Marcin Kania
Psychotherapy in the Face of Man's Fate
Original Title: „Ordnungen des Helfens - Ein Schulungsbuch", Heidelberg: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag, 2003 [ISBN 3-89670-421-4]
Bert
Hellinger's „Orders of Helping" is intended for anyone who deals
professionally with helping others – therapists, teachers, etc. The book
consists of two parts, the first of which presents original assumptions of
Hellinger's helping method, while the second, a more extensive part allows the
reader to get to know the method by studying examples of family constellations
from different workshops, mainly trainings.
Born in
1925, Bert Hellinger, the founder of the therapeutic method known as "Family
Constellations or Systematic Constellations", studied philosophy, theology and
pedagogy. He spent 20 years in a Catholic order, 16 years of which he worked as
a missionary among the Zulu in South Africa. As a psychoanalyst he uses various
therapeutic methods, including group dynamics, transactional analysis, radical
therapy and hypnosis. His long-term experience came to be the base of his own
original helping method. Hellinger runs seminars and workshops all over the
world. He has written over 40 books.
In his
method, Hellinger distinguishes between certain "helping orders" which make
a therapeutic relationship work. The first order is a principle saying that one
can only give what he possesses and that he can only expect and take what he
needs. This order assumes that we frequently need to refrain from giving and
have to be able to draw the line somewhere. The second helping order is about
accepting internal and external limitations of a given situation and limiting
oneself to help just as much as necessary ("an upholding intervention").
The third
helping order is an assumption that both the helper and the seeker (client)
treat each other as grown-ups. By putting forward this idea, Hellinger opposes
the classical therapeutic method based on the mechanisms of transference and
counter-transference. According to Hellinger, the situation in which the client
expects help and views himself as a child and the therapist adopts the role of
the parent leads to mutual and, in most cases, long-lasting dependency. Some
clients will not seek to exceed this stage as this kind of relationship does not
fall short of their expectations. However, the therapist can break the
relationship, by disappointing the client, for instance, by postponing the
meetings and eventually abandoning them. The client's feeling of "loss"
will then transform into regaining strength by both parties, as well as
accepting responsibility for that.
The fourth
order assumes avoiding interpersonal relationships between the helper and the
client. The person seeking help is always entangled in a specific system, a
family system in particular. The problem he asks to solve is systematic. This is
not merely this person's problem, for it is the family constellations that
underlie it. Hellinger stresses the importance of the relationships of the
person seeking help with people excluded from the family system. These are
people who were forgotten, erased, left unsaid, and as such, they are, according
to Hellinger, key figures for solving the problem. To a degree, the present-day
problems reflect conflicts and borderline situations that took place in the
helper's family, sometimes many years earlier.
The family
constellations serve reconciliation and are intended to re-establish the broken
communication in the system, though without evaluating and distinguishing
between the good and the evil. This is important inasmuch as it often relates to
a situation from which a victim and a perpetrator emerge. The helper has to find
place for both of them in his heart. At the same time, he stays within and
outside the situation he is examining. Hellinger claims that helping and
reconciliation is made possible due to the fact that the helper found place in
his heart for both the client and his problem. This is because what the client
has to do, the helper himself does first. And this is the fifth helping order
understood as "love for every man as he is, in spite of differences" (Hellinger
2008, p. 23).
The second
part of the book consists of reports from the workshops for helpers. The
problems discussed include drug addiction, bipolar disorders, suicide, epilepsy,
autism and depression. Helpers act as "representatives" of their clients,
who in the vast majority of cases are not present. It takes the form of a
psychotherapeutic supervision, revealing hidden problems of the helpers
themselves.
Hellinger
starts his work by listening to a short account of the participant of the
workshop on his client's problem. What matter are key words, basic information.
Hellinger treats excessive information as unnecessary burden, and thus when he
notices it, he interrupts the account and goes on to family constellations at
once. Representatives of the client's family members are picked from among the
other participants by the helper or by Hellinger himself.
According to
the theory of family constellations, the biggest energy and strength is in the
family, and one cannot skip that fact or escape their fate connected to it. The
situation in which you are born – the place, time and people – is the source
of your health or illness. Hellinger introduces an interesting notion – "the
knowing field", otherwise referred to as "the soul of the family". The
knowing field can be described as a systematic determination regulating the
equilibrium, energetic and psychological hierarchy in the family and other
systems. A person who doesn't respect it falls ill. The system has a capacity
of self-regulation which Hellinger calls "levelling out". It is a kind of
adjustment that the system makes by shifting collective responsibility onto an
individual.
The work on
constellations consists of observing mutual relationships and behaviour of
people who represent the key figures in the client's family, as well as his
own representative. The therapist acts as a moderator while the "knowing
field" ("the soul of the family") takes on the leading role, unmasking hidden
problems and people excluded from the family. The exclusion could be, for
instance, a result of a murder committed by a great-grandfather. It becomes a
taboo subject and a curtain of silence is drawn around it in the family. However,
such events have their consequences for the following generations because the
factor of time does not exist for the "knowing field". A grandson or a
great-grandson becomes, so to speak, a representative of the excluded family
member, which in consequence may lead to a mental disorder or in case of a
murder, as Hellinger claims, to schizophrenia.
Family
constellations make it possible to find the excluded member of the family (e.g.
the perpetrator or the victim), to confront him with the representative of the
victim, which in consequence leads to a healing reconciliation. Actions of the
knowing field and the attitude of the helper, who can find place in his heart
for both the victim and the perpetrator, bring in the healing. The excluded
member finds his place back in the family, and the person who was his
representative is released. It is not, however, to be understood as liberating
the family from the demonic member since this would mean another exclusion. Here,
the regained freedom means understanding and refraining from moral assessment.
Hellinger
stresses repeatedly that the work on constellations is not a search for the
solution but an action intended to start a movement. And this is what heals.
Such work has very little in common with verbalizing the problem or trying to
find a descriptive solution to it. If this were so, the energy (power) would
have been wasted. Hellinger points out that attempts to explain the meaning of
his method through description are doomed to failure. Only giving in to the
influence of the "knowing field" allows full understanding of the method.
The helper
should take the factor of fate into consideration which he does not, in
principle, have an influence on. As Hellinger states, this is "too great"
for the therapist, and no method is applicable in such cases. Fate requires one
to accept the fact that the life we participate in and all that fate has for us
is the best we could possibly receive. "All that exists is wonderful. We are
fortunate to be able to embrace all things the way they are. Deriving joy from
the reality as it is, the parents as they are, the past as it was, the partner
as he is, the children as they are is crowning us with happiness" (Hellinger
2008, p. 183). The authenticity of help relies, above all, on a true diagnosis
of the family system, including searching for links, often hidden, between
generations, whose recognition allows reconciliation.
Family
constellations and work with the "knowing field" make it possible for a
client treated as a grown-up to shoulder the responsibility for his own fate.
The helper is not supposed to do any work for the person seeking help, but to
maintain the process and end the contact when necessary.
Hellinger's
method of family constellations has come in for criticism resulting from the
fact it is not possible to examine it "scientifically", just as
psychoanalysis and the possibility of reaching the unconscious were once
criticized. Other criticism aimed at the method concerns the person guiding the
family constellation. Here the criticism comes from the fact that every
therapist has a different personality and talent for helping others, which
causes the therapies and their results to be different. Undoubtedly, the
interesting aspect of this theory is its cognitive value. It allows for a
broader perspective that makes it possible to see the "genetic", existential
and phenomenological location of man and his relations with others.