Dear Diane,
may I refer to the case you are presenting to make a general point on the
interview preceding a constellation.
Assuming you conducted the interview with the mother immediately prior to
the constellation within the group,
that case may illustrate the difficulties that can arise from a "public"
interview right ahead of the constellation.
The constellator may be caught on the wrong foot as you indicated with "I
immediately thought of a friend of my daughter who was also addicted to
Methamphetamine who killed herself."
The participants too could be encouraged to make undue associations which
subsequently may have a bearing on their representation. I got the sense
that is what happened with the person who represented the son: "he first
ran around looking in drawers and purses - as if looking for drugs - then
found some wooden matches and broke them in pieces and threw them on the
ground and said his life was in pieces like that. " One gets the impression
he was psycho dramatically coming from his head rather than being in touch
with the field.
Further more did I experience the energy level of the group dropping off
during interviews or participants wanting to contribute as drawbacks of
that procedure.
For me it works increasingly well to conduct the initial interview in
advance of the workshop, best over the phone rather than face to face,
constructing a genogramm in the process. With practise it gets easier to
stick to the facts not getting drawn into psychological interpretations.
With a glance at that genogramm immediately before the constellation
the group will be told only who is who and the representatives have the
chance to really feel what is coming up in them.
I do see this procedure completely in harmony with Bert Hellingers
Movements of the Soul.
Love
Max
