Systemic Constellations originated in Germany in the late 1980′s as the work of Bert Hellinger, a psychotherapist, philosopher and teacher. Drawing on many sources and traditions including Psychodrama (Jakob Moreno), Family Reconstruction Therapy (Virginia Satir), Gestalt, Janov, Psychoanalysis and many others, including some years in the Catholic priesthood and working as a missionary with the Zulu tribes in Africa, Hellinger experimented with family construction (the constellation) and ideas and philosophies about what supports good relationships within family systems.
From his work with the constellations construction and process he formulated what he called The Orders of Love, a dictum on the apparently natural ordering of relationships within family systems, attitudes that can be represented by physical positions in the constellations construction, and by rituals that confirm the nature of a particular relationship. For example a person says to their mother: “You are my mother, I am just your child; you are bigger I am smaller.” The repeating of this ritualised statement is thought to bring to full consciousness the simplicity of the relationship that may have become complicated and entangled by thoughts and beliefs that, for example, the person has to take care of his mother as if she were his child. At this point in time the work became known as Family Constellations.
In the intervening years many people have become interested in the process of the method of constellations, the extraordinary experiences that people chosen as representatives have that always seem relevant to the issue being explored, and have creatively brought their own thinking to the work.
Today there are many practitioners of Constellations throughout the world, and many different practices of the method with varying theoretical underpinnings. The methodology, and to a sometimes greater and sometimes lesser extent the ideas that Hellinger originally espoused, have been taken up by practitioners in many fields. As a methodology the constellation has proved to be of use in any domain as a means of understanding the systemic dynamics at play. So at this time there are practitioners using the constellations approach in the fields of trauma work, working within the domain of psychotherapy and psychiatry, organisational and business fields, environmental and ecological studies, political and governmental systems, within the field of Shamanism, spiritual exploration and past life work, and in the field of coaching and practical problem-solving.
For more detailed explanations of the particular work that I do, trauma-oriented constellations, follow the sub-titled tabs to this page.