Background

Family constellations as developed by Bert Hellinger, work at a deep level of our consciousness, deeper than the level of emotions and feelings that psychychotherapy works with. At that deep level we are in contact with larger fields of consciousness that are not personal. First of all this is the field of consciousness of our family in which we have access to the collective memory of our family system. At this level lie our bonds and also our entanglements, because when we were a very young child we felt at this level precisely what was the matter in the family system, what was missing or out of balance, and unconsciously we tried to compensate for it.

At this level, we are also in contact with larger fields of consciousness, such as the field of our country and people, or the field of our religion and of our culture. Sometimes we carry the burden of war experiences of an earlier family member. Then the larger fields of consciousness of entire peoples come into play.

The great achievement of Bert Hellinger is, that he developed a way of working that can make visible what is going on at this deep level and that can resolve entanglements in family systems.

At a small scale, the method of family constellations is also used in peace processes between nations. For example, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in the peace process in Rwanda. Then it is made visible what is going on between peoples and nations and sometimes at the scale of small groups a step can be made in the direction of peace.