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Home / Volume 4, Issue 2 – Winter 2012 / Exploring Constellations  

Exploring Constellations
A brief examination of the synergies
between Constellations and Inter-
subjective Systems Theory

Kim Liversidge
The knower affects the known. Quantum physics – understanding the world as system –
helps us to accept this perhaps. In my view the beauty and challenge of Inter-subjective
Systems Theory as first developed by psychotherapists Drs Robert Stolorow, George
Atwood and Donna Orange (1979,1984, 1987, 1992, 1997) and the methodology of
Constellations as first developed by German psychotherapist Burt Hellinger (see for
example Hellinger 1998), is that they also both subscribe to this systemic view; the knower
affects the known.

I come from the unusual position of having experienced both these meta-theories during
my training as a Humanistic and Integrative psychotherapist and therefore am highly
influenced by both. I feel strongly that each enhances the other, and in my view both are
particularly helpful for building self-esteem and getting ever nearer to one’s ‘Original Self’
as described by Thomas Moore (2000). Both offer the possibility for dialogue between self
and other, leading to insight about one’s creative needs. It would be impossible to give an
overview of both theories here. However, I am interested in starting a conversation about
their synergies and also to wonder about some of the differences between them. To begin
with, in order to highlight my thesis, I will describe a constellation. The constellation I am
writing about is a composite, made up of several of my own experiences of constellations
over the years. To further protect confidentiality I have also altered various details. The
facilitator is an experienced psychotherapist, skilled in working phenomenologically and
with trauma.

A group of strangers, about fifteen people, sits in a large circle. The facilitator asks who
would like to go next. A man, mid-forties, raises his hand; I shall call him Sam. He sits next
to the facilitator and speaks about his growing fears of losing his young son. He speaks of
always having had a fear of his son turning away from him, and a sense of frustration that
he feels he is now making that very thing happen. Sam doesn’t want to lose his son but he
can feel the relationship beginning to break down, can feel a horrible coldness in himself
towards his son that he does not understand. The facilitator asks him a bit about his
upbringing: “It was pretty ordinary, though I often felt cut off from Mum and Dad. They
always seemed kind of distant. I know they loved me very much, but they were never
demonstrative sorts.” The facilitator asks: “Where were your Mum and Dad from?” Sam
replies: “Not from the UK. They were both German Jews; they came over here to escape
the war.” The facilitator thinks about this… “Your parents must have been very young
when they left Germany?” “Yes,” he says, “Mum came over on one of the last Kinder ships.”

(A bit of history) In response to Hitler stepping up his persecution of the Jews in 1938,
a time seen as the beginning of the Holocaust, ‘Kinder transport’ refers to an attempt
to remove the endangered Jewish children from Germany. British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain agreed to allow specially organised ships to bring over thousands
of unaccompanied children aged from birth to eighteen. They were allowed one small
suitcase, though it is reported that many arrived in the UK with nothing except a label
attached to their coats.

“How old was your mum when she was put on the ship?” asks the facilitator. “She was five
years old.” Sam replies. They speak a little more and then the facilitator asks: “Shall we
begin? Please choose somebody to represent yourself, and someone to represent your
wife and son.”
We all watch as these representatives move very slowly in the space until each feels in the
‘right’ place. The wife and son stand quite near one another, but are not looking at each
other or at the representative for Sam. He is turned completely away, reports feeling very
cold and finds it anxiety provoking when his son tries to move to where Sam can see him.
The son reports fleeting feelings of sadness and numbness. After a while the facilitator
asks Sam to choose someone for his mother. The mother can’t bear to have her son see
her and tries to move as far away as possible. Sam tries to move towards her, feels terrible
guilt at turning away from his own son, yet only wants to turn towards his mother. The
facilitator asks him to choose someone to represent his mother’s mother, his maternal
grandmother. He chooses me. It’s hard to explain, but I find that once I enter a
constellation, I stop hearing or being able to concentrate in the same way. So, with the aid
of the facilitator working phenomenologically, I am tuning into my body as it leads me.

I feel myself utterly unable to look at or be anywhere near ‘my daughter’. I notice panic
arise in me if she moves so that we could see each other. She reports feeling deeply angry
one minute, desperate the next; she wants me to look at her, to see her. Why don’t I look?
She weeps and then reports deep feelings of despair and gradually she loses energy and
begins to report feeling cut off. I can feel in me the absolute refusal to look or listen. I do
not want to see her. That’s all I know. The whole process of slow, slow steps towards me,
with me turning away as I follow my body, seems to go on forever. My body is rigid and
aching with the need to not look. Eventually, at some point my ‘daughter’ comes into my
line of sight. We see each other. The strangest sensation comes over me. My body slowly
seems to fold itself in half; I feel grief-wracked, acute pain. The facilitator asks Sam what
happened with his mum and her mother. “They never saw each other again… my
grandmother wasn’t able to escape in time, so she last saw mum when she was five, lined
up to get on the ship.”

It’s difficult to put into words just how powerfully this experience connected me at that
time in a new, embodied and immediate way with a strong ‘Organizing Principle’
(Stolorow, 1992:55). The other representatives, including Sam, also expressed a strong
sense of having reached new insights and understanding in relation to self and others.
Sam later reported that in the weeks and months following this experience he felt himself
able to be in a much more intimate and loving relationship with his son in particular, no
longer experiencing that coldness and turning away that had confused him and caused
him such pain. Donna Orange says: “To risk testing our organizing principles in dialogue
with a text or a person makes possible new meaning … empathy is implicit conversation
between perspectives.” (Orange, 1995:73). Orange is referring to psychotherapy but these
words, in my view, are equally applicable to a constellation. She also says ‘effects are
reasonable grounds for theory-choice’ (ibid: 41).

To place oneself in acConstellation is to take a risk, to experience consciously what it feels

like to ‘not know’ but rather simply to report and follow one’s instinctual responses. I feel
the experience and learning that occurs in a constellation experience supports the
therapist striving to work inter-subjectively.

At the conclusion of his teaching on Inter-subjective Systems Theory (IST) in Contexts of

Being Stolorow (1992) puts it thus: “We are led inexorably to a consideration of the limits
of self-reflection. Analysts are in the position of the mythical snake devouring itself by
swallowing its own tail unless they are able to reflect from a position that encompasses
principles of organization alternative to the ones being reflected upon.”

With an inter-subjectively inclined facilitator, a constellation presents the opportunity to

do exactly this.

One way in which these two theories appear to clash is that in setting up a constellation
according to Hellinger’s approach, the facilitator holds in her mind certain ‘rules’.
Constellations work arose out of Burt Hellinger’s original theory ‘Orders of Love’
(Neuhauser, 2001) however, I want to be clear that this is a very simplistic interpretation of
his intentions in those early days. Psychotherapist Barbara Morgan states: “The ‘orders’
and the natural laws which help maintain them, are much like any other theory we learn in
our psychotherapy training – they form the ‘ground’ from which we move out to the work.
They are not foreground. What’s foreground is in fact an emptying of the mind and an
openness to what emerges in the moment. The methodology has changed and evolved
over time but generally a constellations facilitator would be holding these ‘orders’ in mind
as part of the process but would be willing to let them go if what showed up in front of him
or her indicated something different. In other words, the work is phenomenological.”
(Morgan, 2012)

An example of a basic order is: ‘each of us was given life by a mother and a father’.
However, Orange speaks of ‘the harmful effects of rules’ (Orange, 1995:50) pointing out the
dangerous but understandable need we have to seek certainty as opposed to exploring
meanings and being with the ‘not knowing’. On the other hand, it is a given that in
individual therapy and supervision certain rules are applied on the understanding that
‘holding the frame’ in itself forms part of the therapeutic process. There’s a history to this
understanding and not so long back this wasn’t understood so clearly; boundaries were
less well considered and re-traumatisation was not uncommon. Today, from the outset,
we strive to hold certain boundaries because we understand this to be in the service of the
client and the relationship, just as we understand the importance of boundaries in any
healthy relationship.

I hope there will come a time when the teachings of Hellinger and the methodology of
constellations (when practiced inter-subjectively) will become integrated. I believe that
experiencing the struggle to widen our understanding of how to include it will be similar to
that of our struggle to let go of Stolorow’s ‘myth of the isolated mind’.

I am currently running a small experientialcConstellations group and I am in group and

peer supervision for this work. Ordinarily one might attend a one-off Constellations
Workshop and this can be particularly useful for clients who are in long-term
psychotherapy as a means of widening their perspective of a suffering. The purpose of my
on-going constellation group however is part of my own passionate enquiry as to how this
way of working deepens and supports individual psychotherapy: how am I translating
what I am learning – as a facilitator of constellations, as a representative in my
constellations supervision group and in my individual practice? What I am consistently
discovering is that I find using constellations in my individual practice, through use of
images, visualisations and representative objects (there are some specific items one can
use) is extremely effective in terms of illuminating meanings. I find that constellations
theory supports my quest to maintain ‘a stance of empathic enquiry’.
There are at present, increasingly in the UK, and worldwide, many different sorts of
constellations facilitators and of course slowly emerging are different sorts of trainings.
Perhaps in the end there will be as many different sorts of constellations facilitators as
there are different types of psychotherapy!

For the interested reader I would highly recommend UK Constellations Psychotherapist

Vivian Broughton’s In the Presence of Many: Reflections on Constellations Emphasising the
Individual Context (Broughton, 2010) and German psychotherapist Professor Franz
Ruppert’s Trauma, Bonding and Family Constellations (Ruppert, 2008). You are welcome to
email your thoughts/responses to this piece to me kimdliversidge@sky.com

Kim Liversidge is a UKCP registered MA Integrative Pyschotherapist working in

private practice in Bath, Somerset. She also works in Bristol for the charity
Trauma Foundation Southwest which provides long-term integrative
psychotherapy for asylum seekers and refugees. Her key area of interest is
working with people who suffer with issues of low self-esteem and seeking to
creatively enhance and develop her understanding of what helps.

References

Atwood, G. E. & Stolorow, R. D. (1984) Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in

Psychoanalytic Phenomenology. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.

Broughton, V (2008) In the Presence of Many: Reflections on Constellations Emphasising

the Individual Context. UK: Green Balloon Publishing

Hellinger B, Weber B and Beaumont H (1998) Love’s Hidden Symmetry. Phoenix: Zeig,
Tucker

Moore, T (2000) Original Self. New York: Perennial

Morgan, B (2012) Private Communication

Neuhauser, J (ed) (2001) Supporting Love: How Love Works in Couple Relationships
Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen Inc

Orange, D (1995) Emotional Understanding London: The Guilford Press

Orange, D. M., Atwood, G. E., & Stolorow, R. D. (1997). Working Intersubjectively:

Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press

Ruppert, F (2008) Trauma, Bonding and Family Constellations: Understanding and Healing
Injuries of the Soul, UK: Green Balloon Publishing

Stolorow, R. D. & Atwood, G. E. (1979) Faces in a Cloud: Subjectivity in Personality Theory.

Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson

Stolorow, R. D., Brandchaft, B., & Atwood, G. E. (1987) Psychoanalytic Treatment: An

Intersubjective Approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press

Stolorow, R. D. & Atwood, G. E. (1992). Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations

of Psychological Life. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press

Image: Humans by Stefano Corso

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