Systemic Constellations & Family Constellations

Website design Vivian Broughton

Systemic Constellations takes as its primary  principle a trans- and multi-generational perspective. We readily accept that physical characteristics are passed on within the family; some illnesses are known to be genetically part of the family. It is also true that emotional and psychological patternings are part of our legacy.

Traumatic events cause a split in the personality and soul of the person involved, and this affects those who bond with the traumatised person. In the very intimate process of bonding the mother’s internal emotional and psychological world is what the child bonds with. The child can do no other, and the mother also, since the trauma reaction is unconscious, can do no other.

This also occurs with the father, but usually when the child is slightly older.

Many of the difficulties that we experience in our lives seem unexplainable within the context of our own life experiences, in particular things like chronic depression, panic attacks, chronic anxiety, even addiction, suicide , psychosis and schizophrenia. But if we widen our view to the larger context of two, three or even four generations, and understand the impact of trauma on these previous lives, then we have a different opportunity..

A Multi-Generational View

I have supposed that the sense of guilt for an action has persisted for many thousands of years and has remained operative in generations which can have no knowledge of that action.

Freud, S. (1913)