The arrangement of family systems created by Hellinger is also known as Family Constellations, and was dubbed Hellinger Science by Hellinger himself. Clearly, Hellinger was convinced that his field of study and his discovery of family dynamics were scientific.
Hellinger's research presents the dynamics of family systems through the arrangement of family systems, but we know very little about Hellinger's own family dynamics. In order to increase the knowledge of Hellinger and the arrangement of his family system, I think it is necessary to introduce in detail some basic information about Hellinger himself.
Dr. Hellinger was born German on December 16, 1925. The second oldest in the family, there is an older brother above and a younger sister below. We don't know much about his parents. We don't know what made him volunteer to become a priest at the age of 5. At the age of 10, Hellinger was baptized in a convent school run by the Catholic Church and was boarded there to study. I don't know why he was boarded by his parents so early, but judging from the psychological growth of the child, he was prematurely separated from his parents, which was not good for him and his connection with his parents and family. Forced into the army at the age of 17 to become a German soldier, he fought through World War II, was captured by the American Army at the age of 20 and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Belgium, escaped from the camp a year later and returned to Germany, where he joined the Catholic Church to study philosophy and theology. This life-and-death experience in the barracks may change some of Hellinger's beliefs about life.
Hellinger was ordained a priest in 1952 and sent to South Africa to work as a missionary. In the early 1960s, he attended a series of group dynamics courses in South Africa and was very impressed with the training of reconciliation of opponents through phenomenological methods, based on respect. In 1966, he became dean of St. Francis College.
After living in South Africa for 16 years, Hellinger returned to Germany and became the head of a theological seminary in Würzburg. In 1969, Hellinger began studying psychoanalysis and took courses in psychology at the University of Würzburg. In 1970, he trained as a psychoanalyst in the Vienna Psychoanalyst Working Group. In 1971, two years after returning to Germany, he resigned from the priesthood and married his first wife, Hertha, despite all opposition. In 1974, Hellinger went to the United States for nine months and trained in primitive therapies in Los Angeles and Denver. He also attended gestalt therapy, psychodrama and communication analysis. In 1979, he attended Milton Erikson's hypnosis training. At the same time, Hellinger studied NLP and bioenergical analysis. In 1982 he began to engage in psychotherapy and was recognized by the psychological community. In 1990 he attended the Psychologists' Congress, where a psychiatrist from Hamburg showed her family system arrangement, which shocked and inspired Hellinger. In 1992, he began using the family system in small groups. In 1995, his masterpiece Love's Hidden Symmetry was published. In 1996, Hellinger announced that he had discovered an order of love and help in the family that was as unshakable as gravity. In 2003, Hellinger married his second wife, Sophia. In 2005 he founded the Hellinger Scientific Institute.
From the above Hellinger experience, Hellinger's family system arrangement began in the 1990s, less than 30 years ago. Therefore, the research in this field can still be said to be in the exploratory stage. Hellinger was first a theologian and then a psychologist, and although he later broke away from the Catholic Church, his theoretical system was still full of theological ideas. His use of the soul and past lives in his family system arrangement is clearly contrary to the scientific spirit of psychology. His family system arrangement was also resisted by the academic community as a whole because of the addition of theological and spiritual elements, so that his family system arrangement could not be studied, taught, promoted and disseminated in the mainstream academic field. His family system arrangement agency was named "Hellinger Science", apparently in order to gain recognition and acceptance from academia and the scientific community.
Let's take a look at how Hellinger's theory of family system arrangement views the dynamics of family systems.
Hellinger believed that the family system is like a constellation, and this constellation has its own rules of operation, and this operating rule is "the conscience of the family system." There are three laws of conscience in the family system, namely the law of belonging, the law of balance, and the law of order. If the family system can operate in these three laws, then the love in the family can flow well and the family members can develop well; otherwise, the family system or members will have problems of one kind or another.
The law of attribution
The need to belong requires that all members of the family belong to the family system, cannot be excluded, cannot be excluded, and that no matter how bad things the person has done, or whether the person is still alive, he is a member of the family system. If a person is ostracized or no longer recognized as a member of the family because he has done something disgraceful or humiliating to the family, then the family system will be greatly affected by this act of exclusion or exclusion.
Some members of the family often exclude or exclude family members who have committed crimes, suicides, etc. to shame the family, and when they are excluded by the whole family or some members of the family, some later members of the family will replace the family members with similar behaviors of the excluded or excluded family members, so as to balance or compensate for the excluded results. If a person who has committed a crime in the family is excluded or excluded, some other family member may also commit a crime and become like the excluded or excluded family member, supplementing or replacing his exclusion in order to give him a place in the family. If this replacement will continue to be excluded or ostracized by the family, then there will be other people in the family who will continue to replace him. It is not until the family system continues to exclude criminal family members that the family will no longer have the phenomenon of replacing other family members with crimes. The purpose of the family system is to bring the person excluded from the family into place. Therefore, the family system arrangement usually looks for the person who is rejected or excluded by the family in the arrangement, and then looks at the substitute implicated by the excluded person, and then lets the excluded person return to the family system, so that the implicated person also returns to the position where he should be. Once this double homing is completed, the family system arrangement is over.
The law of balance
The meaning of the law of balance is to give and to get balance. This is a very important law in the relationship of the system. This law applies between different subsystems of a family system, as well as between two members of a system.
For example, a system of marital or partnership relationships is a system of equilibrium that is exchanged with each other. If this exchange can be balanced with each other, then the couple or partnership will be successful. If there is an imbalance in this exchange, then there will be problems or crises in the partnership. The light will continue to conflict, and the heavy will break the relationship and disintegrate the relationship. Therefore, the law of balance advocates that both husband and wife should constantly exchange, not unilateral sacrifice and dedication, because then the relationship will become unbalanced, then the relationship between the two parties will be difficult to maintain.
Parent-child relationship is a kind of inheritance relationship, such as in the parent-child relationship, it is also a child in their own original family, and their relationship with their parents is also a parent-child relationship, then the parent-child relationship of the previous generation and the parent-child relationship of the next generation are usually balanced. That is to say, the parent-child relationship of the previous generation usually determines the parent-child relationship of the next generation, how much the parents give to the child in the parent-child relationship of the previous generation, usually how much the next generation was once a child and now it is the parent will also give the child, which is caused by the balance of the system.
However, in the same generation of parent-child relationships, parent-child relationships are one-way, unequal or unbalanced. That is to say, in a single parent-child relationship, the parents in the parent-child relationship only give love to the child, but they cannot ask the child for love, that is, the child cannot be required to give love to the parents. In the parent-child relationship, if we also pursue exchange or balance in the husband and wife relationship, and the parents ask for love from the child, then the child's growth will be a problem, and the child may sacrifice their growth to meet the needs of the parents. The balance of parent-child relationships is a balance that spans generations. Because parents in the parent-child relationship, when they are still children, their parents also give their love in the same way, and their parents only give no, which is also a one-way love relationship.
In the relationship between siblings, the balance is reflected in the fact that their position in the hearts of their parents should be equal, and this equality should be reflected in the equal importance of gender and the equal ranking of positions. If the parents favor their children over the other, then the child who receives more love from the parents will balance out the excess of the parents in other ways to compensate for the brothers and sisters who did not get what they deserved from the parents. They may compensate by problem behavior, getting sick, and limiting their success and happiness.
Between brothers and sisters, the same principle of parent-child relationship is followed, the older love for the younger is also one-way, and the older brothers and sisters cannot ask for love from the younger siblings. Such a law will add some problems, and the brothers and sisters in the middle will easily strike a balance because they have both gain and giving. And the old assembly is faced with only giving and not getting, while the old man only enjoys it, and does not give, and there will be an imbalance at both ends of the brothers and sisters. The way to balance is usually that the boss gets some privileges in the parents or family, and the old man gives the parents more care when the parents are old to balance the excessive giving in the position of the boss and the position of the elder who gets too much of this part.
The law of order
The law of order means that in a family system, different members of the same system or different systems in which the same member resides differ in importance. According to the law of order, in the same system, the first-comers are more important than the later members; for family members in different systems, the new system is more important than the old system.
For example, in the nuclear family, the relationship between husband and wife is more important than the relationship between parents, the relationship between husband and wife and parents is more important than the parent-child relationship, and the older sibling is more important than the younger sibling. As members of the system, respect the order of this importance, and the older position is more important than the younger position. As a family member, there can be no offside, that is, the child cannot cross the position of the parent or the parent as a husband and wife, and the younger sibling cannot cross the position of the older brother and sister; otherwise, the offside and the person who gives way will pay the price.
The same member is in different systems, the opposite is true, not the old system is to take precedence over the new system, but the new system to take precedence over the old system. For example, when a person has established a regenerative family as an adult, then for him, the original family and the regenerating family are two different systems, because the regenerative family is newer than the original family, so for him, the regenerative family should be given priority or importance to the original family.
When a person remarries after divorce, then the partner in the later marriage is important or takes precedence over the partner in the previous marriage. When a person has an affair, or has children in an affair, then he has a new family system. From the principle of family system arrangement, when a person has children in an affair, he can no longer return to the original marriage, he needs to leave the original marriage and form a new family with the affair, so as to conform to the order of the system.
The family system arrangement is basically from the above three laws to find family motivation and obtain solutions to family problems.