Ulrike & All,
Stephan's observation is well-founded in the annals of family therapy. In
the United States, family therapy, as a professional practice distinct from
psychiatric treatment, emerged in the 1950s. In this formative period, Don
Jackson, of the Palo Alto group, was one of the first researcher/clinicians
to notice that often when the patient got better, someone else in the family
got worse, as though the family needed a symptomatic member. He
hypothesized that as in a game of hide-and-seek, it didn't seem to matter
who was "It" as long as someone played the part so the game could continue.
To weigh in on the other side of this equation, I can report that during the
check-in at my monthly Constellations with "Lifers" group on Saturday one of
the men reported that his brother was moving 700 miles to be closer to their
mother, who is facing major surgery. He choked up and cried, saying that
this brother has been estranged from him and their mother for over 15 years.
After his Constellation on this issue a year ago, their non-communicative
relationship thawed. Since then they have been talking and writing back and
forth, finding the love they had never been able to reach. The flowing love
between the brothers soon extended to the mother as well. Now the brother
(and his wife) are taking this leap to relocate. My friend's tears were
deep emotion and gratitude.
In the context of our on-going conversation about unintended negative
consequences of Constellations, it is gratifying to come into contact with
such a successful outcome.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ulrike Danks
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 4:43 AM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ConstellationTalk] transference of symptoms between siblings
Dear all,
I was just browsing the internet in pursue of a particular FC topic, when I
came across a paragraph that surprised and touched me as it could relate to
our family.
Here is the paragraph from a German interview of Stefan Hausner by Marianne
Franke published on Stefan's website www.stephan-hausner.de:
'Ich habe auch immer wieder erlebt, wenn sich ein Geschwister aus einer
Verstrickung löst, es manchmal ein anderes Kind aus dieser Familie plötzlich
schwerer hat oder sogar die Symptome übernimmt: Das findet man vor allem
dann, wenn die Eltern, aus welchem Grund auch immer, sich dem ausgegrenzten
Thema nicht stellen können.'
english Translation:
'I have expereinced again and again, that when one sibling resolves an
entanglement for him/herself, sometimes another sibling of this family
suddenly has a hard time or even takes on the symptoms: You find that
particularily when for whatever reasons the parents are not able to address
the excluded issue'
This appears to be the case in our family, where my sister (having had
several cancer scares) and myself ( having been through treatment and
recovery) have after much work and soul movements disentangled ourselves
from our father's/parents fate's and have a brother, who is now very sick
with cancer. Being familiar with the particular systemic entanglement, that
led to the female siblings dis-eases, I know that my brother is also
entangled in a very similar way.
Has anybody experienced similar fates or encountered them in their work? I
want to say that I am at peace with my brother's fate, and (not but) his
pain and fear touches my heart and makes me feel closer than ever to him.
I have not heard before about this particular possibility of tranference.
With gratitude to all of you for the many rich learnings I receive via this
forum.
Ulrike
