Family Constellations. Jakob R Schneider
Diagram 6
Son: Yes, that’s very, very good. (He beams at his grandfather, who smiles back at him.) Now there’s a good balance there.
Daughter: I feel much better. The two grandmothers are good to have. Now my daddy is being taken care of and I don’t have to worry about him. Now I can actually live. My mummy is still missing something.
The therapist asks the client if either of his parents had had a relationship with someone else before they got married, or if anything else occurs to him that could be pertinent. The client says that his father did not have a relationship before he married his wife. He was somewhat younger that the client’s mother. The man vaguely remembers his mother having once spoken about a fiancé who had left her. Otherwise, nothing occurs to him. But, in case it should happen to be important, his mother had an abortion after his sister was born. His mother had told him about that recently, after a row with his father. He had the impression that she felt guilty about the abortion. The therapist chooses a representative for the mother’s one-time fiancé and places him next to the client’s mother.
| F | = | father |
| M | = | mother |
| S1 | = | elder son (client) |
| D2 | = | younger daughter |
| PGM | = | paternal grandmother (father’s mother) |
| MGF | = | maternal grandfatherr (mother’s father) |
| MGM | = | maternal grandmother (mother’s mother) |
| PGF | = | paternal grandfather (father’s father) |
| MFi | = | mother’s fiancé |
Diagram 7
The mother lays her head on this man’s chest in the same way she had put her head on her father’s chest. She becomes very teary. The therapist asks her to look at the man and say to him: “I miss you. I loved you very much. Despite the pain of your leaving, I have always longed for you. Now it’s time for me to truly let you go. I will remember you fondly.” The therapist leads the ex-fiancé off to the side, but still turned towards the others and clearly seen by them all. He moves the father a bit nearer the mother.
| F | = | father MGF = maternal grandfatherr (mother’s father) |
| M | = | mother |
| S1 | = | elder son (client) |
| D2 | = | younger daughter |
| PGM | = | paternal grandmother (father’s mother) |
| MGF | = | maternal grandfatherr (mother’s father) |
| MGM | = | maternal grandmother (mother’s mother) |
| PGF | = | paternal grandfather (father’s father) |
| MFi | = | mother’s fiancé |
Diagram 8
The therapist then asks the mother to look at her son and say to him: “My dear son, you have been my comfort. Whenever I look at you I feel a bit of my love and longing for my father and my ex-fiancé. Your presence has always been a relief for me, but now I release you. With my father in my heart and my mother close by, I am fine. I am letting go of my old fiancé along with the old pain and the old longings. I leave you to your dad.”
The client, who is sitting in the group, exhales visibly.
Finally, the therapist adds a representative for the aborted child and places this person on the floor in front of the two parents, leaning back against them. Both the father and the mother spontaneously lay their hands on the child’s head. They look directly and warmly at each other for the first time.
The client is asked to assume the place of his representative in the constellation. He stands quietly for a while and puts his arm around his sister. He then leaves her and goes to his father’s father, takes him by the hand and leads him to the grandfather’s son (the client’s father). Silently he embraces the two. The therapist firmly removes the client’s arms from the embrace and moves him back. He asks the father and grandfather to embrace the client instead of him embracing them. They do so energetically, and look at each other openly for the first time. The young man begins to sob deeply in the arms of the two men. A great tension seems to relax and something thaws towards his father. The client’s experience of his relationship with his father has always been distant and indifferent and now, suddenly, his father seems very close and he can feel love towards him. The therapist asks the man to leave off his sobbing and instead to breathe deeply until he really, physically feels his father. After a while the therapist moves the client from the arms of his father and grandfather, and turns him around in front of them so he can feel them at his back. The young man straightens up visibly, his face lightens up, and he nods firmly to the therapist.
| F | = | father |
| M | = |
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