Bert Hellinger
Brief lectures at Tokio - On Family Constellations

Held by Bert Hellinger in September 2001 at a workshop at Tokio, Japan. You´ll read about some parts of family constellations performed by Hellinger on stage as well.

On conscience
The Collective Conscience
Bonding
Peace through Grief
On love

I want to explain something at the beginning about the work I can offer here. You have heard the term Family Constellations. This just describes the method, but behind the method there are very important insights into family relationships, the relationships between men and women, parents and children, and in a wider field also. It is these insights that are most important, because in the course eof the years it became apparent that many illnesses and other maladies are caused by entanglements in the family. These entanglements are unconscious.

I bring an example. A woman comes to a workshop and says that her daughter has difficulties. The daughter wrote a letter that she does not want to live much longer. So I set up her present family. That means that I selected representatives from a group like this to represent herself, her husband and the children. If the family is set up in front of all the people, people are very often surprised to see what they have set up. For instance, in this constellation she placed her daughter a little bit outside, and she, although she stood next to her husband, was looking away.

So from the picture, I can gather immediately the problem. I led the mother the way in which she was looking, so I led her a little bit outside and asked her, how she felt there. She said, she felt better. This is very surprising, actually, that she should feel better if I lead her away from the family. So I led her back to the place where she stood before, and I led her daughter a little bit further away and I asked the daughter, how she felt when she was standing further away. She, too, said, she felt better. Then I asked the mother how she felt when the daughter was moving away, and she said, she felt better.

What does this example reveal? The mother wants to go away, in fact she wants to die, and then the daughter also wants to go away, in fact she wants to die. But then, when the daughter wants to go away, the mother feels better. Therefore, secretly in her soul, the daughter has told her mother, "I will die in your place. I will die, so that you may stay behind." None of them had thought of this, the movement was completely unconscious. It was brought to light by means of the family constellation.

You must know, it was not the mother herself who was standing in the constellation, and it was not the daughter herself who was standing in the constellation. They were just representatives who didn't know anything about this family. This shows the power of the family constellation, because as soon as the representatives have been set up, they feel like the people they represent without knowing them. So, through the representatives, a hidden dynamic of the family comes to light.

But why should the mother want to die? There must have something happened in her family of origin. So I asked her, "What happened in your family of origin?" And she said, "I had a twin sister who died at birth." This was the secret behind her move of wanting to die. She wanted to follow her twin sister into death because she felt in her soul that she could be united with her in this way. Now, her very deep love for her twin sister came to light.
If people feel that urge in their soul, it does not mean that they follow it all the time. They feel it. Sometimes, because they feel it, they develop strange symptoms. For instance, they get seriously ill or they have accidents or they have suicidal thought.
This woman had married and one of her children felt that her mother wanted to die. Therefore she said, "I will die in your place."

Now I have explained two important insights about family constellations. Many difficulties and illnesses stem from these two sentences said silently in the heart. The one is, "I follow you unto death." The other one is, "I do it in your place."

But why should people want to do this? Because they feel connected in a very deep way with the members of their family. Sometimes, we see people who are angry with their family, they seem to be against their family, and they may feel ashamed that they have such feelings. But when we set up the family, suddenly it comes to light that they are bound with a very special deep love to their family. They are only entangled in a specific way. How these entanglements develop, I will explain in the course of this seminar. What I said now, may be sufficient as an introduction. So I want now to demonstrate the work. Afterwards, I will explain the procedure, and I will also give a chance to ask questions.

On conscience

This kind of therapy is different from what you may be used to. First of all, I have no intention, I have no personal intention to change anything in the client. I only bring something to the surface and that which becomes apparent will be helping. So I do not become active myself, I don't want to change anything because nobody is able to do this.
I will explain the deeper connections.

We are guided by our conscience. We feel our conscience by the feelings of guilt and innocence. This conscience has one purpose, a main purpose, to bind us to our group. If we deviate from what is permitted in our group, we have a bad conscience. We could see this last night, when she was sitting here and I wanted to continue with the work. She said, "As a Japanese I must not do more." In this society, there are certain rules. When she does not comply with these rules, she has a bad conscience. An American might have behaved quite differently, because in her society there are other rules.

So, the good conscience of an American is different from the good conscience of a Japanese. And, of course, the bad conscience as well. Some people think, if they follow their conscience, they follow a law which is general for all people. But conscience binds us only to our group.

Now I come to your question. If I would attempt to change something in her, which is not in conformity with the rules of her group, I cannot change her. She may comply superficially, but nothing could be changed in her heart. Most of the time. Because once we follow this kind of conscience, we remain children in a certain way. In order to develop, we must be able to go beyond the boundaries of our conscience. That's why each development and personal growth is only possible if we can go beyond the boundaries of our conscience. That's why we can only develop with a bad conscience. We can only develop by feeling guilty.

We could see this last night. When she behaved like her mother, when she is unhappy like her mother, she feels innocent. But if she would love her husband, although we may consider this a good thing, she has to separate from her mother in a certain way. Then she will feel guilty. Do you see the difference?

Now it is important that we help each person that she gets support to go beyond the boundaries of her conscience. I did this with the last exercise with her. I brought the ancestors in. So, she has not only to look at her mother or at her father, but there are many more who may give her permission to change. So, it is not me who intervenes, her ancestors intervene. So, she can change with a good conscience, looking at them. I can withdraw and leave her to her ancestors. Have I made that clear?

Following one's conscience can be very dangerous. For instance, if a child says in her heart, "I will follow you unto death." she will do it with a good conscience. So her good conscience drives her into death.

The images we have connected with our conscience are magical. They com from a point in our personal development when we were thinking in a magical way. A child thinks really, if she dies, she will please her mother, or even that she can save her mother. This is magical thinking.

To grow beyond this, we have to gain insights, that we can see what is actually happening there. And that is very difficult. I spent about six years observing how conscience works. Then suddenly I got the point. This enables me to help people to find a solution. I will explain more about it when we proceed with the work.

The Collective Conscience

Before we continue, I will explain something about the collective conscience. I explained something about the personal conscience before. The personal conscience we feel, we feel it as guilt or as innocence. The collective conscience cannot be felt. But we see its effects, especially through the constellations.

The collective conscience follows certain laws. The collective conscience is a conscience which guides several people at the same time. I will enumerate those who are guided by this collective conscience. I will name those who are guided by the collective conscience, those who are affected by the collective conscience. This is very important, and you may write it down actually for yourself, although it is not difficult to remember.

Those who are affected by the collective conscience are on the lowest level the children, the children in a family. On the next level, it is the parents and their brothers and sisters. The next level are the grandparents, but not their brothers and sisters. Only the grandparents. The next level, sometimes, are the one or the other of the great grandparents. These are the blood relatives affected by the collective conscience.

Besides the blood relatives, there are others who belong to this group. These are those who have made room for people within this system, for instance former partners of parents and grandparents. And those who paid with their lives or their unhappiness for the well-being of those within the group. For instance, if a man became very rich and some of his employees paid for it with their lives, then these employees belong to the system.

I have an example and it is in one of the books, I suppose,. There was a great grandfather who build a railway in the United States and became very rich. But many of the workers died when they were building the railway. They belong to the system.

Now what does that mean? This collective conscience watches over the wholeness of the system. If anyone is excluded of those who belong to the system, this person will be represented later by another person within the system. If I return to the example I just cited, the great grandchild of the man who became rich by the railways felt very weak, unable to do anything creative. In the constellation it turned up that he was identified with those workers who died for the benefit of the great grandfather and the family. This is the working of the collective conscience. This explains entanglements, why somebody is entangled in the fate and the destiny of other people within the system.

I will bring an example from Germany. In many Jewish families you find a child that represents the murderers, those who killed so many Jews during the last war. And in many families of the murderer, you find children who represent the victims. This shows that if in a family there has been a murderer, his victim belongs to that system. And if in a family has been a victim of a murderer, the murderer belongs to the system. This seems very strange to some people, because we think of the victims as poor who deserve our compassion, and we think of the perpetrators of people whom we want to exclude. In the families of perpetrators, people don't want to look at the victims, but the victims will be represented by one or the other of their children or grandchildren.

And in the families of victims, they don't want to look at the perpetrators, they exclude them, and therefore the perpetrators will be represented by one or the other of their children or grandchildren.

This collective conscience is unconscious and if people are driven by this collective conscience, they don't realise that they have to represent somebody whom they do not even know. These are difficult thoughts.

Now I do come back to her. In her family, certainly, people don't want to look at the grandfather. That's why she represents him. How does she represent him without knowing about it? She feels hatred. That is the hatred of the grandfather. It may also be the hatred of the son, because the two were fighting. Now she interferes by taking over those feelings. But for the resolution it would be necessary to leave the problem with those two. That's why you felt better when you turned away.

I think this will become clear if we demonstrate it by the work rather than by explaining it here.

Bonding

I want to say something about bonding. We are all bound to our families with a very deep love. For the sake of this love, children are ready to sacrifice everything. If we know this, we understand children. They are even ready to sacrifice their lives if they think that their parents will be helped by it. And they want to be like their parents. That is why you can observe that in certain social systems, let's say social classes, those of the lower class don't want to leave the lower class, because they don't dare to fare better than their parents.

We can see that in a society where there are equal chances for everybody, those of the lowest class often don't use those chances, out of love for their parents. They don't dare to be above their parents. They can only do this, if their parents agree, for instance it they tell their parents, "If I do better than you, I will prove to all other people how good you are." So out of love for the parents, the child can do this. But if somebody says, "I will prove that I am better than you." he will fail after some time, because the child in him cannot tolerate to be better than the parents.

That shows also how difficult it is, sometimes, to help somebody in psychotherapy. He does not want to have a better life than his parents. Therefore, we have to win the support of the parents. Then the child can change out of love for the parents. It can change with a good conscience.

to the client  Do you have some money?

CLIENT  No I don't.

HELLINGER  You don't have any money?

CLIENT  Are you talking about savings?

HELLINGER  Yes.

CLIENT  I have almost nothing.

HELLINGER to the group  If she would have saved a lot of money, what would she do? She will lose it like her father, out of love for her father. But not now. Because here she experienced that he loves her. So she could ask him, "Please bless me if I keep my money."

to the client  Did you understand?

CLIENT  Yes

Peace through Grief

If there has been a war or something like this, an occupation of another country, and people have been killed and hurt, there will be a tension over many years even centuries. We know this from Germany, of course, and we observe that also in Israel and the Palestinians. Now what is the solution? When will the conflict end? There is only one means to end this: This is grief, grief about what happened. I give you an example.

We had a congress in Germany a few months ago, and there was a Palestinian professor and an Israeli professor present. They both had founded a peace institute, they wanted to promote peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Then they had a workshop, and during the workshop they wanted to show means of reconciling the Israelis and the Palestinians. They asked me to help by means of a family constellation. Now I will demonstrate this here. So I chose 5 representatives for the Palestinians and 5 representatives for the Israelis.

(a demonstration followed at that time of the lecture, being commented by Hellinger afterwards:)

After the demonstration:

Those on the ground are in the service of peace. There is no hatred anymore, only grief. These (who still stand) are not yet in the service of peace. They resist grief. Only if they all grieve, will there be peace. Peace is achieved if they all look at what has happened. The all must look at it. The dead person in the middle represents not only the dead of the one side, but also the dead of the other side.

One important thing must also be borne in mind. All the achievements by force and all the hurt inflicted on others, are all in vain. Nothing was gained by this. This is the truth.
No imagine the American soldiers who conquered Japan are going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meet with all the descendants of the victims there and would grieve with them. Do you feel what a healing effect it would have on them all?
Okay, this I wanted to demonstrate.

On love

I may say something about love. It is a very important subject. Love is what stimulates us in our life. First of all, it is a love between a man and a woman. All human life depends on the love between a man and a woman. It is the basis of everything. Sometimes, people look down on the love between a man and a woman. But it is the greatest thing, most deeply moving. Once we enter a relationship, it changes our entire life. But when a man and a woman say to one another "I love you", and if they marry afterwards, is that love which they admit and tell one another strong enough to endure? If a man tell a woman "I love you", and the woman tells the man "I love you", is that love strong enough to last. It is not strong enough. Something else must happen to make it strong.

If a man meets a woman, and a woman meets a man and they fall in love, do they see one another? No they don't. They look at an image, not at the real person. And what is the image? It is the ideal mother. This is true not only for the man towards the woman, but also for the woman towards the man. Both think and feel, now I have found the ideal mother, now I get everything I want and what I need. But as is shown very soon, this is an illusion.
Then begins another love. I call this, love at second sight.

Then we have to look at the real person, and we have to love the real person, exactly as he or she is, without any wish to change them. Some people think they could change their partner. Especially women think this. Then they treat their partner like a little child which has to be educated.

The first thing a man and a woman have to realise is, that they are both quite different. A man is different from a woman in almost every respect, and a woman is different from a man in almost every respect. So they are two different kinds of human beings. Although they are different, they are a right edition of human beings. The man has to forgo the idea that he as a man is the ideal human person, and the woman has to give up the idea that the woman is the ideal human person. Both have to admit that they lack something which the other person has. A man needs a woman because he lacks what a woman has, and a woman needs a man because she lacks what a man has.

Both have to admit that they are incomplete. And both must be prepared to accept what the other partner has to give. Both have to admit that the other person has something which they miss, and they have to accept what the other partner gives. This is a humble position. I admit that I am in need. Both admit that they are in need, and both acknowledge that they have something special to give. In this way there is an exchange possible by which both, after some time, feel enriched.

As a consequence, we see, both have to admit that they are equally valuable. Both have to admit that there is a basic equality between them. This makes a partnership possible. If one of the partners behaves in a superior way, for instance by thinking that men or women are better than the others, then their partnership is in jeopardy.

In Europe - I don't know how it is in Japan -some people say, the man has to integrate the female qualities, and the woman has to integrate the male qualities. If they have done this, if the man has developed female qualities, and if the woman has developed male qualities, do they still need one another? No. A relationship is best if a man remains a man, just a man and nothing else, and if a woman remains a woman, just a woman and nothing else. A man must develop the male qualities, and the woman must develop the female qualities. A man must renew his male qualities by seeking the company of men. When men are among themselves, they develop their male qualities. And vice versa. Women must seek the company of women from time to time to renew their female qualities. When both meet afterwards, their relationship is enriched.

Something else has to be considered. Both, the man and the woman, come from different families, and these families are different. Very often a woman thinks that her family is better than the family of the man, actually it is mostly the women who think this. That's why they laughed just now. But also men very often think that their family is better than the family of their wife. But both families are equally good. It has to be admitted that both families are equally good, although they are different.

This is important, once there are children. With regard to their education there is very often a conflict between the partners. The woman thinks that the children should be educated according to the values of family. And the man thinks that the children should be educated according to the values of his family. Then the children have a difficult time because they love both their parents, and they love the families of both their parents. So the parents have to agree that they acknowledge the values of both families and educate their children accordingly.

Now how will a child feel really happy? If the father looks at the child and sees in the child his wife and if he loves in the child his wife. And vice versa. If the woman looks at the child and sees in the child the father of the child and if she loves in the child the father of the child. Then children feel really happy.