Family Constellation Therapy: Body Memory and the Sense of Space

“Family constellation” is a ritualized form of counselling or psychotherapy conducted in the setting of a group (Sax/Weinhold/Schweitzer 2010). Family constellations were introduced in Germany in the beginning of the 1990s ( Weber 1993). Over the following two decades, the approach enjoyed rapid adoption in various settings and fields of therapeutic and counselling practice. It spread to various other countries around the globe ( Alonso 2005; Cohen 2006). In Germany, the method was criticized within academia and psychotherapy, in particular for seemingly patriarchal “orders of love” according to which family dynamics evolve, and the directive method and stance of the founder of family constellation, Bert Hellinger ( Haas 2009).