From June 26th to September 19th 2003.
This work, based on a group therapy method
of the same name, deals with the handling of information and the many
different narrative levels arising from each unique event itself. In this
work, I document, break down and deconstruct the different sessions carried
out in the intimacy of a group of anonymous people to reconstruct them
again.
Starting from documentary material – the taping of
the therapy sessions – audiovisual information is subtracted from,
contracted or expanded upon in order to show us those different levels
that occur simultaneously as overlapping layers forming the very event
itself. Thus human behaviour can be interpreted as being the accumulation
of these layers, some of which fall outside of the individual’s conscious
control, in the same way as they also extend beyond the individual to
impregnate his, or her, own group. On the other hand, this work is in
response to computer media that gather information by unravelling and
isolating each of the aims of the person, handling the information by
separating each of the steps aimed at manipulating the image, text or
audio file present in any audiovisual work and dividing them into separate
layers.
The therapy sessions are small pieces of work in their
own right. Participants do not know each other. They let themselves be
guided by someone familiar with this technique. It is based on the conception
of the individual as a receiving antenna for those extra-personal forces
lying beneath the surface of our behaviour.
The aim of this therapy is to achieve the affective healing
of the individual, leading to better comprehension of the individual’s
own governing factors and rules regarding unhappiness that are mostly
related to questions of a relational nature. The method contemplates the
family system, whether current or original, as the central device for
individual destiny.
“Constellation” therapy.The methodology employed in a session is as follows: the person – hereafter referred to as customer – who would like to address a particular problem in his, or her, life, acts as the temporary director of the scenario. The session guide or therapist exchanges information with the “customer”. Then decides who the particular role-players that are going to form the “constellation” are going to be. These are generally people belonging to the costumer’s own family system. Then he or she chooses players completely intuitively for each of the other roles suggested by the guide, as well as choosing someone to represent him, or herself, from the participants. Then the customer is asked to place them in the space in such a way as to represent a virtual emotional network joining them all together. The customer thus becomes the spectator of his, or her, very own constellation.
The positioned people, who do not know each other and who possess very scant information about the roles they are playing, immediately start to receive identical impulses, emotions and thoughts as the people they are representing. Role-players start to let themselves go and a current of energy begins to run through them. Movements, gestures and words lead to others that make the constellation evolve towards a balance. In the scenes that follow, they discover new perceptions of themselves and their surrounding situations with each and every new movement.
Once the system’s underlying conflict surfaces – the damming or blocking of this energy – the guide usually suggests the way to repair the system and recuperate some sort of balance to the participants by word or gesture. Finally, he guide asks the customer to place him, or herself, physically in the scenario, taking the place of the person who had been playing his, or her, role, in order to experiment the new position within the group leading to a solution of the conflict. As far as participation is concerned, a constellation may be considered as a ritual with unsuspected cathartic qualities. In each constellation, several scripts corresponding to physical, emotional, analytical and archetypical levels dovetail into one another. The session can also be interpreted from its sculptural and geometrical viewpoint – movements of the soul creating virtual lines in space – or from the opposite, more melodramatic level, something that might be closer to the content of popular TV “reality shows”. A source of energy.
Without wishing to analyse the consequences this therapy has on its practitioners, this work aims to summarise the emotions, feelings, attitudes and animic impulses that reveal the determined hidden order that is universally felt by all human beings into a sort of catalogue. It evidences the energetic nature of human beings and the channelling of this energy using sight, touch, spatial location and the directed focus of role-players.
It is a faithful reflection of this dynamic therapy that values action over reflection, that works by reconfiguring the individual’s interiorised characters and restoring those loving and naturally creative currents that flow between those characters making up a system. It permits interiorising a new image more in synchrony with the system to which one belongs, getting in touch with one’s own destiny and perceiving alternative solutions.
Whilst “constellating”, one gradually goes about abandoning one’s viewpoint regarding another person, or persons. This viewpoint could have been acquired over a period of time – including possibly determined by the system in earlier generations – due to the intervention of mental forces that are mistakenly used to avoid feeling pain or prolong the incapacity to deal with the same. ©Eulalia Valldosera, 2003