Bert Hellinger

The German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger (born 1925) is among the most well-known, influential and controversial practitioners living in Europe. He is considered the principal developer of a therapeutic method best known as Family Constellations and Systemic Constellations. In recent years, his worked has evolved beyond these formats into what he now calls Movements of the Spirit-Mind. Several thousand professional practitioners world-wide, influenced by Hellinger, but not necessarily following him, continue to apply and adapt his original insights to a broad range of personal, organizational, and political applications. [http://www.iag-kongress.com/2007/en/ ]

Hellinger's work is not well known in the United States. An austere and emotionally intense single-session intervention that claims to positively impact chronic problems raise red flags of skepticism within the professional community of psychologists and psychotherapists. The field of psychology is littered with countless treatment modalities that were promoted as panaceas or instant cures for a broad range of ailments and later judged by empirical testing and accumulated anecdotal case study evidence to be of limited benefit or even harmful.

The American Psychological Association recognizes only 108 empirically supported treatments for the entire range of mental health disorders. These are predominantly cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal therapies. [ Chambless, D. L. & Ollendick, T. H. (2001). Empirically supported psychological interventions: Evidence and controversies. Annual Review of Psychology 52, 685-716.] Hellinger's approach is at philosophic and material odds with many precepts of scientifically supported psychology. Furthermore, his views are variance with commonly held perspectives about the sources of, and remedies for, human suffering.

Life

Hellinger was born into a Catholic family in Germany in 1925. During Hellinger’s childhood, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist (Nazi) party, came to power as Chancellor of Germany. Central to Nazi ideology was the subordination of the individual to the state, the necessity of blind and unswerving obedience to a supreme charismatic leader, the claims of the racial and cultural superiority of the Germanic peoples, and the identification of Jews and those of Jewish extraction as the personification of cosmic evil. The Nazi regime emphasized the inequality of men and races and the right of the strong to rule over the weak. The State apparatus consolidated and exercised control over the population through mass propaganda and systematized terror.

Even as the Nazi regime tightened its grip on the population in pursuit of its extreme nationalistic vision, there remained in Germany the remnants of a diverse cultural and intellectual tradition. Hellinger’s parents’ “particular form of [Catholic] faith provided the entire family with immunity against believing the distortions of National Socialism.” [Hellinger, B., Weber, G., & Beaumont, H. (1998). Love’s hidden symmetry: What makes love work in relationships. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen. p. 327 ] At age 10, he left his family to attend a Catholic monastery school run by the Order in which he was later ordained and that sent him to South Africa as a missionary.

The local Hitler Youth Organization tried without success to recruit the teenage Bert Hellinger. This resulted in his being classifying as ‘Suspected of Being an Enemy of the People’ [Cohen, D. B. (2006). “Family Constellations”: An innovative systemic phenomenological group process from Germany. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Familes. 14(3), 226-233.] In 1942, Hellinger was conscripted into the regular German army. He saw combat on the Western front. In 1945, he was captured and imprisoned in an Allied P.O.W. camp in Belgium. After escaping from the P.O.W. camp, Hellinger made his way back to a Germany that lay in ruins. Nearly 7 million people, out of a pre-war population of 68 million, had perished. Eight million refugees were expelled from areas captured by the Soviet Union and its allies. Every major German city had been pounded to rubble by Allied bombing. The industrial and transportation infrastructure were destroyed. Food and fuel were in short supply, leading to illness and malnutrition. The German state itself ceased to exist. [ibid.]

The Nazis’ master plan of creating a dominant global power led by a race of Übermenschen had resulted in a devastating and catastrophic defeat. Furthermore, the surviving Germans carried responsibility for being the perpetrators of history’s greatest crime against humanity, the extermination of more than 6 million Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and others in the Holocaust.

The brutality and destructiveness of the Nazi era is central to Hellinger’s life’s work. Sixty years after the cessation of warfare, with all the victims and perpetrators either dead or aged, Hellinger continued to focus on ways to acknowledge and reconcile the echoes and reverberations of this massive collective trauma. He aimed to interrupt the transmission of suffering and guilt to successive generations.

Following his return to Germany, Hellinger entered a Catholic religious order and began a long process of monastic purification. He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Würzburg en route to his ordination as a priest. In the early 1950s, he was dispatched to South Africa where he was assigned to be a missionary to the Zulus. There he continued his studies at the University of Pietermaritzburg and the University of South Africa where he received a B.A. and a University Education Diploma, which entitled him to teach at public high schools. [ibid.] Hellinger lived in South Africa for 16 years. During these years he served as a parish priest, teacher and, finally, as headmaster of a large school for African students. He also had administrative responsibility for the entire diocesan district containing 150 schools. He became fluent in the Zulu language, participated in their rituals, and gained an appreciation for their distinct worldview. [Hellinger, B. (2001a). Love’s own truths: Bonding and balancing in close relationships (M. Oberli-Turner & H. Beaumont, Trans.). Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.]

Although he makes no claim to be an interpreter or promulgator of Zulu culture, it is clear that his immersion in their lives had a profound impact on him. Of particular importance is the difference between Zulu attitudes toward parents and ancestors and those typically held by Europeans. The Hitler Youth Organization was notorious for encouraging children to betray their parents’ confidence. In Zulu culture, Hellinger says, “I never heard anyone speak disrespectfully about their parents. That would have been inconceivable.” [Hellinger, 2001, op.cit. p. 443]

His participation in a series of interracial, ecumenical trainings in group dynamics led by Anglican clergy in South Africa in the early 1960s laid the groundwork for his leaving the Catholic priesthood. The trainers worked from a phenomenological orientation. They were concerned with recognizing what is essential out of all the diversity present, without intention, without fear, without preconceptions, relying purely on what appears. [Hellinger, B. (2003). Farewell: Family constellations with descendants of victims and perpetrators (C. Beaumont, Trans.). Heidelberg, Germany: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag.] He was deeply impressed by the way their methods showed it was possible for opposites to become reconciled through mutual respect.

The beginning of his interest in phenomenology coincided with the unfolding dissolution of his vows to the priesthood. Hellinger tells how one of the trainers asked the group, “What is more important to you, your ideals or people? Which would you sacrifice for the other?” A sleepless night followed as Hellinger wrestled with the implications of this question. As a German, he had participated in the destruction of his country. As a priest, he was sworn to adhere to a particular creed, to a specific set of values and beliefs, and to accept the infallibility of the interpreter of God’s will, the Pope. This was not merely a philosophical riddle to him. He was acutely sensitive to how the Nazi regime sacrificed human beings in service of ideals. He says, “In a sense, the question changed my life. A fundamental orientation toward people has shaped all my work since.” [Hellinger et al., 1998, op.cit. p. 328 ]

He decided to give up the collar and, with it, his position as a respected teacher, headmaster, and school district administrator. He met his first wife, Herta, and was married, shortly after returning to Germany.He spent several years in the early 1970s in Vienna training in a classical course in psychoanalysis at the Wiener Arbeitskreis für Tiefenpsychologie (Viennese Association for Depth Psychology). He completed his training at the Münchner Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Psychoanalyse (Munich Psychoanalytic Training Institute) and was accepted as a practicing member of their professional association.

In 1973, he left Germany for a second time and traveled to the United States to pursue training from Arthur Janov in California. There were many important influences that shaped his approach. One of the most significant was Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis. Berne proposed that dysfunctional behavior results from self-limiting decisions made in childhood. Such decisions culminate in what Berne called the “life script,” the pre-conscious life plan that governs the way life is lived out. Changing the life script is the aim of Transactional Analysis [International Transactional Analysis Association. [http://www.itaa-net.org/ta/keyideas.htm] .]

Hellinger immersed himself understanding the embedded patterns by working with stories, fairy tales, novels and films that have special meaning to an individual. His work validated Berne’s key premise that there is an underlying, unconscious structure that shapes and drives people’s responses to external stimuli. Hellinger said, “Berne believed that these scripts are often based on early parental messages, but I discovered that this isn’t the whole truth.” [Hellinger, 2001, op.cit. p. 433)] It became clear to him that some of the scripts come from other sources. One example came from working with clients who chose the story of Rumpelstiltskin (Rumpelstilzchen in German) as their signature fairy tale. This is a story of a motherless child whose father gives her away. Hellinger asked, “Who has been given away?” In many cases, someone in the grandparent’s generation really had been sent away and the client’s life script came from this source. He concluded, “Whether we’re aware of it or not, a great deal of our suffering is not caused by what we have personally experienced, but what others in our system have experienced or suffered.” [ ibid., p. 434 ] Hellinger saw that some unconscious mechanism was transferring the psychic scars from grandparents to their newborn grandchildren.

The insight that a client’s current suffering could be entangled with events that occurred two or more generations earlier led Hellinger back to the United States to study emerging trends in family therapy. In 1979, he spent one month training with Ruth McClendon and Leslie Kadis. This was his introduction to the Family Sculpture method pioneered by Virginia Satir. Another major influence in his work during this period was the hypnotherapy of Milton Erickson. He also trained with Jeffrey K. Zeig, Stephen Lankton, Barabara Steen, Beverly Stoy, Frank Farelly, and Jacob Levy Moreno.

By 1985, Hellinger, then 60 years old, had completed a 15-year cycle of education and training. He had integrated what he had learned from psychoanalysis, Primal therapy, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt therapy, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, and the family systems insights of Virgina Satir and Ivan Bozsormeyni-Nagy into an approach that drew from these sources but was, in several key respects, radically different. Hunter Beaumont, writing the introduction to the, Love’s Hidden Symmetry [Hellinger, et al., op.cit. 1998] , asserted: “Bert Hellinger has re-discovered something about love in intimate relationships that grasps people and changes their lives. What he found is this: ‘Love follows the hidden order of the Greater Soul.’” This hidden order is not a rigid structure. Rather, they are always changing. Hellinger explained, "There’s something richly varied in them, a profound abundance we can glimpse for only a brief moment.” [ Hellinger, et al. 1998 op. cit. p. 91]

Nearing age 70, he had neither documented his insights and approach nor trained students to carry on his methods. He agreed for German psychiatrist Gunthard Weber to record and edit a series of workshop transcripts. Weber published the book himself in 1993 under the title Zweierlei Gluck [Capricious Good Fortune; aka Second Chance] . He hoped to sell two thousand copies within the community of German psychotherapists interested in alternative approaches. To everyone’s surprise, the book was received with acclaim and quickly became a national best-seller, selling two hundred thousand copies. Bert Hellinger experienced a rapid transformation from being a regional practitioner to an international best-selling author. During the next 15 years, he authored or co-authored 30 books.

Expanding from his base in Germany, Hellinger traveled widely, delivering lectures, workshops and training courses throughout Europe, the United States, Central and South America, Russia, China, and Japan. He made three trips to Israel, where his work often dealt with issues relating to the Nazi Holocaust. Hellinger never stood still or rested on his laurels. He continued to refine and develop his techniques, introducing an even more austere and minimalist variant of the Constellation process called Movements of the Soul. Beginning in 1997, a series of bi-annual international congresses were organized to integrate the principles of Hellinger’s Constellations within the broader fields of transpersonal psychology, health care, education, peace studies, and systemically-oriented organizational consulting. At their height, these congresses, organized first by Gunthard Weber, then Albrecht Mahr, and most recently Heinrich Breuer drew over 2,000 participants. Moving beyond psychotherapy, these events seeded the principles of the Constellation process within a broad range of professions.

In 2000, the Hellinger Institute, USA began offering year-long training programs in multiple cities the United States. These programs featured leading European faculty including Harald Hohnen, Dipl. Psych., Gunthard Weber, M.D., Hunter Beaumont, Ph.D., Stephan Hausner, and others.

Hellinger was accustomed to operating autonomously; he determinedly eschewed collegial dialogue, debate, or challenges over his methods and concepts. The physicians, psychologists, and academics who organized the International Association for Systemic Solutions (IAG) found Hellinger, at times, to be a reluctant, even unsupportive, collaborator. Further, Hellinger would not be moved by any criticisms of his idiosyncratic behavior, such as making sweeping statements that reduced complex issues to single root causes or his manner of sometimes addressing clients in a caustic, authoritarian tone. Many practitioners distance themselves from the method’s founding figure. Many others continued their association, integrating the further developments into their own practices.

Eventually Hellinger concluded, “there are some issues which cannot be solved with Family Constellations.’’ [Hellinger, B. (2006a). Movements of the spirit and the phenomenological approach. The Knowing Field: International Constellations Journal, 8, 69 ] This led to further refinements in his approach into what he calls “Gehen mit dem Geist (Moving with the Spirit or Moving with the Spirit-Mind)." "The basic procedure…is to do nothing, keep back, and just look…. The movement of the spirit is happening in all of them at the same time and that movement is consenting to everything as it is… In the end, we don’t know what happened. We don’t look for a solution in the usual sense. We bring something in tune with a spiritual movement and then we withdraw." [ibid.] Moving in a new circle, Hellinger and his second wife Maria Sophie Hellinger remain active as practitioners and teachers in their ever-evolving practice, operating under the name Hellinger School. [ http://www.hellinger.com/international/english/index.shtml ] Now in his 80s, he remains an articulate, controversial, and compelling figure who continues to publish, travel internationally and offer professional training programs.

Works

Hellinger has published more than 30 books with combined sales of one million copies in at least ten languages. Some of his books translated into English include:

* Hellinger, B. (2001). Love’s own truths: Bonding and balancing in close relationships (M. Oberli-Turner & H. Beaumont, Trans.). Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.
* Hellinger, B. (2002). Insights: Lectures and stories. (J. ten Herkel, Trans.). Heidelberg, Germany: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag.
* Hellinger, B. (2002). On life & other paradoxes: Aphorisms and little stories from Bert Hellinger (R. Metzner, Trans.). Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.
* Hellinger, B. (2003). Farewell family constellations with descendants of victims and perpetrators (C. Beaumont, Trans.). Heidelberg, Germany: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag.
* Hellinger, B. (2003). Peace begins in the soul: Family constellations in the service of reconciliation (C. Beaumont, Trans.). Heidelberg, Germany: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag.
* Hellinger, B. (2006). No waves without the ocean: Experiences and thoughts (J. ten Herkel & S. Tombleson, Trans.). Heidelberg, Germany: Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag.
* Hellinger, B. (2007). With God in mind. Berchtesgaden, Germany: Hellinger Publications.
* Hellinger, B. & ten Hövel, G. (1999). Acknowledging what is: Conversations with Bert Hellinger. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.
* Hellinger, B., Weber, G., & Beaumont, H. (1998). Love’s hidden symmetry: What makes love work in relationships. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

In German:

* Zweierlei Glück. Konzept und Praxis der systemischen Psychotherapie (1993)
* Ordnungen der Liebe (1994)
* Die Mitte fühlt sich leicht an (1996)
* Wo Schicksal wirkt und Demut heilt - ein Kurs für Kranke
* Wie Liebe gelingt (1999)
* mit Gabriele ten Hövel - Anerkennen, was ist. Gespräche über Verstrickung und Heilung
* Mit der Seele gehen
* Ordnungen des Helfens - Über die Ordnungen und Unordnungen sinnvollen professionellen Helfens
* Gedanken unterwegs
* Gottesgedanken - Über die Gottesvorstellungen der Menschen und ihre Wirkungen und Funktionen in Systemen.
* Wahrheit in Bewegung
* Der große Konflikt
* Ein langer Weg - Biographie (2005)
* Rachel weint um ihre Kinder - Familien-Stellen mit Überlebenden des Holocaust. Vorwort v. Haim Dasberg (Herder Verlag 3/2004, ISBN 3-451-05443-4)

External links

* [http://www.hellinger.com/international/english/index.shtml hellinger.com] Official page
* [http://www.hellinger.co.uk/ hellinger.co.uk] United Kingdom website for Hellinger therapy

References