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Issue 12, June 2008

£ 12.00

Contents

  • Barbara Morgan: Editorial

SPOTLIGHT ON

  • Barbara Morgan: Interview with Bert Hellinger

JOURNEYS OF THE SOUL

  • Dan Booth Cohen: Family Constellations & the Soul

  • Bettina & Alfred R. Austermann: The Lost Twin

  • Jen Altman: Snippet – Other Lost Twins

  • Geoff Mead: Storytelling & Constellations

  • Chris Walsh: Mindfulness & Phenomenology

HUMAN RIGHTS

  • Alemka & Max Dauskardt: Sorry Business: Winds of Change in Australia

  • Raquel Schlosser: Family Semantics & Human Rights

TRAUMA

  • Graciela Lauro: Trauma - Interview with Anngwyn St. Just

ORGANISATIONAL WORK

  • Simon Loveday: Finding a Place for Place

  • Cheng Lap Fung: The Healing Power of ‘Future’ – Part I

REFLECTIONS & PERSONAL STORIES

  • Berthold Schmidt: The End of Enlightenment

  • Vivian Broughton: Constellations, Psychotherapy, Standards & Associations

  • Christine Wilson: Attachment & Bonding within Family & Community

CONSTELLATIONS

  • Bill Mannle: The Unkindest Cut of All

  • J. Edward Lynch: Blood Red Moon

  • Sheila Saunders: Representing ‘Psychosis’

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Barbara Ashley Phillips: ‘A Place in My Heart’ by Annette Aubrey

  • Meretta Hart & Jutta ten Herkel: ‘Relative Balance in an Unstable World’ by Anngwyn St. Just

NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

  • Various Contributors

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

AN INVITATION FROM RAQUEL SCHLOSSER

Extracts

Geoff Mead: Meanings, Moments & Movements: Storytelling & Constellations

In a way, we might say that all constellations are based on story. The client is interviewed with the intention of becoming clear about what solution they want and gathering the basic information, the bare bones of their story…One could describe what we then see unfolding in the constellation as a story in motion…What we witness, time after time in constellations work, is the innate desire of the system to reconstitute relationships so that they become more congruent with lawful patterns. When it occurs, we might call it a movement of the soul, the universal animating principle of which we all, human and non-human, partake. I think that at least, some traditional stories work in a similar way…Opening the story up, enacting and embodying our responses, can implicitly help us connect with our souls. Such a story speaks the language of the soul, which understands that kings and queens, horses, ravens and the hidden heart are all aspects of ourselves.

Barbara Morgan: Interview with Bert Hellinger

BH: There is one important aspect of the spirit-mind. It never repeats itself. Everything is new. As soon as you rely on former experiences, then you rely on you, no longer on the spirit-mind. That is a big step to take, to trust something where you have no experience yet. Every insight coming from the spirit-mind is new and leads to something new. It is always creative and it always succeeds. And it cannot be repeated. That is a controversial thing to say but it is true.
BM: You have always been surrounded by controversy wherever you have been. What is your perspective on the current situation between the Sciencia programme and the ISCA? How do you see them co-existing and how do you see the tensions between you?
BH: I do not think about it. I allow everybody to go his own way because whatever they do they are also guided. We are not always guided to a success; we are also guided to failures so we can learn from them. I am also led to situations where I fail and I have to learn immediately that I have to change. To get in tune with the movement of the spirit-mind is an effort that takes your full time. Well actually, it is not really an effort, you just go with it and allow yourself to be guided.

Cheng Lap Fung: The Healing Power of Future: Part I

My work is gradually developing in a way that helps clients to look at the future. This path has led to some interesting observations: firstly, resolution of the past is not always necessary for the client\’s well-being and growth; secondly, when a client is able to reach to the future with his soul, in many cases resolution of the past is achieved automatically anyway. Usually this means that the entanglements is over and in the constellation, the representatives often say: It is over. Even when the resolution for the past is visible and available, the individual members of the system generally do not feel at peace until the client begins to face the future.

Chris Walsh: Mindfulness & Phenomenology

Every time we are involved in a constellation we are involved in a phenomenological investigation. It is through the application of the phenomenological method that Hellinger discovered the orders of love. Although the orders of love reduce relationships to simple formulae, they provide the basis for an understanding that assists us to enhance the health and well-being of those relationships. So research can assist us in our understanding and application of constellations.

Using the phenomenological method for facilitating family constellations leaves us with at least three practical dilemmas:

1. How to integrate useful pre-existing knowledge and theories.

2. How to deal with background assumptions which may be out of awareness.

3. The lack of a systematic method for training and improving our skills in the phenomenological method.

Once a practitioner is guided by theories of the orders of love or any other pre-existing theory or experience, they are no longer being strictly phenomenological. Phenomenology may either confirm the theory or demonstrate that it does not apply in the particular case in question. In this way phenomenology is not only helpful for the case in question, it also helps us to fine tune our theory. So we need to be able to move between the phenomenological stance and scientific enquiry, which includes accessing theory. It also includes paying attention to specific facts as presented by the client.