Hellinger / Family Constellations

Bert Hellinger (1925–2019), German psychotherapist and former Catholic priest, developed Family Constellations (Familienaufstellung) from the 1970s onward — a phenomenological, systemic approach to uncovering hidden loyalties, entanglements, and transgenerational trauma within family systems. Influenced by his years among the Zulu in South Africa, by Eric Berne's transactional analysis, Arthur Janov's primal therapy, and above all by Virginia Satir's family sculpture work and the phenomenological tradition (Husserl, Heidegger). The method: a representative spatial arrangement (constellation) allows unconscious systemic orders to become visible and moveable. Key principles: the Orders of Love (Ordnungen der Liebe) — belonging, hierarchy, and balance of giving and receiving — govern system health. When these orders are violated (exclusion, early death, injustice), later generations unconsciously repeat or compensate. Systemic trauma thus travels across time not through memory but through morphic field-like entanglement. Later expanded into Organisational Constellations and 'Movements of the Spirit-Mind.' Controversial but enormously influential in German-speaking therapy, somatic trauma work, and increasingly in leadership development and organisational consulting.

· 1975– · active · influence 6/10