Influences of Bert Hellinger
-exerpted from "Love's Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships" by Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont
Bert Hellinger was born in pre-World War II Germany. "Because of his repeated absences from the required meetings of the Hitler Youth Organization, he was eventually classified by the Gestapo as "Suspected of Being an Enemy of the People." His escape was paradoxically made possible when he got drafted. Just 17 years old, he experienced the realities of combat, capture, defeat and life in a prisoner of war camp in Belgium. At age 20, he entered a Catholic religious order and began the long process of the purification of body, mind, and spirit in silence, study, contemplation and meditation."
"His 16 years in South Africa as a missionary to the Zulu also deeply shaped his later work. His peculiar ability to perceive systems in relationships and his interest in the human commonality underlying cultural diversity became apparent during those years. He saw that many Zulu rituals had a structure and function similar to elements of the Catholic Mass, pointing to common human experiences. He is committed to the goodness of cultural and human variety, and to the validity of doing things in different ways. The Sacred is present everywhere.
"The next major influence was his participation in an interracial, ecumenical training in group dynamics led by Anglican clergy. They had brought from the United States a form of working with groups that valued dialog, phenomenology, and individual human experience. He experienced, for the first time, a new dimension of caring for souls. He tells how one of the trainers once asked the group, "What’s more important to you, your ideals or people? Which would you sacrifice for the other?" A sleepless night followed, as the implications of the question were profound. Hellinger says, "I’m very grateful to that minister for asking that. In a sense, the question changed my life. That fundamental orientation toward people has shaped all my work since. A good question is worth a lot."
"His decision to leave the religious order after 25 years was amicable. He describes how he gradually became clear that being a priest no longer was an appropriate expression of his inner growth. With characteristic impeccability and consequent action, he gave up the life he had known so long."
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Additional influences on Hellinger's work include Psychoanalysis and Primal Scream therapy. He studied with the most notable teachers of these disciplines, gaining an appreciation of the body's role in our emotional lives from his work with Janov. Several other therapeutic schools have had an influence on his work, including Gestalt therapy and Virginia Satir's family constellations methods. He has also trained in Milton Erickson's Hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Hellinger's contribution is his unique integration of diverse elements and his unwavering loyalty to and trust in each person's soul.
Bert Hellinger has set up and worked with many thousands of family constellations. Over time, he observed certain essential patterns emerged, as if Life itself had rules or "orders of love" that transcended our cultural or societal ideals. It is in taking Family Constellations the next step, and re-ordering these systems so that they are in line with the greater life force, that allows love to flow freely in our relationships where it had been blocked.
