Family Constellations and the Collective Unconscious.
Although many psychological and psychiatric theories abound, depending on what school a person adopts, most of the theories pretty much originate from a specific source and branch from there. This is true, especially when it comes to family dynamics.
In trying to fathom emotions of the modern family of today, Bert Hellinger, in his book "Love's Hidden Symmetry,"" has come up with certain conclusions about why we react the way we do, and namely, it is so we fit in with our family group more effectively.
Yet it can be said that Hellinger is not necessarily the first to have brought up this theory. Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud's protégé, came up with some similar dynamics, but instead of addressing these dynamics as the "family constellation,"" as Hellinger calls it, Jung tagged it the "collective unconscious."" Although these two mental health experts lived a century apart, their theories both have many similarities.
In this paper, I will try to identify both of the theories, then compare and contrast them with one another. Finally, I will place my personal thoughts and experiences explaining how this has touched my own life.
In his book, Hellinger puts forward that people generally behave the way they do, not because of environment necessarily, but because of how their generation ancestors behaved as well. He classifies most relationships between family members as "the orders of love- and indicates how disturbances in such orders end up creating negative legacies.
The book is mainly a "how to- guide, namely how to create a roadmap, which he calls "family constellations- to help family members determine why they behave in a specific way. The idea behind this is that once knowledge has been obtained on this, the family member can work toward improvement.
He provides some interesting insights in terms of the orders of love, namely that the purest kind of love between a child and his parents is that type of love in which a child pretty much affirms parents as they are.
