Love-S-Hidden-Symmetry-Pdf

Copyright © 1998 by Bert Hellinger, Gunthard Weber, and Hunter Beaumont. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright owner. Published by ZEIG, TUCKER & Co., INC. 3614 North 24th Street Phoenix, Arizona 85016 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hellinger, Bert Love's hidden symmetry: what makes love work in relationships / by Hert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, p. cm. Translation and reworking of: Zweierlei Gluck. ISBN 1-891944-00-2 1. Family psychotherapy. I. Weber, Gunthard. II. Beaumont, Hunter. III. Zweierlei Gluck. IV. Title. 616.89 156—dc21 98-13152 CIP Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 CONTENTS Acknowledgments iv Foreword by Gunthard Weber v Introduction by Hunter Beaumont ix PART ONE The Phenomenology of Intimate Relationship Systems 1 Chapter One Guilt, Innocence, and the Limits of Conscience 3 Chapter Two Man and Woman: The Foundation of Family 31 Chapter Three Parents and Children 92 Chapter Four The Conscience of the Family Group 150 Chapter Five Love and the Greater Soul 190 PART TWO Psychotherapeutic Considerations 203 Chapter Six The Therapeutic Posture 205 Chapter Seven Some Helpful Interventions 251 Chapter Eight Specific Themes in Systemic Psychotherapy 302 Appendix Influences on the Development of Hellinger's Work 327 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have contributed generously to this effort. To John B. Cobb for teaching me to think about process—holisti- cally and systemically. To K. E. and H. A. for preparing the ground. To John Hobbs for his generous gift of time and skill in correcting my grammar and style and for supporting my tenuous relation ship to the common comma. To Deb Busman for courageous and caring criticism that helped. To Colleen, my wife, with whom I have learned most of what I know about relationships, and for the space, confrontation, love, and criticism. To Erik and Jesse, my children, for making my life very worthwhile. To my parents for making everything possible. To many unnamed others—friends, relatives, students, colleagues, critics—who have contributed directly and indirectly. To Bert Hellinger for the work, and for the abundance of support and care. My heartfelt gratitude, Hunter Beaumont iv FOREWORD by GUNTHARD WEBER In his poem, "Legends of the Origins of the Book Tao te Ching dur ing Lao-tzu's Emigration," Bertolt Brecht describes how a customs official got Lao-tzu to declare his knowledge before he withdrew to the mountains: On their fourth day among the boulders A customs man blocked their way: "Valuables to declare?"—"None." And the boy who led the oxen, spoke: "He has been teaching." And so his knowledge was declared. The man, in his excitement Asked: "What! Did he make a profit from it?" Said the boy: "He gained knowledge that soft water, Moving over time, defeats the mighty stone. You understand, that the hard is weak." I later learned that Lao-tzu's book is also important to Bert Hell- inger. For many years, I have regretted that almost nothing has been written about Bert Hellinger's work, and many others have told me that they feel the same way. Still, I can well understand his caution in committing to writing something that others might treat either as a revelation of truth or as confirmation of their prejudices. "The spirit moves like wind," he has said. What is written loses its con nection to real life so easily, loses its vitality, and becomes oversim- v vi Love's Hidden Symmetry plified, uncritically generalized, and rendered into fixed patterns and empty sentences. Bert Hellinger: "The best can't be said. The next best will be mis understood." My doubts that writing is a suitable medium to com municate what Bert Hellinger has developed were gradually assuaged by my repeated experience of the value of his ideas—for me personally, and also for my clients in my psychotherapeutic work. His intention to retire—he became 72 in 1997—strengthened both my interest in watching him at work once more and my resolve to make his teachings available to others. I asked him in 1990 if he would permit me to be a "customs official," and he agreed. My first plan was to videotape one of his seminars, and then to publish the transcripts. After I had taped the second seminar and he had given me copies of his lectures "The Orders of Love" and "The Limits of Conscience," as well as other material, it became clear that this plan was not adequate. The present volume is the result of an attempt to integrate his ideas about family relationships and sys temic psychotherapy and to give an overall impression of his work. In this I have attempted to allow Bert Hellinger to speak his own words, and wherever possible, I have included transcripts of his seminars. I have withheld critical commentary where my views dif fer from his, hoping that each reader will come to grips with the text in his or her own way. Why did I choose to describe the systemic psychotherapy of Bert Hellinger? In my career, I have participated in many different work shops and training seminars from a great variety of psychotherapeu tic schools and orientations and with a variety of teachers. The three seminars I did with Bert Hellinger in the 1970s remain indelible in my memory. In every seminar, I experienced something that contin ued to move me years later, to work in me, bringing me back into balance, guiding me back to myself when I became confused. I was impressed by the precision of his way of seeing—I still think of him as a "seer." I know no other therapist who is able to recognize prob lematic patterns so quickly, to interrupt them so effectively, and to reopen the possibility of change in areas of the soul that are seldom addressed in psychotherapy with such impeccable timing and loving humor. As a participant, I lacked the necessary distance to discover how he does what he does; for example, how he awakens the "good that is present in the transitory moment," how his stories are con- Foreword vii structed, how he manages to reduce and concentrate the family constellations so that they become powerful therapeutic interven tions. At first, I found his ideas about the background of tragic fam- iy entanglements alien, and I felt resistance to his style of communication without understanding what he really meant. Participants in his workshops are presented with a meeting that is clear, challenging, orienting, and encouraging, and, at the same me, free of personal investment in a particular outcome. He is separate and intimate simultaneously, thus avoiding power conflicts. Xith every theme that people bring, he moves the exploration inexorably toward the depth of human nature and to the existential dimension of our lives—themes such as belonging, bonding, love, tie success and failure of relationships, surrendering to the unavoidable, mortality, and death. For this reason, people are deeply moved, and also because the poetry of his words allows him to address the soul directly. Although what he says often appears to relate to the past, ±rough his feelings and intuition he is always scanning the horizon for resolutions that set free possibilities for attaining unrealized good. The family constellations develop their deep natural force for dealing because information is accessed that is nonverbal, as in a drninal state of a rite of passage. The old, which must be left behind, ind the new, which is to come, meet and are one. The content of this book is susceptible to being misunderstood ad to skeptical or infuriated rejection. Those easily swayed will be tempted to interpret what they read as universal truth. He often formulates what he says as if it were an eternal or absolute truth, rut careful observation of his work reveals that his therapeutic interventions are directed to a specific individual in a specific therapeutic context. If you try to make these specific statements nto general truths and rules for behavior, then you keep the peel md throw away the fruit. After setting up a family constellation, de often recommends not doing anything different at all, but to let die constellation continue to work in the soul until the necessary md appropriate action has become clear. On reading the transcripts, it will become obvious how quickly Bert Hellinger pulls back when someone tries to generalize uncriti cally. He also guards against his thoughts and observations being poured into specific theoretical molds. "Too much theory interferes with practice." I have followed his lead in this. He sees his work as viii Love's Hidden Symmetry being phenomenological. For him, what needs to be done emerges from really seeing what is happening. "I open myself to a situation in darkness, not knowing what is going on. The question is: How do I get to a truth concealed in darkness? I dive into a flowing field; I become part of it, and it reaches out beyond me. Things move in the field, some into areas of light, revealing something of whatever IS. I open myself to that and wait for something to come to me. An image for this process is: I feel my way in darkness along the walls until I find a door. When I find a place of light, I try to describe what is illuminating me with a word that is full and ripe. When the right word is found, those for whom it came grasp it at a level beyond rational thought. The right word touches and moves them, even when they don't understand how." I will be pleased if this book is a "right word" that touches you.

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