Hellinger's "Orders of Love": summary, reader reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

"Orders of Love" by Hellinger is the main book for those who have long been trying to find a way to maintain or build harmony in the family. His technique is used everywhere and it is officially recognized in Serbia. The book, written in 2001, immediately found its admirers, who give it only positive reviews. Hellinger's "Orders of Love" is a new and powerful approach to creating comfort in the home. It is about this book that we will talk in our article.

About the author

Bert Hellinger is today considered one of the most innovative and influential psychotherapists in the world. He synthesized years of study and experience with many modalities in an approach he developed on his own and called "Family Constellations". He introduced a way of separating current family members from the unresolved issues of previous generations so that love could be passed on from generation to generation.

How did you come to psychotherapy?

The main influence in his life was primarily his parents, whose Catholic faith protected him from the distortions of National Socialism. In 17 yearshe was drafted into the German army and survived combat, capture and imprisonment as an Allied prisoner of war.

At the age of 20, he became a Jesuit priest, spending 16 of his 25 years in the priesthood as director of a Zulu mission school in South Africa. During his entire time in South Africa he underwent an interracial ecumenical training in group dynamics led by the Anglican ministry. Their approach to dialogue, phenomenology and individual experience influenced his subsequent work.

After leaving the religious order, he continued his studies in psychoanalysis, gest alt therapy and neurolinguistic programming. He has trained with Arthur Yanov, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. Extrapolating from various aspects of all of his major influences, Burt created the Family Constellations approach to healing the family field. Through constant observation, he saw certain patterns, which he called "Orders of Love." Hellinger and his work are constantly evolving with the recent revelation of Spiritual Movements and Spiritual Mind Movements.

Author's books

The list contains books that are available for reading in Russian. The list includes the following materials:

• "Orders of love: resolution of systemic family conflicts and contradictions" (2001);
• "The source doesn't need to ask the way" (2005);
• "Orders of Help" (2006);
• "We're moving forward. A course for couples in difficult situations" (2007);
• "Thoughts of God. Their roots and their impact"(2008);
• "Big Conflict" (2009);
• "The Happiness That Remains" (2009);
• "Love of the Spirit" (2009);
• "Healing. Get He althy, Stay He althy" (2011);
• "Success in Life / Success in Profession" (2012);
• "Success stories in life and profession" (2015).

Hellinger's Order of Love

The "Family Constellation" method was developed in the early 1980s by the German psychotherapist, philosopher, theologian and educator Bert Hellinger. Influenced by group dynamics, primary therapy, transactional analysis and various types of hypnotherapy, he adapted the method to the modern therapeutic approach. Hellinger's "Order of Love" has been successfully applied throughout the world and is also known as the "Constellation Work" or "Hellinger Work".

"Family constellations" is a phenomenological method. Possessing a deep healing effect, it goes beyond the classical therapeutic work. It includes both the transpersonal realm, which is unknown to us, and the level of the soul, intertwined with relationships in the family and social environment. This method goes beyond the personal level and allows you to understand the dynamics of the trans generation and the impact on people.

By understanding these dynamics through the so-called collective memory that connects us to transpersonality, we become able to understand the connections and the true meaning of relationships. With this approach, great progress can be made, andalso the resolution and process of healing in a person's life.

Method Recognition

"Family constellation" is one of the official methods in folk medicine, recognized by the Ministry of He alth of the Republic of Serbia in accordance with article 6 of the "Decree on the conditions and procedure for performing methods and procedures in folk medicine".

Besides Serbia, Hellinger's Orders of Love are used by practitioners all over the world. Although the therapy does not have an official status, its methodology underlies the work of psychologists who bring married couples to agreement.

It is known that a sufficient number of books and manuals have been written on the topic of how to find harmony in the family. However, most of them are either street reading that is not able to influence the course of events, or are too complex to interpret and then use.

What is the book about?

When a couple enters Bert Hellinger's work, the partners enter the realm of an unusual decision. Hellinger's book Orders of Love describes the author's approaches - family constellations and the underlying observations from which they are formed. It reveals the deepest dynamics of relationships. People are starting to see how invisible forces, including non-present family members and those from past generations, and decisions that were made long ago, are affecting current partners' bonds with each other on many different levels.

Stages of "constellations"

The Orders of Love by Bert Hellinger presents verbatim transcriptions of the constellations with multiple pairings, complete with questions, comments and discussions to focus this multidimensional process. Typically, a "constellation" goes through two stages. First, hidden, but convincing - the impact on the family. In the second stage, the healing movements and affirmations are discovered (restored) and then tested in the "constellation". Large or small mental adaptations that occur expand the couple's vocabulary in search of a solution.

Bert Hellinger's voice is clear and strong on topics such as love, suffering, bonding, giving and taking, parenthood, childlessness, fidelity, separation and sexuality. Throughout The Orders of Love by B. Hellinger there are moments of exceptional clarity and unpleasant surprise: the resonance and dissonance of a new understanding of the ways in which we can support love, and the ways in which love can support us.

Practitioners review

For doctors, psychologists, counselors of all kinds and psychotherapists, the basic text to work with is The Orders of Love by Bert Hellinger. The experience and feedback of many practitioners in this field demonstrates that this is the most dynamic development in the field of psychological and physical healing in recent decades.

The book is a continuous combination of storytelling, anecdotes, transcripts and didactic material, illustrating how family members inflict trauma on each other andmisunderstandings, often spanning generations, and how they are resolved by restoring the proper "orders of love". The theme of the book is much broader and deeper than How to Have Good Relationships. It's about the unrecognized rules of love and relationships and restoring the integrity of family systems and relationships.

Practitioners in the reviews claim that long-term psychological and physical problems that did not respond to other forms of healing were solved in one "constellation". Everyone in counseling should read this book and understand this material.

Strangely enough, considering how popular psychotherapy is in the United States and in many other countries, Russia is perhaps the last country on the planet that recognizes and accepts the merits of the work of Bert Hellinger.