Supporting Love

How Love Works in Couple Relationships

by Bert Hellinger
Type: Softcover

In this expertly edited book, Johannes Neuhauser brings an artist’s eye to Bert Hellinger’s unique approach, and shows that beneath the surface of his often-startling work there is a gentle tenderness that calls — softly and steadily — to the truths that lay resting in our hearts. It is refreshing in this era of psychotherapeutic relativism to come across the work of a therapist who takes a quiet and clear-sighted stand for the centrality of love in human life. The power of the work that has emerged from Hellinger’s unwavering focus on the flow of love in relationships is remarkable; it will touch any who come into contact with it — professional and lay reader alike.

–Arthur Roberts, MA Editor and Co-Director, The GestaltPress.

When couples turn to therapy or to self-help, they are usually looking for a way to “fix” their “problem.” Common solutions might entail improving communication skills, identifying unproductive interaction patterns, or changing some specific behaviors.

When a couple steps into the work of Bert Hellinger, the partners are entering a realm of uncommon solution. Hellinger’s approach — family constellations and the underlying observations from which they take shape — taps into the deepest dynamics of a relationship. People begin to see just how unseen forces, including non-present family members and those of past generations, and the choices that were made long ago, affect the current partners’ connections with each other at many different levels.

Supporting Love presents verbatim transcripts of constellations with numerous couples, supplemented by questions, commentary, and discussion, to bring this multidimensional process into focus. Typically, a constellation moves through two stages. In the first, hidden — yet compelling — influences on the family are revealed. In the second phase, healing movements and statements are discovered — or recovered — and then tested within the constellation. The “psychic adjustment” that takes place, whether great or small, expands the couple’s vocabulary in creating solution.

Bert Hellinger’s voice is clear and strong on such topics as love, suffering, bonding, giving and taking, parenthood, childlessness, faithfulness, separation, and sexuality. Throughout the book, there are moments of exquisite clarity and moments of uneasy surprise: the resonance and discord of new insights into the ways we can support love — and the ways that love can support us.