Frankl Archive Set (8 Audio Tapes)

Rating:
Summary: Revealing System Dynamics
Review: For me chapter one alone is worth the price. As a group facilitator, Hellinger's insight on the how the system balances and how to approach it from the practitioner's point of view reveals a lot of system thinking in family/group situation. I particularly appreciate he sees his role as a Tao Master, which is really doing something by doing nothing. This book is now in Chinese and we have a study group and an on-going practitioner's group around the topic.

Rating:
Summary: This book will change your life
Review: Love's Hidden Symmetry is a book that will change your life. Bert Hellinger's wisdom, the love that shines through everything he says and does will touch the reader's soul. His work with family constellations is the most effective, gentle and graceful tool for re-creating harmony in our troubled family lives. A must for anyone interested in therapy and personal growth.

Frank Arjava Petter, author

Rating:
Summary: Hellinger's the real deal
Review: With the wisdom of a sage, Hellinger takes on psychotherapy, conventional beliefs about relationships and what is commonly accepted between family members and lovers in their relationships. Hellinger's message is one of humility in accepting what is, especially the natural order of relationships. For instance, rather than bemoaning an abusive father, Hellinger will stand by the victimizer and have the victim, a son or daughter, humbly acknowledge the father for being the father and to place the circumstances as secondary. In this action, the natural order of the relationship becomes untangled. Hellinger is more interested not in details but in finding what works in resolving problems. The past is past, he seems to say with each page's turn, and focusing on making things right is his intent.

From my personal work, I have seen how this work is indeed powerfully effective, and because of Hellinger's non-linear, often intangible approach, he is a controversial and immensely popular figure in psychotherapy. This review does not do this book or Hellinger's work justice. In reading Love's Hidden Symmetry, I found myself reading only a small section, then putting down the book to sit with whatever I had just read. Each section is worth more than the space on its page, in other words. It took some time to complete it, and a better understanding of what he says will probably only come in time and in multiple readings. Hellinger's work talks precisely about being humbled by each other and our processes and how things work as they do. Moreoever, through his readings and family constellations I have discovered how powerfully my lineage influences who I am. The brilliance of this work is in its systemic significance: how noted events, such as war or murder, can have lasting effects transgenerationally.

My only criticism his is limited inclusion about environmental factors and the role of civilization in contributing to individual psychological problems; this area is not seeming to be his focus. Instead, Hellinger, a master psychotherapist, appears more interested in redirecting our entangled relationships with each other. I leave my first reading of this book still intent on people finding healthier ways to live, rather than just necessarily focusing on their healing; at the same time, I am blown away by what Hellinger does for the individual and family end of things. It is simply unlike no other I have been exposed to before.