The recent exchange about alcoholism and my continuing growth as a
facilitator brings up the question of how we mediate between working from a
formulaic structure versus working from a stance of phenomenological
emptiness.
What I am noticing is that I tend to be more phenomenological in the opening
stage of a Constellation and more formulaic at the end. For example, I
worked this week with a client whose issue was that he had been adopted and
felt always alone, emotionally pained and depressed. I asked him to set up
representatives for himself, his adopted parents and his birth parents.
This step was basically formulaic.
Once the representatives were placed, I suspended my preconceived ideas
about how it should be and let the field emerge. The representatives were
all looking away from everyone else. The picture that emerged was that the
mother had become pregnant after sleeping with a stranger. She rejected the
baby and gave him away. The adoptive parents had lost a baby and replaced
it with the client as a consolation; they too rejected the baby,
particularly the adoptive mother who became quite hostile towards her
substitute son. This all came through without my "doing" anything. Here, I
was in a phenomenological stance.
Once the dynamic became painfully clear, I sought a healing solution. I
looked at the client in his chair and he appeared to be in agony. He was
half-looking, half turned away, twisted into himself with his fist over his
mouth and tears on his cheeks. So far, so good. I felt like I needed to
bring him out of this state somehow. Here, I became more formulaic.
While being cautious not to impose the healing solution, I nevertheless
acted with a certain amount of purpose and intention. I'll skip all the
intervening steps, but my solution was for to him to agree to it all exactly
as it was. I had him say to each parent, "If this is what you needed to do,
I agree. I accept my life from you at the full price it cost you and the
full price it cost me." He then bowed to each. Then I brought in several
representatives to represent his future. He was able to lean back on the 4
parents and face what was ahead with love and strength.
I am leaving out many details for the sake of brevity. The client was
inflated at the end; not ego-inflated, but inflated like an empty balloon
that was filled with air. He not euphoric, but seemed to have grown and
bloomed (a cactus flower?) in the space of 45 minutes.
The formula was: see it, acknowledge it, accept it, grow forward into life.
The "it" comes phenomenologically, since I did not care or impose what the
"it" is. Whatever "it" is: see it, acknowledge it, accept it, look to the
future.
This dialectic between being open to whatever emerges and being directive
towards a healing outcome seems to influence our work. I'm sure each of us
deals with it a bit differently. My question for the group is how do you
see yourself working between these two poles?
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Dee Yoh [mailto:deeyoh@xxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 10:10 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ConstellationTalk] alcoholism
Here are some notes I pulled from Love's Own Truth on alcoholism & addiction
I thought you all might find to be interesting.
As a mother, she has an incontestable right to see her child, and the right
must be respected. But the child's well-being has precedence over her
rights. As long as she is addicted, there is a certain danger for the child,
so one has to consider what the most sensible solution would be for the
child. When she's cured of her addiction, there's no longer any objection to
her visiting the child.
One reason people become addicted is when a mother says to her child:
"Everything that comes from your father is worthless. You must take only
from me." Then the child takes so much from the mother that it does harm. In
this pattern, addiction is the child's revenge on the mother because she
prevented the child from taking from the father.
The child takes so much food and drink from the mother that she harms
herself. That's addiction, when a person takes so much more than is needed
that he or she is harmed. That's why addicts should be treated only by men.
Women are not capable of it, unless they really respect the addict's father.
If they do, they may be able to represent him.
What if the father is an addict? A. If the mother wants to help her son,
she can say to him, "I love your father in you, and it's okay with me if you
are like him." The effect is strange. For if the father is respected in the
son, the son doesn't need to become an alcoholic. The procedure is directly
contrary to what often happens in practice.
Imagine that your addicted parent is lying on the floor drunk and the spouse
looking on helplessly. Go lie down beside her and look at her with love.
Life-endangering addictions, for example, heroin addictions, are sometimes
concealed attempts to commit suicide.
The mother of an addicted child very often despises her husband and lets the
child know that nothing good can come from the father, but only from the
mother. When this happens, the child takes so much from the mother that it's
harmful. Addiction is the child's revenge on her mother for not allowing her
to take from her father. I've actually seen some addictions cured if the
father, as well as the mother, is allowed to give to the child and the child
takes from the father while the mother watches.
"He's just as important to me as you are, and I take from him everything he
gives me, just as I do from you. I'm a ______ (say last name)." It's very
difficult to do authentically with love, and it takes a lot of courage.
_____
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