Everyone knows that we inherit from parents not only physical indicators – growth, color of eyes and skin, but also some psychological properties. The widely known method of constellations is based on information from several generations of ancestors, which have an impact on the fate of a person.
More and more specialists are paying attention to this method of therapy, as it is really effective in solving life situations, analyzing and changing their behavior.
In this article, we will consider 3 common psychological areas of work with family history.
1 method. Family sculpture
This method was developed by Virginia Satir, an American psychologist who was one of the first to study the problems of family psychology and family therapy. Satir also called the developed method of family sculpture “the technique of a simulated family”. Here, family members are arranged in order to clarify the structure of the family using a spatial representation of the relationship. Roles are performed by family members or workshop participants. Each family member demonstrates their image of the family. So everyone understands how differently family members perceive the forms of communication and the rules in force in the family.
The client brings photographs, a family tree and a genogram to the workshop with a description of the relationship and all the details of the life of his family. In the process of reconstruction, the interlacing of relations, as well as the social connections of family members are depicted and investigated, and the missing parts of the biography and family history can be filled.
2 method. Psychogenesis
The founder of the course, Anne Anselin Schutzenberger, is a French psychologist, psychotherapist and professor emeritus at the University of Nice. Anselin Schutzenberger called the influence of ancestors on the fate of man transgenerational ties. She believed that the life and development of man is no less (and maybe even in certain cases more) influenced by the culture and life of his ancestors. The family, whether she wants it or not, carries all the baggage of events that have occurred with her representatives in many generations. Maybe that’s why the people have an idea about the curse of descendants – “to the seventh generation”. From generation to generation, from grandparents, through parents and mothers, family myths and ready-made life scenarios are passed on to children.
The goal of psychogenalogy: to identify what can be passed on from generation to generation (family secrets, recurring events, debts, failures), unravel tangles of family ties and help free oneself from family “inheritance” – not to repeat the scenarios of a past family but live and build your own life.
The main tool of the method is genosociograms, which are based on the information that the patient provides about his family. The genosociogram schematically describes the life of five to seven generations of a family. Important events in the life of all family members are noted: birth and death, marriages, divorces, accidents, illnesses… Moreover, it is not the event as such that is important, but its significance for family members. Psychogenesis helps to realize how events that occurred in the lives of different generations of a family affect the fate of a client. And this gives the client the opportunity to change the idea of himself and his life.
3 method. The Bert Hellinger family constellation method
Bert Hellinger is a German philosopher, psychotherapist and theologian.
The author of the method notes that often the source of the client’s problem lies in the standard of living of their ancestors, for example, parents or grandparents. Any tasks that have not been lived to the end of the script or the uncorrected mistakes of the past are passed on to descendants by gender, thereby weaving them into living and processing what the ancestors did not complete. So, the Hellinger constellations are a method that allows you to work with a person as part of a system, find and eliminate the causes of certain negative phenomena in a person’s life, the source of which is in the life of ancestors.
What is the arrangement? At the seminar, the client calls his request, that is, his problem or symptom and approximately describes what is the desired solution for him. The therapist asks the client to name the people important to him, as well as significant events in the life of the client, the generation of his parents and the generation of grandparents. Based on these facts and emotional reactions, the therapist hypothesizes what is behind the problem of family speakers and checks them in the arrangement.
The information that our kind carries through generations is really important and influences our present life. The systems of relationships in the family prior to certain events, to the family, certain hushed up facts or people in the family, about which it was not customary to speak for certain reasons, matter. And even that which you do not know affects you in a certain indirect way, on a spiritual level. Having discovered the “difficult” places, realizing them, you can change the destructive life scenario in various areas of life – family, career, study, health.
Good luck in finding.
