The Knowing Field Issue 5

Dear Reader,

Taking over the Editorship of the Bulletin has been a challenging task and I want to begin by offering my heartfelt gratitude to Barbara Stones for the grace with which she has handed it over in a quietly supportive way, standing aside to allow me to find my place as Editor. As the Bulletin moves forward from here, in a way mirroring the progress of the wider field of the constellation work, I foresee many changes over the next few years, as the work evolves and develops. Honouring Barbara and Jutta ten Herkel as the founders of this Bulletin in the same way as Bert Hellinger continues to be honoured as the founder of the constellation work, for me forms an important background to this forward movement. It was their vision and courage to launch the Bulletin and their subsequent tenacity and hard work which has brought us to this point. This issue marks a transition, as next year there will be some major changes. The Bulletin will be re-named and will be issued twice a year to encompass the mushrooming of the work outside Germany.

Already in this issue, we see two major new developments in this work. The first is explored by Bertold Ulsamer, who examines how the trauma work of Peter Levine can further the work in constellations, with great benefit. Ed Lynch’s constellation piece provides a graphic illustration of the kinds of traumas that can emerge with clients, whilst Albrecht Mahr takes the issue of trauma to the wider field of Genocide and the horrors of Rwanda in this, the tenth anniversary of the atrocities there.

The second development is a trend towards individual constellation work, which is reflected by two pieces: Helena Arkoudis-Konstantara’s article about the use of figures in individual work and Vivian Broughton’s review of two major books on the subject and a discussion of her views on the effectiveness of this approach.

With Colette Green’s article on Addiction and Eva Madelung’s exposition on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of embodiment, we see two moves to make links between the constellation work and other aspects of both psychotherapy and philosophy. Colette’s in-depth article provides an integration of object relations and constellation work. She includes a detailed case example as evidence of the efficacy of this combined approach to an affliction which affects an increasing number of people each year. Through the work of MerleauPonty, Eva makes a radical attempt to find one possible philosophical foundation for the process that all of us who have been representatives in constellations have experienced – that strange physical phenomenon of ‘oneness’.

At the cutting edge of the constellation work is the discussion on “Bowing” between Hunter Beaumont, Eva Madelung, Wilfried de Philipp and Jakob Schneider. This highlights how people can get into difficulties with their understanding and interpretation of the language of the constellation work and the role the superego plays. I imagine there will be further debate about this and other allied issues linking into the role of the superego in constellation work.

In sharp contrast, no debate is needed when we see how these archetypal movements can touch us at that deeper level of the soul, as illustrated in the newspaper article submitted by Bubula Lardi. In almost all the articles, we see the importance of the body and the role it plays in holding the memories of our personal and systemic experiences in the form of illness, addictions and trauma and how that memory can be called forth when we stand as representatives in constellations or work with individual clients.

From the articles appearing in this issue, it is hard to know what will happen to the constellation work. It is clear that it is changing and evolving and at the same time, the discussion on ‘Bowing’ in particular, illustrates the potential range of interpretation and application of the work and the ever-present risk of it becoming yet another ideology or set of moral dictums. In her Editorial in the previous issue, Barbara Stones wondered about the possibilities of the work becoming distorted through long, accredited trainings or people taking it lightly and not honouring that ‘knowing field’ named by Francesca Mason-Boring in her article in the same issue.

In recent times, Bert Hellinger has come under a lot of criticism and attack for his approach, particularly in Germany. Whilst some of this is healthy and constructive and may be necessary for the development of the work, it is hard to differentiate it from the task, also necessary, of deposing someone who has been revered for the enormous contribution he has made. This can be seen throughout history and as Bert said at the International Constellations Intensive held at ZIST last year, “It’s just a movement.”

Having attended Bert’s workshop on ‘Working with Psychosis and Schizophrenia’ in Holland a short while ago, I saw a change in him from the previous occasion at ZIST. True to his own philosophy about life and the constellation work, Bert continues to evolve and we all need to take care not to ‘fix’ him in a particular spot any more than the work. Some of his recent thinking on the subject of illness can be found in the two pieces contained in this issue, which have been extracted 2004 from a series of short lectures he gave in Mexico in 2003. We can see the development of his ideas and observations in these two pieces and at the same time, the essence of his approach remains unchanged and is beautifully captured by Jen Altman’s poem ‘The Art of Healing’ which she wrote after his supervision workshop in London in 2003.

My thanks go to all the Contributors for this issue, without whom the publication would not exist. Thank you also to the Translators and Editorial Team for all their hard work and to the Advisors for being there in the background. A special thank you to Carol, my Associate Editor, for her dogged persistence and last but not least, to the inventors of computers and email!

I hope you, the reader, will find much that inspires you.

Barbara Morga