Family constellations: a type of (pseudo) psychological therapy

The family constellations They are a type of therapeutic dynamic that is having a great boom in recent times. This psychotherapeutic process is carried out in a group and seeks to awaken the feelings and emotions that we have latent in our unconscious.

The theoretical support of family constellations is rather questionable. They tend to base this practice on the fact that people live with certain unconscious emotional conflicts that we have not been able to resolve throughout life. This unconscious burden can lead us to experience pain and other emotional problems, without us being able to get rid of the cause of the problem. These internal conflicts can lead to behavioral problems and be in permanent dispute with certain people in our environment.

Family Constellations: Family Introspection Therapy

But what exactly do the dynamics of family constellations consist of? The dynamic is carried out with several people gathered in the same room. They are people who do not have any family ties between them and who want to know themselves better and, perhaps,

overcome some family and interpersonal conflicts that have dragged on for years.

We must make a small clarification: although family constellations are carried out in groups, they do not It is considered as a group therapy to use, since there are important methodological differences regarding these.

The philosophical and methodological bases

The promoter of the constellation method is the psychologist, pedagogue and priest of the Catholic Church Bert Hellinger. This German developed the foundations of the family constellations in the 90s, and is considered the founder and its main author.

During his professional career of more than half a century, Hellinger researched, processed and collected data on the families he helped. He discovered that most of us unconsciously reproduce patterns and dynamics within our family. They are patterns that, very frequently, lead us to have bad psychological experiences: anxiety, anger, guilt, contempt, isolation... In addition, we may be suffering from certain disorders as a result of our relationship with family members, such as alcoholism wave emotional dependence.

Hellinger reflects and says that when we are children, we are likely to sacrifice our own emotional balance to correct the emotional problems of our parents or other close relatives. According to Hellinger, family constellations can help discover and reinterpret these unconscious patterns so that we are able to live and relate in a healthier, more balanced and happy way.

In summary, the objective of family constellations is to detect and discover the unconscious dynamics of each family and the attitudes and behaviors that occur among its members. Through experimentation in situ, the participants in these dynamics can inspect their hidden feelings regarding their relatives, being an opportunity to find solutions to these latent conflicts.

Family constellation sessions: how are they carried out?

Then, How exactly do family constellations work? In an authorized room, several people meet (usually between 5 and 12), among them the constellator, who acts as a therapist and organizes the dynamics.

Sessions usually last several hours. Each workshop consists of 4 to 7 people, as the therapist deems appropriate based on the family to be represented in the dynamics. Each of the participants has a turn to constellate their own family, for one hour.

During the time in which a constellation passes, the rest of the participants stage and represent the unconscious experiences of the person who is doing the therapy. After each shift there is a 15-minute break to take a breath and continue with the next person. In this way, the therapeutic dynamics is chained and each participant carries out their own personal therapy and participates in the therapy of the other assistants.

People who participate in the dynamics do not have to know the characteristics or theories on which this type of therapy is based. The way of working is totally experiential, although the therapist imposes a series of essential methodological elements. All attendees conduct their own therapy, but they also benefit from experiencing all the roles playing the family members of the other participants, and drawing similarities with their own personal and family histories.

A therapy... useful? More like pseudoscience ...

The dynamics that develop in family constellations do not have any scientific endorsement. In fact, this practice is frequently related to pseudoscience and superstition. It is one of the fashions new age that have acquired relevance among the spiritual and pseudopsychological circles.

In any case, here we will limit ourselves to describing, or rather to echoing, all the possible applications of this type of therapy based on the testimony of Hellinger and other prominent defenders of this practice therapy.

Family constellation therapists often point out that this type of therapy is useful for treating systemic issues within the family. Can help resolve entrenched conflicts and reinterpret family relationships, and by extension to find a new meaning to life.

Conflicts that are usually treated by this therapy

• Problems in family relationships
• Childhood trauma
• Problems with your partner or with old romantic relationships
• Relationship with children
• Depressive pictures, sadness
• Grief processes
• Coping with serious pathologies
• Isolation, feelings of loneliness
• Other conflicts

One more among existential therapies

Existential therapies are based on a phenomenological vision of the human psyche, and therefore of the psychological conflicts that we suffer. The dynamics of existential therapies leave the therapist in the background, and focus on allowing the patient to perform deep introspection.

This allows the person to detect latent conflicts and try to resolve them, usually through reinterpretation and reconciliation with certain people and events from the past. However, its scientific foundation is non-existent so since Psychology and Mind We must warn that participating in these types of sessions can be useless and even harmful.