Dan,
I haven't read all of your correspondence on this but some things come to
mind:
I think that having a control group is not statistically sound as they may
not be attracted to constellation work so already you have a skewed sample.
If i were you I would concentrate on longitudinal research of any group that
does constellation work, including:
* What is their previous history of issues & interventions
* why now?
*any data on the type of constellation(s) done
*effect of being in holding circle, representative etc as opposed to being
protagonist
* effects of the work
I think that the research you do should be simple but deep, keep it
focussed, rather like a constellation?
Cheers, David
on 14/12/04 3:59 AM, Dan Booth Cohen at danbcohen@xxxxxxx wrote:
Thanks to those of you who respond to my message below. From the comments I
received it became clear that what I put forward is not going to work. So,
I am moving it to the recycling bin and starting over.
The question I want to address is whether clients benefit from participating
in a Constellation. I recognize the inherent difficulty in finding an
answer, and in the deep sense the impossibility of truly knowing. However,
as I have pointed out in past postings, the history of the healing and
helping professions is littered with remedies that eventually were
recognized to be useless or harmful. Thus, I feel a personal responsibility
to somehow test whether what it is that I am doing with clients does them
any good or not.
The part of proposed protocol that I envision keeping is to design a way for
a number of practitioners to participate with a minimum amount of extra
effort. The part I am eliminating is limiting the presenting issue to
grief.
The components are:
· We need a straightforward and lost-cost way to gather a cohort of
research subjects.
· We need a baseline to test against.
· The subjects sit as the client in a group Constellation session.
· We need to test the outcome against the baseline and compare the
results to a control group. The test needs to be credible.
The problem with grief is it is too limiting in terms of recruiting clients
and the outcome measurements are too restrictive.
Here are a couple of other scenarios for your consideration:
We advertise for parents of school children with behavioral/discipline
issues to participate in a research study. Half of the respondents are
wait-listed as a control group. The other half participates in a
Constellation workshop. Both groups grant permission for us to submit
questionnaires to the school administration. We collect baseline data and
outcome date a year later for both groups. The school administrators are
not privy to which parents were in the control group or treated group. We
then compare the results to see if there are discernable differences in
outcome.
Another scenario along the same lines would be to draw subjects from a
clinic treating pediatric asthma or from therapists who are not
psychotherapists, but who treat chronic conditions. This could be
cranial-sacral therapists, massage therapists, etc. We divide the subjects
as above and collect the baseline and outcome data. As an example, a body
therapist might have two clients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. One would
setup a Constellation; the other would be wait-listed as a control. Six
months afterwards the therapist would complete a questionnaire documenting
whether there has been any change or improvement in the symptomology of
these two clients.
In considering these scenarios ask yourself whether it is something you
would participate in. If not, consider what structure of research might be
attractive? Or what kind of research would you do if you have the time and
resources to pursue it?
Thanks again to everyone who responded and even to those who didn’t. Your
silence also spoke to me.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Booth Cohen [mailto:danbcohen@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 8:46 PM
To: 'ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: [ConstellationTalk] Research Project - Preliminary Proposal
Abstract
Constellation Talk Friends and Colleagues -
The document below is my preliminary research project proposal abstract. It
should be self explanatory.
I am soliciting pairs of researchers from Constellation Talk to
participate. One member will serve as an evaluator to administer the test
instruments. The other will serve as the Constellation facilitator. The
team will jointly recruit a cohort of subjects to participate in the study.
These will be individuals who are dealing with pathological grief.
In terms of level of effort, the steps involved are:
· Recruit a group of individuals to participate in the study.
· Administer the test instruments to establish a baseline.
· Have 1⁄2 of them participate in a Constellation workshop. The
other 1⁄2 will serve as a control group and can be given generic material on
grief.
· Re-administer the test instruments in six months.
I acknowledge the comments from those who feel that attempts to fit the
Constellation process within the confines of scientific psychology will
bastardize the process to the detriment of the clients. Outweighing those
concerns for me is the need to establish a minimum amount of credibility
within the broader professional community. This study will not achieve that
goal in itself, but it has the potential to demonstrate the efficacy of the
process according to generally accepted standards.
This is a preliminary document and I am open to suggestions and
modifications.
There are several of you who have indicated your interest in participating.
I will contact you directly.
Ideally, I would like to begin collecting data in September 2005 and
complete the longitudinal outcome tests by June of 2006. To accomplish
this, we will need to identify the teams, finalize the protocol and schedule
the workshops in the next 6-8 months.
The budget for this effort is €£¥?$ 0.00. If this becomes a limiting
constraint, I will have to reevaluate. My expectation is that the level of
effort will not be prohibitive and our community of facilitators will
mutually benefit from having a published study on the benefits of the
Constellation process. I will be generous with acknowledgements and
co-authorship citations.
The more I am immersed in this work, the more I value its worth. (There
were two teen suicides in our town the past two weeks. I attended a
counseling session for concerned parents at a school auditorium last night.
The insights on suicide gained from the Constellation field were wholly
absent from the presentation. I went home to my own children feeling
particularly grateful.)
5 degrees (c) and raining in Boston,
Dan
(On-line at www.HiddenSolution.com/abstract.htm
<http://www.hiddensolution.com/abstract.htm> )
Preliminary Abstract
A LONGITUDINAL OUTCOME STUDY OF THE SYSTEMIC CONSTELLATION METHOD FOR
TREATING ACUTE GRIEF
Dan Booth Cohen
Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center
The purpose of this study is to measure longitudinal outcomes of a single
session existentially-oriented therapeutic intervention, known as a Systemic
Constellation, on a pathologically grieved adult population.
The Systemic Constellation method was first developed by the German
philosopher/psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. Though it has roots in European
depth psychology and Gestalt therapy, and the American branch of family
systems therapy associated with Moreno, Satir and Boszormenyi-Nagy, it
differs from conventional psychotherapy in four radical respects: first, the
client hardly speaks; second, the process is a singular intervention that is
not repeated; third, critical information that serves to reveal hidden
entanglements and possible solutions within the system is supplied by
surrogates who have no actual knowledge about the family; and fourth, the
client’s parents are not blamed for anything.
There are several thousand practitioners of the method worldwide, but no
English language research has been conducted to assess the efficacy of the
treatment. This study aims to be among the first to fill the gap.
The lead investigator proposes to recruit several teams of English speaking
researchers in different regions of the world to execute the research
protocol.
The teams will recruit a cohort of subjects who have experienced the death
of a spouse or adult child and who are struggling to cope with the aftermath
more than one year later. One member of the team will administer the
Inventory of Complicated Grief, the Wahler Physical Symptoms Inventory and
the Impact of Event Scale at the outset of the study and, again, six months
following the subject’s experience of the Systemic Constellation
intervention. The other team member will facilitate a Systemic
Constellation with a randomly assigned group of subjects. A control group
of subjects will not receive treatment.
The data will be analyzed to determine if significant differences can be
seen between the two groups.
The study will serve as a starting point for research into the efficacy of
Systemic Constellations.
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David Mathes
Inner Success Pty Ltd
Consulting * Training * Counseling
Supporting Change
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