Hi Patricia!
I can recommend you Ursula Franke's book "the river never looks back". That is
her Doctoral thesis on systemic constellations. There is plenty of information
there of the background of this work.
You might also want to take a look at the work of Jackob Moreno (psychodrama)
Virginia Satir with her "family sculptures", in between others...
I'm abroad now, but next week I will be happy to help if you need more
resources. Let me know.
Ursula's book is very well explained and has loads of information on this
matter.
Best wishes,
Cecilia Altieri.
Sent with ❤️ from my iPhone
On 4 mar 2016, at 12:20, Patricia Robertson pkrobertson22@xxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk] <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello to the Systemic Constellation community,
I have been researching the ancestry of Bert Hellinger’s Family
Constellations and looking at the context in which the work developed. It
felt like an appropriate thing to do in my doctoral studies as I have been a
genealogist since childhood and now I am working with client’s as a body
focused systemic constellation facilitator. I want to understand the long
ancestral line behind Hellinger’s Family Constellation. Honouring the
ancestors is integral to my work and has been a lifetime practice for me.
The short version of my question is to anyone with deep roots in the
development of Hellinger’s Family Constellation work: Was the early work on
Family Constellation by Walter Toman in 1961 and the Family Systems Theory of
Murray Bowen in 1976 influential in Hellinger’s work?
The longer version:
At the back of Love’s Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships
(pp. 327-330), Hellinger with Weber and Beaumont list many of the major
influences in the work of Hellinger and the development of family
constellations. Included on the list are influences such as Martin Heidegger
and Richard Wagner, the complete works of Freud, and the Zulu peoples of
South Africa, from whom he gained the “awareness of the relativity of many
cultural values,” “perceiving systems in relationships,” “human commonality
underlying cultural diversity,” ritual as “common human experiences,” “the
goodness of cultural and human variety,” and “the validity of doing things in
different ways” (pp. 327-328). From the field of psychoanalysis influences
mentioned are the group dynamics and psychoanalysis of Primal Therapy,
Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis of Eric Berne; the Family Therapy and
Family Reconstruction of Virginia Satir; whose work was greatly influential
for the development of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) of Richard
Bandler and John Grinder, also an influence, the invisible bonds of Ivan
Boszormenyi-Nagy, the hierarchy of families of Jay Haley; Hypnotherapy of
Milton Erickson, Provocative Therapy of Frank Farrelly, the Holding Therapy
of Irena Precop, and others (pp. 327-330).
Walter Toman and Murray Bowen are not mentioned as influences. I do not come
out of a background in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, or psychology, rather
my work flows through peacebuilding and conflict analysis and management in
the world, and I’m interested in the work of Albrecht Mahr, Hellinger, and
others using systemic constellations in peacebuilding.
Since training in Hellinger’s Family Constellations in 2011, I have never
heard anyone mention the Family Constellation work of Walter Toman in 1961 as
an Associate Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University. I have his book
on Family Constellation: Theory and Practice of a Psychological Game,
published by Springer Publishing Company in New York. His book includes a
great amount of information on family dynamics including 8 sibling positions,
64 relationships with parents, portraits of family constellations,
intermediary sibling positions, and other symbolic notation and quantitative
treatment of “major aspects of family constellation.” Toman states that he
spells out how all individuals will recognize themselves, their families and
friends in the book, including relationships and conflicts, and how we do
think of these things, however, it tends to be done “tacitly, implicitly, and
without much order.”
While his work does take a different direction and emphasis on sibling order
in relationship, it does not seem totally unrelated to Hellinger’s work
either.
Toman’s work has been revisited many times over the years with American and
German editions. Toman, Walter. (Fall/Winter 1994). Family constellation
theory revisited: Part 1. Family Systems. Georgetown Family Center. Dept of
Psych. University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany. (4th American edition and
4th and 5th German editions). (Publication years 1968, 1977, 1978, 1979,
1988a, 1989b, 1991a).
My assumption is that Toman’s Family Constellation work was available in
Germany during the development of Hellinger’s principles.
As well, I am also looking at the pioneering work on Family Systems Theory of
Murray Bowen (1976) and others such as Assagioli (1972) and Framo (1982).
Bowen developed the Family Diagram or early genogram expanded upon by
McGoldrick and Gerson in 1985.
Kerr, Michael E. (2000), (One family’s story: A primer on Bowen theory. The
Bowen Center for the Study of the Family), a long-time colleague of Bowens,
describes the Family Diagram developed by Murray Bowen and how it “symbolizes
a living organism, the multigenerational family emotional system. More than
any other symbol, the diagram announces the necessity to shift paradigms, to
move beyond an individual cause-and-effect model to a multiperson systems
model in understanding human behavior. The diagram represents much more than
genealogy; it represents the profound emotional connections between the
generations. People are born and die, but a family’s past lives in the
present.” “Diagrams are read chronologically from left to right: the oldest
child in a family appears furthest to the left. Males are represented by
squares, females by circles. When information about people’s lives is
collected, added to the basic diagram, and thought about, one’s own life
takes on a new understanding and meaning.”
On the Bowen Center website (http://www.thebowencenter.org/theory/), it
states that Murray Bowen, the psychiatrist who pioneered family systems
theory, which includes the 8 interlocking concepts listed below, is “a theory
of human behavior that views the family as an emotional unit and uses systems
thinking to describe the complex interactions in the unit. It is the nature
of a family that its members are intensely connected emotionally. Often
people feel distant or disconnected from their families, but this is more
feeling than fact. Families so profoundly affect their member’s thoughts,
feelings, and actions that it often seems as if people are living under the
same “emotional skin.” People solicit each other’s attention, approval, and
support and react to each other’s needs, expectations, and upsets. The
connectedness and reactivity make the functioning of family members
interdependent. A change in one person’s functioning is predictably followed
by reciprocal changes in the functioning of others. Families differ somewhat
in the degree of interdependence, but it is always present to some degree”
(para. 2). Anxiety spreads “infectiously” among family members, and the
family member that “does the most accommodating literally “absorbs” system
anxiety and thus is the family member most vulnerable to problems such as
depression, alcoholism, affairs, or physical illness” (para. 3).
Bowen Family Systems Theory (8 features):
1) Triangles ( Fusion and distancing, Adequate and inadequate spouse)
2) Differentiation of Self (Fusion or differentiation, Solid self or
pseudo self, Intellectual and emotional functioning)
3) Nuclear Family Emotional Process ( Maternal conflict, Inadequate or
over adequate spouses, Emotional divorce)
4) Family Projection Process (Child focus or triangle child, Identified or
designated patient,
5) Multi Generational Transmission Processes (Compounding
effects,Schizophrenia)
6) Sibling Position (Toman’a Family Constellation. Based on the
publication of Walter Toman’s first edition of Family Constellation: It’s
Effect on Personality and Social Behavior, published in 1961)
7) Emotional Cutoff (Family of Origin)
8) Emotional Processes in Society (Societal Regression)
It seems to me that Toman’s and Bowen’s work seem to show up as very
influential in Hellinger’s Family Constellations. Toman reveals that the
ancestral lines of his work are Freud, Adler, and Jung. Can anyone elaborate
on whether Walter Toman’s and Murray Bowen’s work and principles were
influential in the development of Orders of Family in Hellinger’s
phenomenological practice of Family Constellations that are revealed within
the greater system of The Knowing Field?
Is there any acknowledgement of this earlier work? I also wondered if part of
the reason Hellinger did not copyright his way of working with Family
Constellations is because Family Constellation already existed before he used
the label? I have heard that the reason is because he wanted Family
Constellations to expand and evolve with each new facilitator as they added
their own background and experience to the work. Any thoughts to share?
Kind regards,
Patricia
Peaceful Possibilities Consulting
MA(CAM), BA(Hon), BCom, CPA, CMA
Student, Doctor of Social Sciences, Royal Roads University
Integrative Wellness Practitioner, Educator, &
Body Focused Systemic Constellation Facilitator
403-474-0452
patricia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.peacefulpossibilities.ca
