The Constellation experience is remarkably simple. A group of ordinary people sit in a circle of chairs.
One person (the client or seeker) presents a pressing personal issue, such as,
“I can make money, but I can't hold on it to.”
Or, “I can't form a lasting relationship.”
With the understanding that all healing is self-healing, the group agrees to help.
The facilitator asks a few questions about events in the family history. After this brief interview,
the seeker selects one or more members of the group to “represent”
members of his or her family system.
The representatives stand in relationship to each other as placed by the seeker.
The seeker sits down and observes without talking.
The Constellation method derives from Adler’s Individual Psychology, Moreno’s Psychodrama and
Satir’s Family Sculpting, but it differs in several important respects.
Most importantly, the representatives do not speak, pose or role-play.
By standing silent and still for several minutes, the representatives tune into physical sensations and feelings that are in resonance with the seeker's issue.
Boszormenyi-Nagy (1973) recognized in his pioneering work in systems therapy,
Invisible Loyalties: that “the structuring of relationships, especially within families,
is an extremely complex and essentially unknown ‘mechanism.’
Empirically, such structuring can be inferred from the lawful regularity
and predictability of certain repetitious events in families.”
The Constellation reveals a hidden dynamic connecting traumas of the past with our own undoing.
As the French psychologist Anne Schutzenberger observed in her book, The Ancestor Syndrome :
It is better to know a truth, even if it is difficult, shameful, or tragic, rather than to hide it, because
what we hide, others pick up on or guess, and this secret, this unspoken truth,
becomes a more serious trauma in the long run.
Out of innocent love, children try to fix or compensate for the past. In this way, suffering serves the family system.
The facilitator slowly works with the three-dimensional portrait of the issue.
After the hidden dynamic comes into clear view, the representatives reconfigure the system
to find a healing resolution that does not demand the suffering to continue.
A good solution allows everyone to breath a sigh of relief.
The seeker stands in her or his place in the constellation.
In the final step, the facilitator suggests one or two healing sentences to be spoken aloud or inwardly.
There is a wealth of anecdotal and case study reports that the new image of the issue gradually melts the archaic image that perpetuated it's staying frozen in place.
For example, Wolynn (2005) documented cases of client self-abuse (cutting, trichotillomania) where perceiving,
acknowledging and honoring "forgotten" traumas resulted in an immediate and
sustained cessation of injurious behaviors.
Removing the “drama” from Moreno’s
Psychodrama and the “talking” from the Talking Cure
opens a transparent window on
human consciousness where previous inquiry had met a translucent wall.
For perhaps the first time, we see and understand that children's self-destructive urges pre-date their birth.
Once the forgotten secret is seen and given respect, it immediately loses the power to harm and becomes a source of strength and growth in our lives.
