Bert Hellinger's family constellations: exposing the pseudoscientific method

Superficial “psychotherapy” for the bored or income for the “guru”? What would you think of a therapist who tells you that you can't connect with your child because your grandmother had abortions? Are you overweight because your great-grandmother died during the siege? And you just can’t pass the traffic police driving test for a simple reason: your second cousin, whom you knew only by name and had never seen, died in a car accident... “He’s an expert, he knows better”? Welcome to family constellations according to Bert Hellinger!

“I look at you as the same person as me: who in the same way has a father, mother and his own special destiny.

Does it make you bigger? Or less? Better or worse? If you are bigger, then so am I. If it’s less, then me too. If you are better or worse, then so am I. Because I am a person just like you. If I respect you, I respect myself. If I am disgusted with you, then I am disgusted with myself too.” Bert Hellinger. To Hitler.

The dangers of bluffing in psychology and psychotherapy

The poker term “bluff” is a good face when bad game– causes negative feelings when applied to science. You can believe or not believe religious figures, mystics, esotericists - but the authority of science in the eyes of people is too high. And when another “scientific sensation” appears on the Internet (and long before the Internet era), like the discovery of giant skeletons in India in the spring of 2007, people naturally feel disappointed when they learn that the National geographical society he doesn’t know any giants, but Photoshop can do a lot... It’s a shame, of course, that there is no archaeological discovery, no scientific miracle. But the authority of real archaeologists did not suffer. And no one was hurt - we sighed, laughed...

But when we are not talking about dead giants, but about living people - that is, a soap bubble turns out to be something that directly concerns them and has an impact on them... This is no longer a joke (giants could, with a stretch, be taken for a joke) - this almost a crime.

A psychologist and psychotherapist who use untested, unscientific methods of work are simply dangerous. If only because they cannot predict the consequences of their work for each specific individual.

But it becomes even more interesting when a certain method is proudly brandished by people who have a very indirect relationship to psychology and not the slightest connection to psychotherapy.

Theory

The first and quite serious article in Russian about the method of family constellations according to Bert Hellinger, published in the professional psychological publication “Psychotherapy” is the work of Elena Veselago, where enough is given full review theory of method. True, with many reservations - they say, Bert Hellinger himself does not call himself a theorist, teacher and teacher. He did not write monographs or articles. All his collections are other people’s recordings from his “performances”.

“Thus, there is simply no coherent concept of arrangements “from the original source”. With this “unscientific” approach, Bert also “infected” many of his first students, now the world’s leading constellations. Most of them do not strive to belong to the scientific community and choose to “practice rather than describe,” sometimes avoiding even ordinary explanatory work for their clients.”

Perhaps because these lovers of “creativity, adventure, meditation” have nothing to do in the scientific community? And they, acting “at random like Lazarus,” simply cannot explain anything to their clients?

Another wonderful passage from the same article: “The ability to make good arrangements is a “consequence” of such a difficult-to-define factor as personal maturity.

At the same time, what a “good arrangement” is is also not defined, and unambiguous quality criteria have not been formulated. Arrangement is often looked at as art - good job beautiful. And many people don’t want to provide a theoretical basis for this beauty.”

But how can a client find out whether the person to whom he entrusts his psyche has “matured” as a person, or not yet?! And a “personally immature” arranger, it turns out, will do the arrangement poorly? That is, it can easily not help, but harm?

And the most main question: beautiful, meditation, adventure... All this is wonderful, but... what does psychotherapy have to do with it? And don’t clients feel sorry for themselves when they entrust their most intimate things to these creative meditators who want to beautifully move figures and create the illusion of a person’s “reconciliation” with any difficulties and even the abominations of his existence?

After all, a person, according to Hellinger, is part of his family system, “no one is excluded, everyone belongs,” if you deny and try to throw out some part of the system from life (well, for example, your uncle with weak pedophile tendencies) - beware that someone Some of your children will unconsciously live out the motives of his life!

Sounds crazy? You simply don’t feel like you’re part of a family system, let alone a universal one! Hellinger feels (see epigraph) that he is even ready to accept, understand and... become like Hitler. Is not it so? To quote again: “If I respect you, I respect myself.” Is it possible to understand this differently?

Having mentioned that Hellinger is no theorist, Veselago carefully makes a reservation: “Rather, he is a spiritual teacher...”.

Well, of course. Reasonably not disdainful of material things - spirituality is now well paid. It’s strange why the previous spiritual teachers were such simpletons - and Buddha did not charge his students for Enlightenment, and Jesus cast out demons from a person for some reason, also for free...

Below Veselago’s article, as expected, is a list of references. Since the guru himself doesn’t care about describing his methodology, why shouldn’t his students do this? Jesus, too, as I remember, did not write a single Gospel...

So, Swagito Liebermeister, “The Roots of Love.” The surname is “native”, German, the name was received from another guru - namely, Osho.

The book plunges you into deep bewilderment from the first pages. I immediately remember the “dashing 90s”, when the shelves of bookstores and street stalls were literally littered with a variety of esoteric poppy... excuse me, literature that you read with an involuntary smile: I wonder whether the author will be able to fool the reader around his finger or not?..

Judge for yourself what is written in this book and preached as effective method solving personal and family problems using constellations. In the right column are the questions that this creation raises.

"Roots of Love"	Author's comments and questions
“...the client brings with him a certain energy field of his family, and randomly selected people gain access to the feelings and experiences of those they replace.”	The same field that Hellinger’s adherents call “knowing”, “informational” and even “morphogenetic” (scientific, yes). What instruments recorded this “certain” field and in what units is it measured? How do strangers gain access to the feelings of people in the client's family? After all, if a client asks for help regarding problems in the family, he himself does not have access to the feelings of his relatives! And when the place of an absent person is replaced with an object (this is practiced in constellations), does a chair or pillow also gain access to the field?
“During the session, deputies can move around and say short phrases which the presenter offers them. Usually this simple sentences, no more than one line, revealing the deep truth about the relationships between the members of the family under study.”	How does the leader (constellator) know this deep truth? Not otherwise, " knowledgeable field"prompted...
“Any person who takes the opportunity to assemble his family members in a Hellinger constellation will find that the resulting picture accurately represents the relationships between the members of his family, and will also see some hidden meaning in it.”	Relationships between members of his family according to the constellator? Well, of course, a person who himself cannot figure out what kind of relationships he has in his family can be quite easily convinced that they are exactly like that. The opinions of other family members are interesting, but who asks them? Meaning hidden from whom?
“During the constellation, you can work with anything that causes you emotional discomfort or difficulties in practical terms, since the roots of almost all psychological problems lie in unresolved family conflicts.”	Almost everyone? Really? A person with a conflict in the professional sphere, which arose due to his incompetence and careless attitude to work, should look for the roots of this conflict in his family? Yes, you can, of course, find it if you really want it. Maybe the wife interfered with professional improvement, demanded help with the children and washing the dishes. Or the late grandfather did not go out to plant sowing on the collective farm due to heavy drinking...
“Simply understanding that my personal difficulties are a reflection of some larger disharmony that everyone I grew up with and who lived before me is experiencing is enough to relax.”	And here he is, with greetings from the other world! Those who lived before the client still experience disharmony! The verb “experience” is used in the present tense, otherwise it is impossible to understand. Curious what the relatives of people who don’t believe in an afterlife experience?
“The client should not discuss the experience gained or do anything with it - at the right time, changes will begin to occur as if by themselves. Perhaps, soon after some changes occur in the client’s consciousness, he will again want to do the constellation. And the new session will be held completely independently of the previous one.”	What if they don't start? What if they are negative? But the next phrase explains everything: of course, a new arrangement will be needed! And then another... and another... Everyone is fine: the client is convinced that he is solving his problems with all his might - it is not clear why he needs to apply for constellations again and again - the problems are not solved, but are getting worse? Or is their number growing? And it’s good for the presenter: each arrangement is a lot of money...

Elena Veselago writes very interestingly about these new constellations: “For example, a man came to me for advice, whose wife was “hooked” on constellation work and almost weekly asked for constellations about her relationship with him, despite the fact that her husband was categorically against such work ". This quote is from that part of her article called “Issues of correct access and interference in the system” - that is, the constellation’s attention is focused on the client’s husband, who does not like what is happening.

There is zero attention to the “hooked” one. That is, this is apparently perceived as an absolutely normal phenomenon. Well, I got carried away, well, she comes every week - and pays, of course. Why figure out why she does this - it is simply not profitable for the arranger to scare away such a promising client! It’s probably not worth talking about the professional ethics of real psychotherapists, who, seeing that they cannot solve the client’s problem and are going around in circles, “pass it on” to their colleagues - with the client’s consent, of course...

Another thing is interesting: why do clients (more precisely, mostly clients) get hooked on constellations? Is it because they really want to solve their problems? And do they solve the same problems if there is no end to the arrangements?

Maybe “problems with my husband” have nothing to do with it, and everything is much simpler? Constellations are an interesting, emotionally rich way to spend leisure time, moreover, in them a woman feels like the center of attention... Maybe her real problem is boring everyday life, lack of fulfillment and lack of live communication? A person who really lives brightly has no time and is not interested in driving back and forth around the room strangers, imagining that they replace his loved ones...

Practice: theater of one director

Those interested can see the arrangers in action.

A very amateur film “Arrangements of Elena Brezhneva”. Request from a young girl: she wants to meet “her” man, but apparently it’s not working out yet. The arranger offers to choose substitutes - for the client and the desired man. He asks the client to place them the way she wants. The girl, without thinking twice, unites them in a hug...

The substitute child of this couple is introduced into the arrangement. Wow, all he can do is stand on the sidelines, since in this position his “mother” and “father” can only be occupied with each other! From all this, the arranger concludes that the client has too romantic ideas about life with her future partner, and there is no place for a child here... I feel sorry for the client from the bottom of my heart: she only nods, agreeing with the “guru” and not at all thinking about the “kitchen psychology” she heard.

It is absolutely incomprehensible why a young girl should not have romantic feelings for the man of her dreams. For falling in love, initial period In relationships, romance is more than natural – even among not so young people. The client was supposed to sit the deputies opposite each other and imagine that they were negotiating a marriage contract point by point, or what? And there the “child” would have sat down next to him... What is strange and wrong in the fact that, by joining the couple in an embrace, the girl conveyed her image of tenderness and intimacy?

Why were there questions about how long a deputy can stand hugging a man? Does the constellator really believe that people are capable of having sex around the clock without doing anything else? And this is exactly what the client dreams of? Where does this opinion come from?

Next, the client’s substitute parents are introduced into the constellation. And this is even stranger - from the point of view of a non-adept Hellinger. The girl is clearly of age, and is also unlikely to choose a partner of school age... What do parents have to do with it? The arranger, as ordered by Hellinger, decided to go through the “family system” - and how relationships with parents prevent a girl from building her happiness...

There is no need to say how amateurish and superficial this all looks. But the arranger, like a fish in water, arranges the “figures” this way and that, puts the girl (the client is already in the arrangement) opposite the “father” and passionately suggests that she should tell him: “I’m fine, dad!” It starts to smell like soap. Brazilian. Television. “Mama” admits that she got goosebumps... Of course: the director helps the puppets play what he needs them to play. Gives his all!

And the credits in the film are interesting. One of them is that constellations help solve any problem... partially.

And what complaints might there be later? The person will convince himself that he has partially felt better. I realized something about myself. But I didn’t quite understand what exactly. Again, it gave me goosebumps. The problem was and will remain unresolved, but partially something happened!

In conclusion, something about the arranger. After graduating from the defectology faculty of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, she worked as a defectologist and speech therapist (why need the clarification? Moscow State Pedagogical Institute also produces psychologists, but this is not the case here). But even in the 3rd year I became interested in practical psychology. I visited Egides, and Sinton, and the Violetovs (from short autobiography: “In 1998 I got to the Center for World Relations. It was like an explosion: awareness of oneself and one’s path began. A year later she began working as an instructor in Socium, then in Harmony. I absorbed the flow of information, my circle of friends almost completely changed, new books and ideas came... I came into contact with spirituality. Second stage of the rack"). How about " practical psychologist“Without Reiki - absolutely nowhere, especially after coming into contact with spirituality. Integrative family therapy, thanatotherapy... Well, Hellinger somehow organically fit into this set. It feels like Mrs. Brezhneva herself was once well “hooked” on “trainings and self-improvement” - it’s something like a favorite hobby, without which there is no life. Is it surprising that others get hooked? This is an eternal party where you will always get attention!

Together with her husband (whom she met in Sinton), she created the “Solar Circle” training center. Invites you to trainings. Arrangements according to Hellinger - 5000 rubles per person. And the price is too high for a party - and for working with a person who is neither a psychologist, much less a psychotherapist... It’s not the money that I’m sorry for, it’s the people. On the other hand, maybe they, who do not even want to delve into what they are doing, deserve just such a specialist - a special education teacher?

Literature:

• 1. Elena Veselago. Systemic constellations according to Bert Hellinger: history, philosophy, technology. Journal "Psychotherapy" No. 7, 2010, No. 1, 2011. [Electronic source] // https://constellations.ru/paper.html
• 2. Swagito R. Liebermeister. Roots of love. Per. from English St. Petersburg: VES, 2008. [Electronic source] // https://www.litmir.me/bd/?b=161155
• 3. Portal Samopoznanie.ru, page Trainings and specialists, Elena Brezhneva. [Electronic source] // https://samopoznanie.ru/trainers/elena_brezhneva

Editor: Chekardina Elizaveta Yurievna

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Psychology is a very complex science that has many different approaches to the perception of a person, to his psyche, to what is happening in his head. There are those methods that are considered scientific, since their effectiveness has been confirmed by practice for many years. But new approaches are constantly appearing, and some of them complement the scientific component of psychology (naturally, over time, when they also undergo a kind of testing_. However, many methods remain unofficial - they are not recognized by the scientific community, but at the same time they remain relevant V narrow circles. One of the most striking examples is systemic constellations - a psychological approach that, despite the fact that no one has recognized it for many decades, still remains relevant and is used by an impressive number of its supporters. What is this method? How do system arrangements occur? This is exactly what this article will discuss.

What is the essence of the method?

Systemic constellations are an unconventional approach in psychology, which is based on the fact that all human problems come from the family, or more precisely from the family system. Therefore, the essence of this method is to reproduce this system in a session in order to understand it and find the real reason Problems. This reproduction occurs in reality and is called arrangement.

Systemic constellations have been practiced for quite some time, but have not yet received recognition from the scientific community. But people do not always turn to professionals - sometimes they are closer to what they want to believe in, and many people believe in this method. Perhaps the reason is that its creator is not only a psychologist, but also a theologian and spiritual teacher.

Founder of the movement

Since we are talking about who exactly founded this method, it is worth dwelling on this person. Systemic family constellations are the work of Bert Hellinger, a famous psychologist who was born in 1925 in Germany. He studied psychology for a long time, worked as a psychotherapist, however, as mentioned earlier, he was also a theologian. And in the eighties of the last century, Hellinger discovered and introduced a method about which we're talking about In this article. That is why it is often called “Hellinger Systemic Family Constellations.” This variation is primary and most in demand.

The roots of the method

The method of systemic constellations is an original branch of psychology, but it also has its own roots. Hellinger created this method based on several psychological movements that were relevant at that time. However, if we highlight the most important method that has had the greatest impact on system arrangements, it is Eric Berne's script analysis. The essence of this method is to analyze the life situations of each person (this psychologist also believed that all problems come from the family). He believed that each person has his own life scenario along which he moves. The script is formed in childhood under the influence of parents and the environment and can only be slightly adjusted in the future.

Hellinger acted precisely in accordance with this method, but at a certain point he realized that it had its drawbacks - as a result, he developed his own approach. Later it was called systemic constellations and is known to this day under that name. Bert Hellinger's systemic constellations are quite popular in narrow circles. It's time to figure out what exactly this approach is.

Problem situation

So, what does Systemic constellations mean - this is not just a psychological term, constellations actually take place, and this is how it happens. To begin with, there must be some kind of problematic situation of one of the participants in the psychological session. Strictly speaking, this situation represents an element of a certain system, most often a family one. This is what the group participating in the session will have to deal with. Bert Hellinger's method of systemic constellations involves the participation of all people, even those who are not familiar with the person whose problem is being considered or with anyone from his family system.

How does the arrangement take place?

The focus of the session is the client's story, his problematic situation. All participants in the session form a large circle, and the problem is presented in a plane in space between all people. Each element of the system is first represented in the imagination, and then its place in the real world is taken by a person called a deputy. During the session, he represents a specific member of the system - thus, the entire system is replenished, and everyone gets their role. This is exactly how the arrangement happens. At the same time, this is all done quietly, slowly and with concentration. Each participant concentrates on his feelings, trying to penetrate the essence of the person he is replacing in the session.

Vicarious perception

As mentioned earlier, deputies may not know either the client or his relatives, including the person they are replacing in the system. And the client doesn't tell the group anything about them, so people have to concentrate and try to figure out on their own what kind of affiliation they have. This is called vicarious perception - people must, without outside help, become the person they are replacing. Thus, the lack of information is compensated by precisely this phenomenon of vicarious perception, without which the process would simply be impossible. It’s likely that this is what’s pushing me away professional psychologists and psychiatrists from this method - there is a lot of uncertainty in it, which cannot be compensated for scientifically in order to allow the method of systemic constellations to be called professional.

A source of information

The main source from which participants receive information about the problem, about the client and about the system as a whole is the so-called “field”. This is why people have to concentrate and work in silence - this is how they try to establish a connection with the field in order to receive necessary information about who they replace in the system, as well as about what kind of “dynamics” their character has with the rest of the system participants. This is exactly how a systemic arrangement occurs - each participant turns into a deputy, gets used to his image, drawing information from the field, and then all participants try to reproduce the problem and solve it. A psychotherapist, called a constellation, guides this entire process, gives people the roles that best suit them, and also tries to help them solve the problem during the constellation process.

The main goal of this entire process is to accurately reproduce the situation so that the client can see it live, understand it and accept his problem. Only when he manages to do this is the session considered successful. Then it is believed that he no longer needs to reproduce a specific problem in the conditions of the constellation, since he was able to realize it and can now begin to solve it.

conclusions

As reported by people who practice this method, it really helps - participants can look at their situation from a different perspective, try to assess what is happening impartially, without associating all actions with their family and friends, which prevents them from thinking rationally. And when a person sees a situation being fulfilled in real life strangers, he can understand that this is really his problem - and then he can start looking for a solution to it. Often, the client is not only unable to solve his problem on his own, but even to see it - this is exactly what constellation is used for. The client looks at the situation with an outsider's eye and gets a chance to see the problem in general, and then recognize his own in it.

“I understand that I am being scammed. I just can’t figure out how exactly,” said the director of one company when he saw people completely unfamiliar to him moving around the room and saying words that were too similar to the truth. While he called these people the names of his employees and placed them on the area limited by chairs, he smiled knowingly: “Yes, guys, I participated in so many different games. Let's play. I will explain to you what is wrong here.” Gradually, as the action in the center of the hall developed, his face changed expression.

Victorious confidence melted away, revealing confusion and puzzlement. How do these people, whom he sees for the first time in his life, know such details about the relationships and feelings of his employees? After all, even with the help of espionage, for which there was neither time nor money, it is impossible to find out so much, down to intimate details personal life and hidden character traits. He admitted that he could not understand how the group members learned all the roles, because he assigned them himself, in random order. Having still not found an answer, he was fired up with childish curiosity: “tell me again...”. So much so that I had to stop him and remind him what issue he came on in the first place.

*Assignment - the customer of the arrangement names any group member he has chosen with the name of one of the members of his system (or an object of his internal structure). /author's note/

This director went through several typical stages of acquaintance with the systematic phenomenological method of Bert Hellinger (hereinafter referred to as the Hellinger method), which in the CIS, with light hand translator Irina Belyakova, was called Family Systemic Constellation or Systemic Constellation, since the method has already gone beyond the scope of family therapy.

Here is an approximate sequence of these stages:

1. Mistrust.
2. The desire to understand (expose).
3. Surprise, reaching the point of amazement: “how do they know?!”
4. Dead end, bewilderment, confusion, embarrassment (sometimes shame, fear).
5. The joy of discovery at the sight of a solution, relief, hope for the future.
6. Waiting for a miracle.
7. “It’s so simple, I want everything and more.”

Someone can go through all the steps, someone can go through part of them. Some steps may go by too quickly, while on others a person may be stuck for a long time. But the generalized algorithm is something like this. And distrust can sometimes turn out to be more promising than excessive optimism in the desire to fulfill any desire. A superficial attitude towards something that contains a wondrous power, not yet studied and in a small fraction, can cause more harm than the expected benefit.

This is not just a method - it is a manifestation of phenomenology in action. None mysterious words and mind-blowing reasoning - named and staged. And I got the information! It shocks, surprises, confuses, pleases, delights, causes indignation, but leaves almost no one indifferent. Therefore, the army of people who want to use this method as either a customer or a specialist is growing rapidly. Just 5 years ago on the Internet one could find 2-3 references to Hellinger’s visit to Moscow. Today - 29 thousand pages with service offers and discussions. Books by Hellinger and other specialists in systemic therapy can be found in every department of psychological literature.

In view of so many publications and the massive abundance of all kinds of resources, we will not dwell on a detailed description of what has already been described many times. We propose to come from an unexpected angle and consider the method with all the sincerity originally inherent in it. Perhaps our publication will cause criticism in circles that advocate infallibility. However, we believe that problem-solving leads to the opening of new directions, broadening horizons and deepening understanding. And we see this as our main task in promoting our favorite method. With all due respect to the founders, whom we honor with all our souls.

The nature of this phenomenon has no scientific basis.

This is true. Omitting theorizing on topics: Freud - the subconscious, Jung - the collective unconscious, Einstein - the quantum physics, Vernadsky - the noosphere - everything that can be offered to the logical side of the mind, let’s just look at what is happening through the eyes of an outside observer. Ordinary, unmarked people are simply called by names. For example, “you are my grandfather”**.

**This is not role-playing, not imitation or duplication, although perhaps psychodrama, as a group work, could have inspired Hellinger to take exactly such a form. /approx. auto/

After they have been appointed, people, also known as deputies, are simply placed in the hall. And then they begin to feel and experience what does not belong to them, what belongs to someone else’s system. They are not under hypnosis, they are completely aware of themselves, but at the same time, they really feel something different: feelings, connections, relationships, events that they did not know before. WHERE and HOW do they get information from? And, most importantly, WHY can this information be trusted?

“Common soul,” says the founder of the method, Bert Hellinger. This doesn't explain anything except that there's a lot we don't know. And that is why the method is called phenomenological***.

***Phenomenology is an unpremised description of the experience of cognitive consciousness and the identification of essential, ideal features in it. /wikipedia/

So, here it is, this very experience of cognitive consciousness!? But the question still remains: why can you believe this? And where is the guarantee that the words following the truth are also true? “What is truth?” asked Pilate. And he didn’t receive an answer, and washed his hands. But for an ordinary person, the main thing will remain his “I”. Either I believe it or I don't. It's not even a religion. It is like a faith based on existential experience and therefore indestructible. I believe this because my personal experience tells me that it is so, time after time. I make sure I feel SOMETHING and it is unique and I can observe it. At the same time, they tell me that this does not belong to me, and this calms me down. I can experience anything without fear - after all, it’s “not mine.” What gives me even more confidence is that my experience is confirmed by similar experiences of others around me.

Okay, but what if it's a suggestion? Mass hypnosis? Sect? I believe what I experience, but people under hypnosis believe too. True, after leaving a hypnotic trance, a person does not remember what happened to him, but my consciousness retains everything brightly and clearly. I didn’t stop being myself, I expanded my understanding of my capabilities and the world around me. And moreover, I suddenly realize that I can feel this outside the seminar, without a group and a leader. In principle, I can feel the states and emotions of the people with whom I communicate. And I always knew how to do this, but I didn’t pay attention before. Yes, there are many stories of how someone felt what was happening to loved ones at great distances. It turns out that you can feel not only your loved one, but almost any person. Here, two people are talking next to me, smiling. And I feel tension. An employee comes up with a question, and I feel the child’s anxiety in front of the parent. This is not a fantasy, this is reality.

But the question remains: how much can I trust myself when I feel another person? How much can I trust each individual deputy in each case?

Harm #1: thoughts, or rather the conjectures of the deputies.

Feelings are true, but “a thought expressed is a lie.” Conclusions can be drawn by those who observe and see the system as a whole. The conclusions of an individual deputy are not only meaningless, but also harmful. They can, and usually do, come from the values, worldview and way of thinking of this particular person, personality. For a true picture, it is necessary that the personality be absent, and we would receive information about the state of the object and its relationship to other objects in its pure form****, without distortion by assessment and conclusions. Deputies who talk too much (as a rule, asserting themselves in this) must be trained to give out correct information, or change to those who can not think, but feel and observe the feeling. This also includes demonstrative experiences “in public” as conjectures. All these attempts to pull the blanket over oneself, to prove oneself the main one in the arrangement process, can nullify the work of the rest of the group.

****In fairness, we note that we cannot yet obtain information in its ideal pure form, given the current state of man as an information channel. Therefore, when we talk about purity, we mean information that is as free as possible from the evaluative influence of the individual.

Okay, we've made sure that the method is real, i.e. with its help you can obtain unique information about the human system, provided that correct work with deputies. But the next question arises.

Is all this actually useful for the customer?

There are several variations of this question: It doesn't work. That's not how it works. It may be dangerous. This can be both useful and dangerous. And in that case, what more? Harm or benefit?

We received information from deputies in the system placed here and now. The customer (client), almost always, having seen what is actually happening there, asks the question: “What should we do about it?” Actually, the reason he came was because he wanted to do something “about it.” And this is where a lot of questions begin, ranging from “do we have the right to interfere?” to “why exactly?”

If we talk about the policy of non-interference in general, then it is actually impossible to live in this world and not interfere in it. We intervened already at birth. And every step we take, every choice we make, every thought is an intervention in the world, in the surrounding system, or rather, our interaction with the world. Metabolism with the environment is a condition of life. Attempts to influence the course of events and history, to change the surrounding space to a more comfortable one, have always been inherent in man and humanity. And in their personal lives, in order to improve relationships, people try to please or punish in order to fix something in the body, they turn to doctors to influence the spiritual side of life - they read prayers, affirmations, go to trainings and conquer peaks. And the fact that this inexplicable method has now been revealed to us - maybe this is not accidental? This is the next step in our interaction with the world. Then you need to learn to do it correctly. What is correct? And what are the consequences of careless exposure?

For those who have not seen the film “The Butterfly Effect,” we recommend watching it as a tutorial on hacking the world order. The hero of the film always wanted to correct the situation, to do what was best. And the further it went, the more terrible the consequences were. Particularly brilliant is the director's version of the film, which Hollywood rejected (the producers lacked vision). There, the solution was that the hero should not have been born at all, because his birth was the desire of his parents, who overcame the ban of the higher system.

How does this “Butterfly Effect” manifest itself in life? You removed a papilloma, and 10 years later you are given a serious diagnosis. You asked for eternal happiness for a loved one, and suddenly he died in an accident. You prayed as a group for the country, and on the other side of the world two skyscrapers fell. Coincidences?

Maybe it’s better not to touch anything at all, not to touch anything and not to interfere anywhere? Alas, do you know the consequences of your failure to do so? Refusing an action where you could have done it and were afraid is also an action.

It turns out that we are doomed to live and interact with the system, and interfere with it in some way, creating something better or worse, or simply different. But what does the Hellinger method bring to this interaction? Doesn't it increase the danger?

The answer is simple: If the method is effective, it can also cause harm. If it is safe, it is not effective. Because we cannot interpret the effect in any direction without fully knowing where the plus and where the minus are, drawing conclusions from the height of our current understanding, even if we consider them very high.

And in fact, to what extent do we have the right to restore order (one of B. Hellinger’s first books on systemic alignment is called “Orders of Love”) where it was not we who violated them? And who said which order is correct? Why should we listen to the opinion of Hellinger, who terrifies many readers with his radical phrases? “The Jewish people will only find peace with themselves, their Arab neighbors and with the whole world when every Jew says a prayer for the repose of Hitler’s soul.” (Hellinger, “Mit der Seele gehen”, 2001, p. 50) - for this statement he was called a fascist. “The husband is just a lightning rod, he is involved in the dynamics, because they all act together against him” (G. Weber. Crises of love. Systemic psychotherapy by Bert Hellinger, M. 2002, p. 80) - this is about incest between father and daughter . And in general, according to Hellinger, the mother is to blame for incest. And the first wife is more important than the current one. AND youngest child least important in the family. And evil must be answered with evil. And the power lies with the killer, the killer is the first one to be accepted into your heart. Nightmare, what kind of inhumane order is this? Maybe our people have gone crazy that they are accepting this German with his far-fetched rules with a bang?

But for some reason those who saw Bert Hellinger are not horrified, but admired. Why? Hypnosis again? As they wrote on the Internet: “a man came to have a look, and he was recruited”? Or maybe it’s the same thing: his method is not a theory? It is useless to try to describe the fullness of the mystery of meeting the beyond, i.e. with that which is beyond ordinary ideas.

And Hellinger’s phrases often sound provocative, because it is provocation that makes it possible to identify the contradiction that lives inside a person, to experience what was not accepted and discover that one has begun to see more, feel more deeply and understand differently? Awareness of the contradiction, the solution to the paradox - this is the solution in a crisis situation. The ability to accept opposing points of view is true acceptance. When a person was able to step over his own limiting framework, he moves to a higher level, and then what connects the contradictory parts is revealed to him, a common meaning, which Hellinger called the energy of love. Maybe that’s why so many people follow his method because they all strive for the same thing? To love... And those who have experienced a sea of ​​love at the point of conflict resolution, a flow of life energy blocked for many years, will not be intimidated by “wrong phrases.” Moreover, these phrases are often taken out of context, and the general meaning remains unclear.

If only Bert Hellinger's admirers did not canonize his living flow of the Spirit into a dead set of rules. The moment of truth only lives for one moment. The next moment it is no longer true.

And yet... and this understanding does not make us omnipotent. It doesn’t make it possible to get what we expect from the heights of ant importance. But what does this give us? After all, no matter how much we write here, the customer is looking for a miracle and wants a solution! “Love? Okay, let's love! I agree!". What will happen to you then? "Everything will be fine!". But we never know what kind of butterfly effect we will get. The system is changing as it can and should. The only thing we can really do, thanks to Hellinger’s ingenious discovery, is to receive systemic information from deputies - see the problem area and reach the point of tension. And this is not always the case, but only if this zone was detected correctly and went to exactly the right point (more on this in the next article). If this happened without loss of information and energy, then you can make one movement - like a switchman moving the arrow. One phrase, a look, the truth in this moment - and the locomotive moved to another track. What awaits on this new path? Although the arrangement is systematic, in any case, you will only be able to see part of the system.

Harm #2. System constellation really makes a difference in life and you have to face what you don't know!

If we always avoided this, we would not have sex, we would not go on new job, would not give birth and would not be born. Life is a collision with what I don't know (and death too). And when a person wants to change something, and he is already convinced that what he did before does not suit him, and he can no longer be there, then he is ready to face something unknown. And only inside him there is this signal - it’s time, go ahead! If this can be done not blindly, but using a method that gives more vision, a method that helps to consciously overcome an obstacle, then why not use it?

But why? Why is there so much resistance to change in people? They protect themselves, familiar and familiar to themselves, from that “I” that can be dangerous. This is protection from one’s “shadow”, a ban on looking at the dark side of the moon.

Overcoming internal barriers is associated with those secrets and deeply hidden traumas that a person keeps behind seven seals. To free yourself from what is holding you, you need to look into the eyes of your fear, your suppressed feeling. And moreover, we not only open the forbidden door of the past, but also invite a person to relive it again, no matter what happens there: shame, pain, humiliation, nightmare, hatred. This task in itself is not an easy one, but, in addition, social prohibitions are imposed from above. Most modern people are accustomed to suppressing their feelings and controlling their emotions. A direct emotional outburst in front of others is already an action. And even having decided on it at a seminar, afterward, in everyday life, a person may feel confused - he can no longer wear the same mask, but he does not know how to behave directly.

Another manifestation of these changes is a change in environment. You may be abandoned by old friends who seemed unchanged and irreplaceable, or you will leave them because playing old games is no longer interesting. Marital status may change, in any direction. You may find yourself plunged into a boiling of passions or into an exclusion zone. And all this does not always cause delight, although the direction of change may be positive in the future, but stress has to be experienced now.

Harm #3. The systemic constellation reveals hidden feelings. And then you have to live with this.

You have to stop being a robot and return to life, where there is both joy and pain, both delight and suffering.

Such a sudden transition scares not only the customer. Imagine that you are the one doing the constellation and your client falls into hysterics at the sight of the picture that opens. What will you experience? Normal human empathy can lead to you being close to hysterics. And then the presenter no longer leads anything, no one observes the process, and no one knows what dead end everyone finds themselves in. Or will you want to help, ease his suffering, comforting him, explaining that everything is not so scary? Then you lead the person away from the decision, acting as a rescuer and affirming him in the role of a victim. The customer asserts that his problems are so serious that no one can do them, they simply cannot be solved.

We have heard the opinion of distinguished specialists that it is not necessary to allow the client to experience too difficult emotions. But how does a presenter measure the severity of emotions? Why does he take upon himself the right to decide the degree of emotional severity and the level of admission? With this approach, it is necessary not to look for stress points, but to carefully avoid them in order to avoid an accidental explosion. Then you can watch the deputies aimlessly walking around the hall for hours. A group that has reached the point of exhaustion is no longer able to feel real experiences, react, or provide information. And the customer is happy with any completion and therefore feels relieved. Thank God, we suffered for a long time, there is hope that something happened. But then, what was it? What is the point of a long process? If the knot is not untied, then there is no solution.

Even more interesting is the partial entry into the problem space. I took three steps towards an obstacle - stop. You'll do the rest in a month. Perhaps it is very important for someone to consider himself so insightful and powerful, and to think that he can control the processes of energy flow and regulate them, like the supply of gas in a gas pipeline. But what is the true meaning of control? What are you afraid of, arranger?

In one science fiction story there was this dialogue between two aliens:

Why are people so nervous?

They think they can do anything, and they are constantly afraid that they won't succeed.

There is also such a term as ecology. How environmentally friendly are the changes after intervention in a living system with the help of a specialist? Strictly speaking, they are not environmentally friendly at all, no matter the degree of intervention. Butterfly effect: the smallest impact is enough to produce unpredictable results of destructive force.

At the same time, since mentors and other certified experts on human souls exist, they are also part of the system, which means they are environmentally friendly from the very beginning.

Zen masters beat students seeking enlightenment with a stick. The student could become enlightened or die. This was considered environmentally friendly in those circles and no one has disputed this to this day.

Doctors watch a patient suffer after surgery without flinching. This is considered normal and environmentally friendly. And drug addicts are even offered to experience wild torment during treatment, and withdrawal during the recovery process is also considered environmentally friendly.

Responsibility for the result and its division.

To whom and how much does a person trust his loved one? What is he looking for when he asks for help?

As we said above, if you are looking for an effective solution, then you cannot do without risk. If you are looking for safety, you should not hope for results. The danger, let us remind you, is a change in the quality of life. So there are two big differences. Or we play games: smart, psychological, funny, childish and different, as long as they are safe. Or we make a responsible decision and follow where the unknown of the future lurks, even if it’s scary and not entirely comfortable. We don't judge which choice is right. Something different is important for everyone, and it’s not about the desire to overcome difficulties. The game can be difficult and serious, but a decisive step into reality suddenly turns out to be easy and pleasant, or vice versa. But there is always a significant difference: someone chooses a game, and someone chooses a meeting with life.

For those who are looking for a game, there is a danger of meeting an arranger who will confront him with reality. It's just a guard! Meeting with something that a person did not want to see and did not even intend to see - like a murderous blow with a stick. I’m not ready for enlightenment - I was psychologically traumatized.

For those who are looking for a real solution, there is a danger of falling into a constellation who seems to show the truth, but at the same time avoids coming face to face with it. And an apparent avoidance of danger can actually result in great harm. The person has already looked for the answer, which means he knows internally that this is important. He was there and didn't get it. The next meeting with the secret may take place in real life, which is not particularly ceremonious in its methods of influence. And the blows are not only unpleasant, but also irreparable. Life often doesn’t leave a second chance and teaches us to be completely “non-ecological”.

Examples. The son leaves this life for his father, whom he could not accept in time.

The woman, given two decisions: to follow her sick mother or live happily, consciously chose the first option and six months later she was gone.

There are other examples. Five years ago, a man in his forties came with the request “I don’t want to live,” and he actually left, as his constellation showed. Interventions and other attempts to bring him back to life were unsuccessful. Then the presenter (Zelinsky A.V.) simply revealed to him what was happening, after which he suggested that he come home and write a will. This was not an easy decision for either the presenter or the client. And only the fact that the client believed in the seriousness of the situation allowed the system to turn 180 degrees. This man is alive and everything has changed for him. But no one at the time of arrangement could give any guarantees.

Everything changed for a four-year-old girl, whose mother literally came running screaming for help. The child was in intensive care for two weeks, and the doctors were powerless to help. Instead of being on duty at the child’s bedside, the mother came to the constellation and bowed to her unborn seven brothers and sisters. It was a decision she believed in. She told her daughter's surrogate, “Thank you for showing them to me. You did everything right." 15 minutes after this phrase, on the other side of the city, in intensive care, the girl opened her eyes and asked for candy. Two days later she was discharged from the hospital.

It is impossible to count all the amazing stories, each of them is unique. Our experience shows that we cannot control life and death. We, by and large, do not control anything, but there is no other correct action except to openly face reality, to recognize the truth at the point of tension, where it is born in a blinding flash of awareness. What will follow after this, where will the system turn? It's not up to us. Our task is to be a guide to reality for the customer, to move with the energy of his system, and to respectfully accept any choice.

We again echo the theme of intervention in life and the ethics of this issue. There are no people who would not interfere. But some are so afraid of a collision with life that they seek special permission for this, remaining, as it were, safe. But neither a diploma nor a certificate provides a guarantee against harm. Or from not doing anything useful. Perhaps an indulgence, and not a spiritual one, but a social one.

A certificate is neither good nor bad. But the problem of choosing a specialist remains.

“...to make sure that Dostoevsky is a writer, is it really necessary to ask him for his identification?” (Bulgakov, “The Master and Margarita”).

Probably Bulgakov's heroes are right. To identify a writer, you need to read what he writes. To determine whether you trust yourself to a specialist, you need to see how he works. There is no single correct criterion, no objective rule. It all depends on what your soul is looking for right now, what stage of your journey you are at (you can afford to play or you are ready for something serious), what you have to choose from and what your inner voice will tell you. At the same time, the responsibility of the customer is who he chooses as his arrangers (according to Hellinger, assistants), and how he accepts the result of the arrangement. Responsibility for conducting the process lies entirely with the leader.

Harm No. 4. Lack of criteria for correct selection. Dependence of the result of a systemic arrangement on the conditions of its implementation: specialist, time, circumstances.

Harm #5. There is nothing uniquely certain about this method. And an attempt to reduce the phenomenological method to schematic operations can not only negate all its advantages, but also cause harm.

For example, there is a rule, almost an axiom - to follow the system, which seems to be very correct, which we willingly supported above. There is a very good idea by Hellinger that energy flows where the truth is. And this is a tendency observed among many arrangers: they ask deputies to make an intervention from their point in the system, i.e. They suggest: “say what you would like to say to that object (that figure).” Here there is a replacement of truth with human error and an attempt by the constellator to hide from responsibility under the guise of following. Only they follow not the energy of the system, but the intensification of the problem voiced by the deputies. What's the point in systematic method, if the solution is sought from within the problem? The customer is already there. In addition, we have already written about the thoughts of the deputies - not only is there no truth there, there is also speculation. As a result, there is a danger of obtaining an illusory solution that will repeatedly confirm and confirm the existing state of affairs, strengthening the hidden cause of the problem state.

It is also futile to try to compile and memorize a list of permissive phrases, or to find a scheme of error-free actions for all occasions.

The task and responsibility of the leader is to be above the system and outside it, while simultaneously feeling the flow of its energy. This is not a passive role. She must be active in observation and perception, and at the same time unobtrusive. And the experience of the presenter, which is very important for his professionalism, should never interfere with direct perception from a state of “ignorance”. To be in this state, it is not enough to have desire, ambition or diplomas. This requires constant practical training. (We plan to tell you more about the role and tasks of the facilitator, as well as the technique of conducting an effective constellation process in the next article).

The application of the Hellinger method is so simple and natural that it enters into ordinary, everyday life more and more widely and uncontrollably. This flow cannot be stopped. The source does not need to ask for paths. No matter how much you put prohibitions and restrictions on its path, and no matter how you try to catch it and become the sole owner of the water, it still spreads, seeps and chooses its own paths. And the warning cries that one must ask permission, where to leak and where to drink, are most likely caused by the desire to concentrate power and finances on oneself, or by the fear of losing them.

We sometimes overestimate the capabilities of our knowledge. The system is always wiser and stronger than our desires, precautions and recklessness. Both in a particular, personal case, and in the global development, for example, of the Hellinger method, which no longer even asks its founder about how to develop further.

Systemic orders are not static, but a feeling of the natural dynamics of the transformative field, the interaction of the energies of subtle field structures that create a unique pattern in which we can read so much information that we do not always have enough knowledge and the quality of the thought process to understand and digest it. It’s not for nothing that in English the method is called constellation.

We see the task of our Center as deepening and developing what Bert Hellinger gave us. Today we have a sufficient number of discoveries to share with inquisitive minds and stimulate Co-Creativity in the endless movement of the Spirit towards knowledge. And also in order to understand how vast the world that opens up in this knowledge is.

How often do we hear terms that are not entirely clear. For example, “Hellinger arrangement” - what is it? Let's start with the fact that the author of this method, Bert Hellinger, is a famous German psychologist, philosopher, teacher and practitioner. His works are relatively young and aimed at solving human problems.

What did Hellinger study?

The scientist formulated some laws and patterns that lead to undesirable events and conflicts between spouses or colleagues. Hellinger worked for a long time on the following questions: “How does the adoption of feelings occur? How does conscience (personal or family) influence an individual’s lifestyle? Is there a system that governs the relationship?” In fact, these are just a few of Burt's many teachings.

Today, his arrangements are becoming more and more in demand. Using this method, a large number of people were able to find the origins of their troubles and eradicate them. Many practicing psychotherapists are increasingly using Hellinger constellations in their work with groups, couples or individually.

“Arrangement” is the individual’s place in space. The method itself resembles a game of chess. That is, each participant is assigned a specific role, which reflects his subconscious image in a situation that requires elaboration. This can be not only a family situation, but also problems in the team, failures in business.

Arrangement method according to Bert Hellinger. Start of session

So, a man comes to a psychotherapist with a pressing problem. To begin with, the specialist has a short conversation with him, during which he decides whether he needs an arrangement or whether everything is much simpler. After all, you can guide a person with ordinary everyday advice - and his life will return to normal. But when the situation is complicated, a more detailed conversation is held with the client.

To begin with, the problem itself is highlighted. For example, in this case, a man drinks, his wife nags him every day and believes that all family problems are related to alcoholism. The man, in turn, does not think so. After all, before his marriage he did not drink so much alcohol.

The therapist asks the client to talk about his lifestyle. Hellinger constellations require a systematic consideration of the problem. That is, it is important to understand what each spouse does all day, what kind of relationship they have in general, and what causes conflicts. Finally, individuals appear as themselves in family life or play someone else’s roles.

The specialist examines the parents of the husband and his wife separately. How did they behave with each other in the family? If it turns out that on the man’s side, the father and mother lived in perfect harmony and there were no problems with alcoholism, then greatest attention wife's relatives.

Having previously sorted it out during the first conversation, the specialist recommends that the man come to the next appointment with his wife. After all, the root of evil is most likely in her, and it is impossible to get rid of it without her participation.

After all, things didn’t work out for her family life, and she kept asking her daughter: “Look, all men are the same. Your father is just like everyone else. He drinks and brings home pennies.” With these imposed thoughts, the daughter grows up and involuntarily notices only negative traits in the men around her.

Nevertheless, the girl begins to date a guy she likes. Soon our heroine marries him, but after a while it seems to her that her husband is not “her man” at all. No matter what he does, everything seems negative to her.

It would seem that the chosen one is not so bad, his positive traits outweigh his shortcomings. But the woman continues to maintain internal aggressiveness and sends him negativity at the energetic level. The man catches this signal, realizes that his partner despises him, and gradually begins to seek solace in alcohol. This helps him forget for a while, but the problem remains.

The following actions

The Hellinger method of constellations involves playing roles. The psychotherapist suggests that the couple play out a certain situation. For example, he asks a woman to describe how she behaves in the workplace. The patient comments on her official behavior, communication with colleagues, and it turns out that at work she is “white and fluffy.”

What changes when she crosses the threshold of the house? Why does a husband irritate a woman just by his appearance? A couple re-enacts a fight in front of a therapist. The wife tells her husband her usual phrase: “If only I would stop drinking, and everything would get better.”

From this point on, the specialist asks the couple to stop. Systemic-family constellations according to Hellinger require timely concentration on important point. In the case of this couple, that time has come.

The therapist says to the couple: "Let's try to understand the source of the problem that forces one of you to drink." Next, all the reasons contributing to this are crossed out. For example, excluded: large money problems, conflicts in the workplace for men, health problems. What remains?

The patient openly admits that he is oppressed by the eternal dissatisfaction of his wife, who constantly finds fault with something or, conversely, remains silent and avoids marital intimacy. In this case, the partner suffers from a lack of feminine energy.

Often, due to a lack of love for their partner or out of a sense of resentment, female representatives punish their chosen one in this way. They actively sublimate their energy into caring for children or burden themselves with household responsibilities. While the spouse is trying to get some kind of positive attitude by drinking alcohol. A vicious circle arises.

In the future, Hellinger constellations imply an in-depth study of the problem. In this case, the psychotherapist will try to instill in the woman the idea of ​​​​the need to eradicate the attitude that her mother unwittingly set.

By her behavior, the wife provokes the man to drink alcohol; in fact, she forces him to play the role of her alcoholic father. If, along with this, the woman still has some kind of resentment towards her husband, then during the session it is proposed to get rid of it. “It is important to free yourself from negativity,” emphasizes Bert Hellinger. Family constellations offer many techniques in this regard.

In fact, the whole process is not as simple as it seems at first glance. In the story of this married couple, the specialist will have to give the heroes new “roles”, and so that there is an even exchange of energies between them.

The impact of egregor on humans

After a constellation session, you may wonder: “How did it happen that I began to play a role that was not my own in life? Why did I speak with someone else’s thoughts?” In fact, few people think about whether they really do what they want and whether they live the way they want.

In most cases, it turns out that we borrow our daily thoughts, feelings and actions from the people around us: our own family, team and society as a whole. In other words, a certain energy-information space (egregor) has a direct impact on the personality.

Each society (collective) is subject to a certain value system. The influence of egregor can be both positive and negative. Everyone develops their own value system. For example, a church egregor seeks to influence people through sermons.

And any terrorist organization creates its own egregor by manipulating the consciousness of participants with a certain theory. Sometimes stronger individuals can create their own egregors and influence others. Such an individual should be the most energy-intensive, since his task is to lead and influence, that is, to manage many energy flows. Egregors are written in detail in one of Bert’s works called “Arrangements according to Hellinger.” The book tells us that often the root of the problem can be in the values ​​of life that are passed down through the family.

Life stories

The family clan is a system that has its own specific tasks. And family members (mother, father, son, daughter) are elements that must perform their functions. What happens if someone gets knocked out of the system? For example, the son did not want to become a military man despite the family dynasty. And my father really wanted this.

In this case, the son’s function may be redistributed among other family members or replayed: the daughter marries an officer. The father is incredibly happy, tries to establish strong contact with his son-in-law and shares plans for the future to continue the military tradition.

The German psychotherapist’s method deeply touches on the problem of the older and younger generations. Can the Hellinger constellation help everyone? Reviews about this vary. However, most agree that generic egregors can have Negative influence for descendants.

For example, a young woman is deeply unhappy in her marriage. It would seem that all methods of resuscitating relationships are ineffective, rudeness and violence reign in the family. There is only one way out - divorce. But the older generation of this woman unanimously repeats: “There were no divorced people in our family. This is not accepted among us and is considered a disgrace.”

That is, this woman’s generic egregor dictates its principles to her and demands submission. Only a complete rethinking and rejection of the role of “victim” will help such an individual make an important decision and start a new life.

Aggression is inherited

Systemic arrangements according to Hellinger help many married couples and individuals to deeply understand the origins of evil. Let's give a simple example of a problem with which men often turn to psychotherapists.

So, a pretend young man came to see a psychologist. He could not understand his behavior towards women. After numerous divorces, he was faced with the fact that his chosen ones were leaving because of his unmotivated aggression.

In all other areas of life, the man seemed positive. During a conversation with a specialist, it turned out that the man had once “unconsciously” tuned into a program of revenge. How did this come about?

As a rule, in such a situation it turns out that the patient grew up in a family where the father was constantly humiliated and suppressed by his wife. The boy could not resist his mother to protect his father. Thus, as he grew older, the young man developed his own plan (a program of revenge).

This led to the fact that, while in relationships with girls, he periodically felt fierce hatred towards them. Whenever the right opportunity came, he took out his anger on them with his fists. Bert Hellinger's arrangement should show the man that these feelings do not belong to him. They are inspired and fixed in the mind from distant childhood. But the client’s situation is different, and the girls have a different character than his mother.

And most importantly, he can become happy only when he realizes this and begins to change. This is a gradual process. Much depends on the natural temperament of the individual. For some, 2 sessions are enough, while for others, several will be needed. The method of arrangement according to Bert Hellinger is unique in that by knowing family systems (orders), a person can not only avoid failures in life, but also protect the future generation from them.

How does the group method work?

We will be talking about group sessions. The phenomenon of these activities is that a group of people live out the roles characters in the client's problem. The situations can be different: a person cannot find a partner, is constantly sick or experiences financial difficulties, although there are no good reasons for this.

The Hellinger arrangement method is difficult to explain in detail, but it happens according to the following scenario: appropriate roles are distributed among the participants. And they begin to feel similar emotions of the person asking for help. The phenomenon received the term “substitute perception”.

That is, there is a transfer of internal images from the client to all participants and to the space in which the arrangement takes place. People selected for specific roles are called "deputies." During the session, they evaluate their condition out loud, trying to restore the problematic situation.

Systemic arrangements according to Hellinger help the main person to unravel the tangle of his conflict situations, build the correct hierarchy and restore energy balance. The work is built by moving “substitutes” into the field of arrangement thanks to various rituals.

The session can be considered successful if all participants do not feel discomfort. And - most importantly - the client should experience physical and psychological relief. The arrangement method according to Bert Hellinger forces you to fully activate different levels of perception: emotional, mental, auditory, tactile.

What does this method do?

As a result, the individual receives A New Look to your problem, acquiring a different model of behavior. Of course, the best way to evaluate the technique is to take part in a group session yourself. It is real experience that will help you find out how it works in practice.

Nowadays, many have already heard about such a method as Hellinger arrangement. There are also negative reviews about it. But despite this, the popularity of this method is growing. After all, the range of sessions is quite extensive - it includes psychotherapy, medicine, pedagogy, and even esotericism.

All information received during the sessions is confidential. In order to take part in group work, there must be motivation and a conscious desire. Today it is not difficult to find a Hellinger arrangement group. In Moscow, the number of fans of this method is constantly growing, as it is recognized as professional.

Constellation using Tarot cards

Finally, we come to the part that leaves an esoteric imprint on the method of the German psychotherapist. The fact is that not every person can come to a group of people and openly talk about their problem. In this case, the individual can participate in a group session, but at his request, a hidden arrangement takes place. That is, the client himself controls the openness of information. An excellent way out of this situation is Bert Hellinger's arrangement using Tarot cards.

In this case, the deck serves as a tool for diagnosing the ongoing process. The client is asked the question: “What is the essence of your problem?” A person selects a card without looking and describes what he saw on it. “Deputies” are also selected following the selected arcana.

According to his problem, the client, with the help of the facilitator's prompts, shows each participant where to stand and what to do. The next stage is the emotional experience of the situation. “Deputies” exchange impressions: “I just thought that...”, “I got the feeling that...”

At this moment the client is also included in the process. He listens to the opinions of all participants and takes the place of the one who hurt his emotions the most. And, already based on new role, he pronounces words that he considers important.

The arrangement ends with a survey of each participant. Despite the fact that the client’s problem is being played out, the “substitutes” are also under the close attention of the psychotherapist. It is important for him to know how this or that person felt in someone else’s role, what he experienced and what conclusions he drew.

Also, the specialist can evaluate the diagnostics on the cards - was it possible to fully provide assistance to the client or did the system not fully disclose the situation? After all, the customer is not immediately able to objectively evaluate the session. He will need time for this.

Individual arrangement

Is it possible to conduct a similar session yourself? It's possible. After all, not everyone has the opportunity or desire to work in a group. In this case, it is possible to perform Hellinger placement independently.

True, for this you should become closely acquainted with the theory of the Bert Helling method. And it's important to professional level understand the interpretation of Tarot cards. So, the problem is identified, and the role of “deputies” will be played by cards. The work is divided into three stages.

First, you should choose cards: yourself and “deputies”. Next, you need to lay out the remaining cards as your intuition suggests. Then open them one by one and collect information from each, putting it together into the overall picture.

The second stage depends on the question posed. If it concerns a family, then the cards of ancestors should be laid out on top, descendants - on the bottom. If necessary, you can take additional cards if in doubt. During the process, it is necessary to move "substitutes", as would happen with real people. It is recommended to listen to your physical and psychological sensations.

The third stage is completion. This happens when a person experiences satisfaction from a lost situation. Based on the result of the interpretation, only the client can decide whether he has worked through his problem.

To a less-initiated person it may seem that this was a fortune-telling session. But this is far from true. The individual method of arrangement using Tarot is shown only to professionals. Others are advised to use this method under the guidance of a qualified psychotherapist.

Hellinger constellations are a psychotherapeutic method of the 21st century aimed at changing the deep processes of the collective unconscious of the family and clan, which creates family, psychological, health and career problems for a person. Currently, this method is widely recognized by the world psychotherapeutic community; it is used in group therapy and individual counseling.

The constellation method is systemic, that is, it works with problems of a complex, recurring nature (family, tribal, organizational) and short-term - the method is characterized by an extremely small number of meetings with a psychologist and large intervals between them. Solution-oriented means that the focus of the psychologist's work is finding a solution, rather than analyzing the problem itself.

The arrangement method owes its appearance to Bert Hellinger, a German professor, former priest and missionary, and psychotherapist. Summarizing his multifaceted experience in philosophy, theology, pedagogy, various areas of psychotherapy, information theory and systems theory, he was able to identify patterns that lead to tragic conflicts between family members. On this basis, he developed his own method of therapy, which is becoming increasingly popular throughout the world.

“Constellations” (also used as “system constellations” or “family constellations”) is the author’s term translated from German (familien-stellen - family constellation). It most accurately reflects the essence of what happens during work in this method: people (deputies) are placed in the “working space of the group,” intuitively determining for each their place in the family and clan system. This is where the arrangement begins. The figures placed by the client reflect his subconscious image of the problematic situation with which he works in the process of arrangement.

How the formations work

A group of people gathers, which can include both people who want to solve their problem (“customers” of the constellation), and people who want to get acquainted with the method and participate in “other people’s” constellations (“deputies”). The client gives a request for an arrangement or voices a problematic situation that he would like to solve with the help of an arrangement. Usually a request is 2 - 3 phrases that reflect the essence of the problem and the result that you would like to receive as a result of the arrangement.

For example, if the client has complex, conflict-ridden relationships in the family, then the request for constellation may sound like this: “I have constant conflicts with my husband, we are on the verge of divorce. I would like to save my family."

The constellator, guided by knowledge of the “orders of love” formulated by Hellinger within the family as a system (about the “orders of love”, see below), selects “substitutes” from the group to play the roles of the main participants or elements of the problem situation for the constellation.

The participants in the arrangement are looking for their place in space and, based on their movements, the leader can judge the processes occurring in the client’s family system. Substitutes reflect the movements of the soul, feelings, emotions and thoughts that occur in the client’s family system and transmit them to the constellation. The task of the deputies is to be very attentive to the feelings and sensations that begin to appear (this is one of the phenomena of systemic interaction), and to move in accordance with this inner feeling.

Deputies move, transmit information to each other about feelings and sensations within the system. Thus, the internal image of the problem situation becomes obvious to the participants, and most importantly, to the person who ordered the arrangement.

The method of family systemic constellations also allows you to solve the client’s problem confidentially, without disclosing details. The task of the leader of the constellation, with minimal interference in the client’s ecology, is to identify dynamics indicating violations of the laws of functioning of the family system and find a way to restore the broken order.

This allows you to start a process of rapid and extremely powerful changes leading to the best solution, both for the customer of the arrangement and for the entire family system as a whole.

The mechanism of arrangement is based on the phenomenon that people unconsciously take on the role of another person about whom they have no information, but in this role they are able to perceive and feel the same way as those real characters whom they replace.

This phenomenon is called “substitute perception” by arrangers, and the people chosen for certain roles are called “substitutes”. Deputies, voicing their states and experiences, allow the psychologist to restore the course of events in family history and gradually, step by step, unravel the tangle of family relationships, return harmony to the family system and find for each of its members the most suitable place where he will be happy and calm. And also to return the excluded kind to the archetypal system, build the correct hierarchy, deal with the balance... The work is carried out by adding, moving and changing the behavior of substitutes in the “arrangement field”, various psychological techniques and interactions are used. An indicator of the correctness of the decision for a given family system is the comfortable state of all participants in the arrangement (even feelings, absence of discomfort in the body), clear signs of sustainable physical and mental relief in the client, which are then preserved in his life along with the result of the arrangement. It is quite difficult to describe how the arrangement works to a person who has not seen it. Work is being carried out on different levels client perception (visual, tactile, auditory, mental, emotional). What is common in all arrangements: the client living a new experience in a safe space. A person receives new information about his situation from the point of view of the system, lives this situation in a new arrangement, with acquired and returned resources, thereby acquiring new model happy behavior and a new, harmonious perception.

The best way to understand how a constellation works is to take part in it as a substitute. Your own feelings will tell you much more than any, the most detailed story about it. You will be able to get an idea of ​​how family ties and laws work, what destroys relationships and what allows them to last, how Love is archetypally manifested in family members.

Bert Hellinger has very precise words: “The main thing in the arrangement is what is essential, what is a turning point, what is effective, what turns our ideas upside down - this is not a theory, this is not a utopia, this is not an ideology, but observations and positive experience, collected in different contexts."

Professor Hellinger is asked: “Why did you put it that way? Why are you telling the deputy to say that? Why do you think so?" He says: “I have seen 100 cases, and in 100 cases it was like this. I have no reason not to trust my eyes, my experience and the experience of people who were sincere.” He emphasizes again and again that the basis of constellation methodology is observations collected in different contexts, generalized and tested by his many years of psychotherapeutic practice with hundreds and thousands of people and couples.

The arrangements are a very complex and beautiful mosaic. A mosaic of relationships, feelings, intentions and actions in their name. In part, it is similar to a hologram or a frosty pattern on glass, where each part complements the harmony of the whole and is part of it.

The main goal of the arrangement is to restore the integrity and harmony of family systems and the life of an individual.

Bert Hellinger is not only the creator of the family constellation method, whose popularity is rapidly growing throughout the world, but also an interesting thinker. Here are just three examples.

1. If a person causes the death of another person, the deceased enters his family, becomes a member of his family.

2. If someone was excluded from the family, then the children “look” at such excluded people and, as it were, replace them - this explains many oddities in the behavior of children.

3. Conscience has nothing to do with good and evil, but with our belonging to the family. Our conscience hurts when we feel we have lost our right to belong. The brightness and unusualness of his ideas captivates, regardless of whether we agree with them or argue.

Long-term conflicts between relatives, family problems... Sometimes we pay the debts of our ancestors without knowing it. The arrangement shows the structure of relationships in the family, makes the invisible visible and allows you to find a solution.

“We lived with my husband for 26 years. Our son is now 19, our daughter is 25, and our granddaughter is six. And all these years I have been worried about the lack of mutual understanding with my children. Even when they were very young, they acted in accordance with their ideas about what was right and what was wrong. Their frame of reference did not match mine. And now the children have grown up, and it has become even harder. The son stated that he never wanted to study as an economist, left the university and mastered playing the guitar for two years. Then I abandoned this activity too. Now he’s just lying on the couch - looking for his way in life. And my daughter is building a career, lives with us, gave birth to a child and “pinned” it on my husband and me. She is absolutely sure that we should be grateful to her for such trust... It seems to me that for the last 25 years I have not been living the life I wanted. My family manipulates me, and I, in turn, do not bring them joy, only fatigue and irritation. We all - family and friends - are constantly “out of phase”. With the hope of finding out why this is happening, restoring mutual understanding between different generations of our family and finding a way out of my personal crisis, I met with psychotherapist Albina Loktionova. “Our family history influences us more than we think,” says Albina Loktionova. - Each of us is part of the family system (relationships with parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, grandparents, husbands and wives), and when it is disrupted (for example, relatives “forget” about one of the family members or stop communicate with him), then the balance in the relationship is disturbed. And this failure is involuntarily repeated by subsequent generations.” The psychotherapist invites me, using the family constellation method, to identify those “forgotten” episodes of family history that prevent my family members from living life to the fullest. After listening to me, Albina Loktionova summarizes: “The order of love has been violated in your family. Order means hierarchy, subordination. In this hierarchy, for example, parents are always placed above children, because they are the ones who created the family. There is no parental leadership in your family, the roles are confused. Let’s make an arrangement to sort out this “tangle” and understand how to return to the natural hierarchy of relationships.” Since my desire to go through family constellations was spontaneous and impetuous, and the group began work only after the vacation month itself - August, we worked together with a psychotherapist. And the substitutes for my family members were pieces of paper laid out on the floor with figures-symbols drawn on them - who is who. This work became an invaluable experience - painful and healing at the same time, when I had to be in the shoes of my household and let their feelings pass through myself and understand ulterior motives . I draw geometric shapes that represent me, my husband, daughter and son. Square, rectangle, circle, oval, and on each I indicate the direction of view with a tick. I lay out the sheets of paper on the floor. “Look,” Albina Loktionova points to the arrangement that I got, “you, your husband and daughter are located too close. You feel cramped, you seem to be pushing, getting in each other’s way. And your son is separate from you and has his back turned to you. It seems that he is afraid to approach his family, as if he is too hot in your close circle, or there is simply no place for him in it. Or maybe the system itself, your family, excluded him?” I am completely perplexed - what is the psychotherapist talking about? And she continues: “Perhaps there was someone in your family history who is now undeservedly forgotten, and your son unconsciously identifies himself with this person?” Still not understanding what the therapist means, I begin to remember and talk about three episodes that our family tries to forget. My great-grandfather (my father’s grandfather), dispossessed during the years of collectivization and ended his days in Siberian exile. Even his daughter (my grandmother) never spoke about him, who, even 50 years later, believed that this family page could be disastrous for the careers of her children and grandchildren. The second episode is related to my mother's parents. They really wanted, but did not dare, to have a second child at a difficult time - the end of the thirties and the beginning of the war. And finally, I know that my mother, having become ill, was forced to have an abortion a year or two after I was born. It turned out that from generation to generation my family carries information about an unborn second child and an unfairly forgotten ancestor. “In my mind, these events were never connected with each other,” I admit to the psychotherapist. “Not only you, but also your son, have unconsciously accepted the dynamics of systemic intertwining and, in a sense, are now unconsciously compensating for the feeling of guilt towards the unborn second children in the family of your relatives or the “forgotten” great-great-grandfather. The distance at which your son is in relation to other family members - we clearly saw it during the family constellation - only confirms the fact: in your family there is no place for a second child, there is no model of communication and relationships with him that has been worked out over generations.” “But he takes care of his niece with tenderness and love, who has been growing up without a father since birth,” I ardently defend my son’s ability to have related feelings. “That’s how it should be,” Albina Loktionova answers, “after all, his niece, in a sense, is an unexpected child. And he unconsciously “rehabilitates” her birth, gives her a chance to live.”

What about my daughter? She is actively pursuing a career and does not want to get married or start her own family. And he only includes his daughter in his plans when he goes to visit and wants to show off how smart, beautiful and cheerful child. “Grandmother and grandfather, that is, me and my husband, are really involved in raising my granddaughter. And the daughter only controls us,” I ask a new topic for the development of the arrangement.

The psychotherapist invites me to stand on a chair, leaving a piece of paper with my daughter’s symbol on the floor, and imagine my mother - somewhere above me, high, at ceiling level. This exercise helps you feel your own place in the family system, where every older generation is located above the next. “Imagine that I am your daughter,” continues Albina Loktionova. - Get down from the chair, come up to me and say firmly: “Lena, I am big, and you are small. You are my daughter and I am your mother. You cannot command me, and I must not obey..."

I obediently repeat these words, but I clearly understand that such a conversation is hardly possible with my real daughter. “Your daughter is used to being in charge,” explains Albina Loktionova, “and in order to restore the correct family hierarchy, without which harmonious relationships in the family are impossible, it is necessary to return both the vertical and the horizontal: to establish contact with the daughter. Sit next to each other, talk about your feelings, or maybe just be silent... From such silent empathy, once-lost closeness with loved ones is often restored. The line that it’s time for you to draw between yourself and your daughter should not become “Great Chinese wall" On the contrary, precise distance will help you truly feel closeness and belonging to each other.”

But here my worries about my son and daughter converge at one point - a second child! After all, the daughter, a beautiful young woman, will probably get married and want to have a second child. And he will carry negative information about unborn second children in several generations of our family. “What if he, too, becomes a stranger among his relatives?” - I share my concerns with Albina Loktionova. “Your son is already “filling” this role in your family,” she explains. - But now, understanding the situation, you can change it. The problem is finally resolved when relatives take the right place in the family hierarchy and are ready to take responsibility for their actions. From now on, there is no need to be afraid of the return of the past.” In literally two hours of family constellations, I discovered the hidden motives that determined the relationships among my relatives for many years. “The founder of the family constellation method, Bert Hellinger, says that accepting the past makes us free,” Albina Loktionova concludes the meeting. - But true acceptance also means accepting all the consequences of many years of silence and hidden family secrets. And it’s really not easy to come to terms with the fact that in our family’s past there were losses and losses, mistakes and disappointments.” It is difficult to accept your past - to do this you need to reconsider many of your usual ideas and ideals. “We will have to clearly clarify the consequences - who won what and what price each member of the system paid for this past, and then determine the ratio of losses and gains,” the psychotherapist sums up. - If you can’t admit it, then you need to at least call the past the past. And it will stop clinging, and you will be able to let it go. Then we can move on."