionary of a Catholic order in South Africa. He then trained in psychoanalysis, group dynamics, primal therapy and hypnotherapy methods, and later drew closer to Gestalt therapy and neuro-linguistic programming. While working with transactional analysis, he perceived a multigenerational dimension in the approach to problems, which oriented him towards systemic therapy. Going deeper into it, he discovered within systems laws and orders of compensation that he called the Orders of love. Building on these orders, he created a method of configuring families that earned him recognition as one of the major psychotherapists in the world today. He runs seminars continuously in different countries. Among the 25 books published by Professor Hellinger, let us mention Orders of Helping, Después del conflicto, la paz and, in preparation, El manantial no tiene que preguntar por el camino.
Who is Tiuu Bolzman
Tiuu Bolzman studied philosophy, pedagogy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt, in Germany. She then worked in adult education and trained in Rogerian-oriented psychotherapy and in systemic family therapy. She met Bert Hellinger in 1990 and trained with him in his particular approach to systemic family therapy. She is a therapist of this method and a supervisor of therapists and other professionals in the social and health fields. She lived for 18 years in Graz (Austria), where she worked as a psychotherapist and teacher. Since 1999, she has transferred her activities to Buenos Aires; she is the founding director of the Centro Bert Hellinger of Argentina and directs training in the Orders of love, systemic solutions and family constellations according to Bert Hellinger in various cities in Latin America and Europe.
This interview is an English translation of “Psicoterapia Sistémica de las Constelaciones y de los Ordenes del Amor. Entrevista a Bert Hellinger”, published by Red Sistémica (first published in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 91). Translated and republished with the journal’s permission.
Read the original articleHow to cite this article
Des Champs, C., & Bolzman, T. (2022). Systemic psychotherapy of constellations and the orders of love. Interview with Bert Hellinger (Complexe Systémique, Trans.). Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/systemic-psychotherapy-of-constellations-and-the-orders-of-love-interview-with-bert-hellinger (Original work published in 2022 in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 91; republished in 2022 by Red Sistémica, https://redsistemica.ar/2022/08/01/psicoterapia-sistemica-de-las-constelaciones-y-de-los-ordenes-del-amor-entrevista-a-bert-hellinger/)
To go further
- What are invisible loyalties?Another reading of the debts and orders that run through the generations, in Boszormenyi-Nagy.
- What you need to know about the genogram, a systemic toolThe classic tool for going back through the generations, where Hellinger appeals to the “field.”
- Is there a hidden ledger in all our relationships? The psychology of debt and givingCompensation, balance, debt: notions Hellinger calls “orders of compensation.”
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