Patricia,
I have been reading back over this thread, and Tiiu's post in particular
reminded me of this: I think the story of "the hundredth monkey" is relevant to
your topic. I take this quote from Ken Keyes, Jr.'s book the hundredth monkey
(who likely got is from Lyall Watson's Lifetide referenced below:
"The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, has been observed in the wild for a
period of over 30 years.
In 1952, on the island of Koshima scientists were provided monkeys with sweet
potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys likes the taste of the raw sweet
potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.
An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing
the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her
playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers. too.
This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the
eyes of the scientists.
Between 1952 and 1958, all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet
potatoes to make them more palatable.
Only the adult who imitated their children learned this social improvement.
Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.
Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number
of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes- the exact number is not known.
Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were99 monkeys on
Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes.
Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to
wash potato.
THEN IT HAPPENED!
By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before
eating them.
The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological
breakthrough!
But notice. The most surprising thing observed by these scientist was that the
habit of washing sweet potatoes then spontaneously jumped over the sea-
Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at
Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes!*
(*Lifetide by Lyall Watson, pp. 147-148. Bantam Books, 1980. This book gives
other fascinating details. [I would quote more from Lifetide, but suffice it to
say, Lyall Watson is one of my favorites, and ANY book he has written is well
worth the read] )
Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness
may be communicated from mind to mind.
Although the exact number may vary, the Hundreth Monkey Phenomenon means that
when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the
consciousness property of these people.
But there is a point at which if only one more person turns-in to a new
awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness reaches almost
everyone!
The experiments of Dr. J.B.Rhine at Duke University repeatedly demonstrated
that individuals can communicate private information to each other even thought
located in different places.
We now know that the strength of this extrasensory communication can be
amplified to a powerfully effective level when the consciousness of the
"hundredth person" is added."
Great to meet you last week, and looking forward to reading more as your
project ensues.
All the best, sheila
Sheila Saunders RN, LMFT
828.273.5015PO Box 1011Weaverville, NC 28787www.systemicfamilysolutions.com
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2016 13:04:12 -0700
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Ancestry of Hellinger's Family Constellations
Hello Barbara,
Thank you for your suggestions. I do have Issue 7 of the Knowing Field and find
the details to be more extensive in Love’s Hidden Symmetry or on the Wiki site
created by the Constellation family. Hellinger’s own website Hellinger.com has
some basic details as well. At the current time, no speculations have been made
or will be made. Gathering information is my intent - and the intent behind my
question was whether anyone in the Constellation Talk community had any
experience or knowledge of Hellinger ever mentioning Toman and Bowen as
influences, whether in print or in person or otherwise. As I have learned
through this systemic work, we can have many influences in our lives that we
are not consciously aware of ourselves and yet they still impact our lives
significantly.
More than learning a detail or two that Hellinger might share with me at this
point in time (and I will attempt to communicate with him as it seems
relevant), I want to be open to learn through all the unconscious aspects
shared through his way of working with others. I believe that reading the
lines, and reading between the lines, of each of his books, and/or watching the
many DVDs I have of his work, is part of understanding the bigger picture, a
journey into understanding other perspectives of the man. I feel this is
reflected through constellations themselves. I find that we set up a
constellation and work within the The Knowing Field to gain new insight, a new
image, or a new perspective. Many times an individual has not connected one
thing, one situation, or one person to another in time or space.
It is somewhat like those moments of great inspiration when we think we have
developed a whole new concept or idea, only to discover that it was developed
by others two decades earlier. It just hadn’t hit our radar screen yet. We
mention our brilliant idea to a colleague or friend and they tell us we should
read up on so and so. I guess that is why the more we know, the more we realize
we don’t know. As others have suggested, perhaps Toman and Bowen were not
explicit influences of Hellinger, since they are not listed by him as the most
important influences in Love’s Hidden Symmetry, however, their influence may be
unrecognized. I have just realized myself how much the work of Toman and Bowen
lives within my work as a facilitator and I value this realization. This
doesn’t minimize the importance of the contributions made by Hellinger in any
way. I make room in my heart for each ancestor I discover.
I am, however, aware that we have our blind spots that keep us from looking at
some aspect of ourselves that may be revealed through interaction and
relationship with others. Each of us has one perspective on the world and the
more sources consulted (the members of Constellation Talk being valuable
sources) the greater body of perspectives that is gathered and the more rich
and detailed the picture that develops. My research is intentionally
transdisciplinary to bring together many perspectives from many fields and
disciplines. I don’t want to limit my ways of knowing the development of
transgenerational theory and transgenerational trauma.
Warm regards,Patrica
On Mar 7, 2016, at 9:26 AM, Barbara Morgan theknowingfield@xxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk] <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:I agree with
Zacquie. More than appropriate, I think it is respectful and necessary to at
least attempt to ask Bert himself. If you get no reply then you could refer to
his brief biography in issue 7 of The Knowing Field.Making speculations without
checking them out is how history becomes distorted. Best wishesBarbara Morgan
Sent from my iPhone
On 5 Mar 2016, at 14:45, "Michael Reddy michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk]" <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello Patricia,
Please do take a look at Jodorowsky and Costa's book METAGENEOLOGY--SELF
DISCOVERY THROUGH PYSCHOMAGIC AND THE FAMILY TREE.
This is a very well-developed theory and practice centered around understanding
and healing intergenerational influences. it apparently grew up in Paris in
the 70's. There are a lot of profound similarities to and yet also substantial
differences from Hellinger's synthesis.
If we truly acknowledge the larger collective "souls" that as individuals are
are part of, it should not be surprising that great ideas bubble up
simultaneously as the zeitgeist evolves.
Best,Michael
Michael Reddy, PhD, CPC, ELI-MPmichael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 610 469
7588www.reddyworks.comRelieving Chronic Emotional/Physical Suffering
usingFamily Constellations | Core Energy Coaching | EFT | Shamanism
<HHFC Cover Thumb Signature.jpg>
On Mar 4, 2016, at 10:20 AM, Patricia Robertson pkrobertson22@xxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk] 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 ConsultingMA(CAM), BA(Hon), BCom, CPA, CMAStudent,
Doctor of Social Sciences, Royal Roads UniversityIntegrative Wellness
Practitioner, Educator, &Body Focused Systemic Constellation Facilitator
403-474-0452
patricia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.peacefulpossibilities.ca
