Case study – Family Constellation 1

CONTRASTING THE MOST WIDELY USED EXPERIENTIAL

METHODS: PSYCHODRAMA AND CONSTELLATION WORK

By Ronald Anderson and Karen Carnabucci

This article builds on our earlier overview of the Family Systems Constellations
Approach of Hellinger and others and notes further similarities and differences
between it and psychodrama, offering a case example as illustration. We contrast the
two most widely used experiential methods, psychodrama and Systemic Constellation
Work, by working with one client on the same issue in each of the modalities, conducted
two hours apart. Using psychodrama first, Karen works with the client’s conscious
perception of her problem with her mother, “working from the periphery to the center,”
expressing real feelings for the first time, reaching breakthroughs in understanding,
and ending in role-training, using her new perceptions. In the Systemic Constellation
Work, Ron skips past the periphery, probing the unconscious workings of her “soul,”
tapping into the roots of the issue she had just worked through in psychodrama,
allowing the family soul of Constellation work to move the action on its own,
spontaneously, between herself and her mother, healing not only her individual pain,
but the family pain that generated the issue in the first place. Seemingly, it brings an
even deeper reconciliation.

The Psychodrama

Our core group of trainees in our Midwest Training Series had been exposed to the basic
tenets of classic psychodrama and Systemic Family Constellation Work for five months,
having multiple opportunities to work as protagonists, auxiliaries, representatives and
audience members prior to this session. We proposed a module to explore one person’s
issue initially in psychodrama, then later the same day, in Systemic Constellation Work,
to demonstrate the differences and similarities of each modality.

A warm-up was developed to include elements from both methodologies. Because

ancestors are so important in Constellation work – as well as in the family of origin
themes that are commonly addressed in psychodrama – we began with general discussion
about group members’ ancestors, and the influences of their legacies prior to each
member’s own lifetime.

Karen, as director, asked the trainees to mill about the stage so that bodily experience
could expand and amplify their cognitive and verbal recollections. As they walked, they
were instructed to choose an ancestor, known or unknown, and role reverse with them (a
psychodrama technique), then find a place in the stage where this ancestor was drawn to
intuitively (a Constellation technique). When every person had taken the role of an
ancestor and found his or her place on stage, the director interviewed each one.

Sandra, who would be chosen subsequently as protagonist, was one of the first to
introduce herself, as Claude, her maternal grandfather. After all group members had
spoken in role reversal, they were once again asked to mill, returning to their own roles.
 Case study – Family Constellation 2

Group members who wanted to be protagonist for the session were then asked to come
into the center of the circle to announce their desire to work.

Only two, Sandra and Marianne, stepped forward. The training group chose Sandra,
likely because she had been the most serious and quiet member of the group during the
past four months, and the group was eager to learn more about her, likely more than
being attracted by the story told by her in her role as her grandfather.

After group members returned to their seats, Sandra, an addictions counselor in a

hospital-based treatment program, participated in a “walk and talk” warm-up, telling
director Karen about a current issue that concerned her: the good and the bad inside her
she had “obtained” somehow from her mother. Sandra had grown up as a “preacher’s
kid” in a small Midwestern community. And as the minister’s third daughter, Sandra
remembered being admonished severely by her mother to always act on her best
behavior. Sandra acknowledged her mother has since mellowed, but during Sandra’s
formative years, the rule-bound mother heavily influenced her perspective and behavior.
She acknowledged that she has been feeling “bothered” by her mother’s past actions and
parental directives.

Sandra picked Kathy to play her mother. Role-reversing with Kathy as her mother,
Sandra self-presented a stiff woman, giving constant directives to her third daughter.
Back in the auxiliary role, Kathy repeated the endless list of “shoulds.” The director,
Karen, helped tease out the most influential messages given by Sandra’s mother from the
early years:

“Don’t get out of line!”

“Be quiet.”
“Act like a lady!”
“Don’t show any spirit!”

With tears forming in her eyes, Sandra, in her adult role, identified the final message,
“Don’t act overbearing!” Sandra labeled this statement as the strongest and most
shaming message, which she then expanded upon in soliloquy, attributing it to having
inhibited any sense of spontaneity, womanly sexuality or sense of selfhood in her adult
years.

Other auxiliaries were chosen to stand in a single line behind the mother, each one
instructed to represent one of the mother-messages. Sandra, stepping into the child role,
again connected to tears, identifying both pain and anger, allowing herself to experience
each of the old messages.

Stepping back into her adult role, Sandra spoke to her mother, telling her how much her
apparent disapproval had inhibited her development as a young person and was now
continuing to inhibit her social and work roles as an adult. “I hold myself back,” she
said, “I go to professional events, and I’m quiet. I don’t speak up. I’m afraid to talk to
people unless I know them really well!”
 Case study – Family Constellation 3

Sandra recalled how she was often compared to her older sister Beth, who was quiet and
obedient. “I’m not Beth!” she asserted firmly. “I’m nothing like her. I’m spirited! I
want to try new things, have new experiences! Yes, I drank, but I never got into trouble.
I was always responsible!”

Karen directed the auxiliary playing mother to move to the back of the line of messages,
as the drama then explored her relationship to each message.

Eve spoke the first message. “You need to be more quiet! You’re way too noisy!” She
kept it up, intensifying the tone, and expanding on the idea, following the director’s call
for her to do so.

Another group member was asked to double the protagonist as a supportive role, and she
began saying, “Noooo.” First the double spoke lightly, then more strongly, “NO!”

Sandra stood stiffly, with her hands in her pockets, was encouraged by the director to
remove her hands, and to allow herself more freedom to express herself, not only verbally
but also physically by swinging her arms gently to loosen her body stance. Sandra’s
double now stepped closer to the mother, saying “No!” again. Sandra was invited to
experiment to stomping her feet, her arms swinging as she continued, now echoing her
double, “No,” first softly, then with more firmness. Both Sandra and her double now
resonated with a cadence of “No! No! NO! NO!”

With her newfound helper, Sandra continued to speak more forcibly, and easily, to each
of the next four auxiliary mother-messages, reclaiming her own self, dispatching each
message carrier to a different part of the room. However, with the final message, the one
she defined most shaming, she began to struggle again.

“You don’t understand me,” Sandra pleaded. “I was a good kid. I was responsible. I was
learning, and I was having fun. I even rode a motorcycle!”

The auxiliary-mother-message then responded, “How dare you get out of line and be
disobedient!” It was a perfect improvised expansion. “Do you have any idea what it was
like for me to be a teenager?” Richard said, in the mother’s voice.

Sandra was quickly role reversed into her mother. “What about being a teenager?” the
auxiliary asked in Sandra’s role.

“It wasn’t easy,” Sandra found herself saying as her mother. “My father drank. Everyone
looked at our family, wagging their tongues. I decided when I had my own family, I
wouldn’t let us be embarrassed!” It was as though Sandra was suddenly making sense of
why it had been that way. It had less to do with her, and more to do with her mother, and
how she was brought up, always focusing on what others might think, even about
ordinary behaviors. With this realization, Sandra could play her own role even more
forcibly.
 Case study – Family Constellation 4

Back in her own role, Sandra spoke to her mother’s strongest admonition. “I WAS a good
kid!” she exclaimed. With the echoes of her double, she was able to speak back to this
message, even wagging her finger at the end of her nose, in the way children will do
when they’re disobedient. She and her double then added a “nah, nah…nah, nah, nah!”
The auxiliary playing the spirit-crushing role tried another few rebuttals, but as Sandra
increased her forcefulness, he finally gave up in a show of exasperation.

The original mother auxiliary was returned to the front of the line. Sandra was given an
opportunity to role reverse, with an instruction to show how she had wished her mother to
be.

“I’m sorry that I stifled you,” Sandra told herself from her mother’s role. “You can go
ahead and experiment, you can have fun—there’s really nothing wrong with that.” Then,
“I didn’t realize I affected you that way. I’m sorry.” Then, back in her own role, she
received the reparative messages, after which both women hugged.

Group members were invited to shrug off their roles and directed by Karen to stand
shoulder to shoulder in a new line in a different area of the room. Sandra was invited to
face each group member and ask, “Can you love me and accept me just as I am?” Each
person, one by one, answered these questions in the affirmative, giving Sandra hugs and
warm messages.

Then, when the hugs concluded, Sandra was asked to attempt one spirit-filled action she
saw as disobedient, yet without being harmful to herself or others. She decided she
wanted to run around the room, and adjoining rooms, whooping and laughing loudly, and
waving her hands—an activity she had enjoyed with her siblings as a child. After much
laughter, she and her group members returned to their chairs for sharing.

The Constellation

A few hours later, Sandra had taken lunch and enjoyed quiet time. She reported feeling
much more energy and was experiencing feeling a greater connection to the training
group. Although she had participated in the psychodrama in the morning, she was still
motivated to address the same issue with a Systemic Family Constellation, as planned.
Ron cautioned that since we had no experience to draw on from doing Constellation work
after a psychodrama, we had no way of knowing whether it would have a good or bad
effect on her. Sandra thought about that very little; she was ready to go again.

Ron reminded her and the group that Constellation work tends to look for another, more
unconscious, basis for the difficulties Sandra experienced with her mother in her
growing-up years. He suggested her mother may have had blocks that inhibited the free
flow of love that a mother has naturally for her child, factors having nothing to do with
Sandra. We, of course, had already learned in psychodrama her mother’s embarrassment
about her own family of origin contributed to her behavior. Ron asked Sandra if she were
open to find out what the other factors might be as well. She said she was, saying it
earnestly.
 Case study – Family Constellation 5

Ron told her since this was Constellation work, he needed to know a few more details
about her heritage. His questions focused on both her mother’s side and father’s side of
the family, going back as far as memory permitted, namely combat experiences and other
possible traumas, prior deep loves, affairs or divorces, abortions, stillbirths, miscarriages
or child losses — factors that could impact on the free flow of love through the
generations.

She recalled her paternal uncle’s combat experience in World War II, which left him with
severe “shell shock,” and her maternal uncle who was killed the same war, leaving her
grandmother forever grieving, and the drinking of her maternal grandfather. Then Sandra
recalled one fact she had almost forgotten. She became tearful even before she could
speak, surprised at her own reaction. Her mother had lost a female child in stillbirth or
shortly after birth. The child would have been between Sandra and her next older sister.
She related that her sister and she had visited the gravestone some years ago, which they
found read, “Baby Girl.” She remembered the baby sister’s name was Ruth. Ron guessed
that Sandra’s tears had some relevance to what had been worked on earlier, and now
wondered if this family trauma had a connection with her mother’s stance towards her.
Ron decided to test it out.

Sandra chose group members to represent her mother, herself, and Baby Girl Ruth. Ron
instructed her to set each representative on the stage according to the Constellation work
criterion, taking each by the shoulders from behind, and placing them, not according to
perception or any construct in Sandra’s mind but rather by the intuition of the moment,
moving them about the stage, until she finds the location that “feels” right.

Sandra placed her mother first, again choosing Kathy. She moved the person representing
herself perpendicular to her mother on her mother’s right, so she could be close to her
mother, but at a right angle, having her mother always in her vision. Then she placed
Baby Girl Ruth in front of her mother, beneath her mother’s vision at the moment, with
Baby Girl Ruth immediately falling to the floor in a sitting position, her legs stretched
beneath her. Being at a right angle to her mother, the representative for Sandra could see
Baby Girl Ruth in front of her as well, but it was obvious that the energy in the room,
without any sounds made, were more between Baby Girl Ruth and the mother.

Sandra was asked to find a chair where she could sit and most easily observe what was
transpiring with the representatives.

Then we waited to observe what would take place. The representatives were reminded
that they were to be aware of any strong feelings, whether emotions or insistent thoughts,
bodily sensations, or strong urges moving within them. Unlike psychodrama, the trainees
on stage are reminded that there is no sculpturing, improvisation or role development;
they are only to go with what emerges from within.

Baby Girl Ruth had already responded to the urge to fall to a sitting position. Next the
mother’s body became more rigid, and she closed her eyes. Baby Girl Ruth looked
longingly up, with a sense of wonderment towards her mother. The representative for
 Case study – Family Constellation 6

Sandra looked anxious, and scared, and looked alternately between her mother and Baby
Girl. There was silence.

Ron noted out loud the importance to Sandra, both sitting in the audience next to each
other, of her mother’s eyes being closed. “Do you have any stories or memories of her
having grieved for Baby Girl?” Ron asked.

“No, I – I have the sense she didn’t – really grieve that much.”

Ron asked the representative for the mother to open her eyes, and look. After some
resistance, she did so, shaking as she looked down and met her Baby Girl’s gaze up at
her. The representative for Sandra looked very expectant, and her nervousness increased.
After a difficult silence, the mother slowly bent to Baby Girl Ruth and touched her, with
Baby Girl Ruth tentatively putting her hand on her mother. Then, a step at a time, the
mother got to her knees, and stroked Baby Girl Ruth, tears in her eyes now forming.

The representative for Sandra appeared to want to join in, but she looked unsure of
herself. When the mother suddenly cried out, Sandra’s representative got down on her
knees to put one hand to comfort her mother, and the other hand to touch Baby Girl Ruth.
Baby Girl Ruth was the most passive of the three, but she seemed to want to melt into the
arms of the mother and Sandra.

Ron asked the mother to try saying the following words: “I see you now.”

“I see you now.”

Ron has her add, “So now I will grieve for you…”

“I now will grieve for you.” Baby Girl Ruth now runs her hands over her mother’s face.

Ron has the mother tell Baby Girl Ruth, “I am your mother, and you are my child, and
from now on I will always carry you in my heart…” The representative repeats this
message.

The audience can tell from the way the representatives say the line whether the message
resonates with what is deep within them, an accurate doubling of what is in their soul.
But the director asks her to make sure, how it feels for her to say that.
“Very good.”

Ron then asks Baby Girl how it feels to hear her say that, and she says “Good” as well.
Ron lastly asks the representative for Sandra how she feels, and she responds, “GREAT!”
Sandra, sitting in the audience, smiles broadly.

When the feelings subside, Ron sits next to Sandra in the audience and tells her that he
suspects there may have been others burdens on her mother, besides the stillbirth, and
asks again about the tragedies happening in her mother’s family. Sandra relates additional
 Case study – Family Constellation 7

memories and as a result a mother and father for Sandra’s mother are chosen, and Ron
suggests that Sandra place them intuitively on stage.

The grandmother, placed behind the mother, moves with abruptness once in place,
leaning heavily on Sandra’s mother, her representative practically falling atop her
daughter. The representative for grandfather paces with seeming hostility in the
background. Looking at Sandra in the audience, Ron notes that his suspicion is
confirmed, but there is not enough time now to explore the situation and what has been
observed is plenty for Sandra to absorb. The representatives for the grandparents are
dismissed from the stage.

Ron then asks the three on stage — Baby Girl Ruth, mother, and the representative for
Sandra — to stand. They do so, spontaneously hugging each other.

Ron then asks Sandra sitting in the audience how many brothers and sisters she has.

“I have four,” she says.

Ron has her choose four people from the audience to represent her brothers and sisters.
Ron directs Sandra to line each sibling according to age, from oldest to youngest, in front
of her mother, then add Baby Girl Ruth ahead of her in line. Ron dismisses the
representative for Sandra, and has Sandra herself get in line and look around to see the
lineup of her siblings. He asks how it feels.

“Weird!” Sandra says.

Ron asks the brother who is the oldest in the family to say, “I’m the first.” The brother’s
representative repeats the line. Ron asks the sister next to say, “I’m the second.” She
does. Ron then has Baby Girl Ruth say, “I’m the third.” She does. Ron has Sandra say,
“I’m the fourth…” She pauses, stumbling, saying, “I’ve always been the third!”

Ron pulls Sandra out of the line and has her look directly at Baby Girl Ruth. Sandra
immediately sobs. They automatically embrace in tears.

Ron has Sandra say, “I’ve missed you.”

Sandra says, strongly, with tears, “I’ve really missed you!” Still embracing, he asks
Sandra to tell her, “From now on, you belong.”

Choking up, sobbing, she says, “From now on, you belong!”

Ron has her add, “…As my older sister.”

“As my next older sister.”

 Case study – Family Constellation 8

Ron then has Sandra get back in line, and the siblings go through the line up once more:
“I’m the first.” “I’m the second.” “I’m the third,” Baby Girl says. “I’m the fourth,”
Sandra says, smiling through her tears now, wiping her eyes. “Wow!”

“I’m the fifth,” another says. “I’m the sixth,” the last one says.

Ron asks the mother look at all her children. Sandra, from her place in line, is flooded,
overwhelmed with love and appreciation for her mother. She impulsively jumps out of
line, and reaches out to embrace her mother. “I’m sorry! I’m soooo sorry!”

Ron tells her to add, “Now I understand…”

“Now I understand,” Sandra repeats. “I want to help you, mother!”

Ron asks her to say, instead, “Now we can help each other, and grieve together for Baby
Girl.”

The director explains to the group that when the young take responsibility for comforting
their elders, the spontaneous flow of love from one generation to the other can be
disrupted. “Look how the grandmother had burdened the mother by insisting she take
care of her, and how that probably added to the mother’s inability to let her love flow as
freely down to Sandra.

The director had Sandra look at the full line of siblings with their mother again, before
drawing the session to a close, so she could concretely picture of the revised order. At the
end, Ron dismissed the representatives, and we all sat in the circle of silence to take it all
in, meditatively. There is no sharing in Constellation work, as there is the concern that
analysis or discussion could interfere with the integrative process of the new image.
Because the client mostly watches, outside the action, it is believed there is not as much
self-disclosure, so the sitting in silence being enough to bring the group back together.

Observations: The Comparison

There is much to contrast between the two methodologies, but what stands out from these
two sessions are the following four major differences:

1. Drama of perceptual reality versus drama of unconscious reality.

Most psychodrama sessions begin with the client’s perceptual reality. In Sandra’s
psychodrama, she created a scene in which her highly restrictive mother did not accept
her natural spontaneity and personality – her perception of her relationship with her
mother. The role playing and deepening expansion of roles by auxiliaries carried the
drama into areas still below the surface, and Sandra was able to do and say what she was
prevented from doing and saying in “real life.”
 Case study – Family Constellation 9

Constellation work examines an abstract reality. A facilitator, after learning the client’s
issue, inquires about the client’s intergenerational history to learn what past events might
influence the present issue, as Ron did with Sandra. Then, ancestors related to those
events are chosen and brought on stage, placed by the client in relation to each other
before her or she has a chance to think what configuration makes sense.

In Sandra’s Constellation, the representative for Sandra experienced fear, as her mother
was shut down with pain. Baby Girl Ruth felt only wonderment. Energies can become
intensely focused on some other representative, or there are mutual abreactions to each
other, as when Sandra’s representative and her mother both reached for Baby Girl Ruth,
and each other, crying. What happens then is a movement toward resolution on an
unconscious level, the “family soul” inside containing a spontaneous movement toward
resolution and peace.

Knowing both modalities, a therapist theoretically could begin on the consciousness

continuum at a concrete level, working towards openness to unconscious work. If Sandra
had not been ready for Constellation work, the session could have started as it did,
psychodramatically, in an encounter with her mother, going through the shaming
messages, could have ended with a summary soliloquy. Then an interview of her family
history at that point could have brought her mother’s stillbirth to light, and the subsequent
abstract placement of mother, Baby Girl Ruth, and Sandra could have moved the drama
into the unconscious soul movement we saw in the second session.

2. Auxiliary work though role development process versus representative work

through information emerging from within and from the configuration.

In Karen’s direction of Sandra’s psychodrama, it was important for Kathy, the auxiliary
Sandra chose for her mother, to learn how to play the role. A role-reversal not only
warms Sandra for the encounter, but also warms the auxiliary to play her role – as well as
the additional mother-message auxiliaries. By the time Richard went one-on-one with the
protagonist, playing the most devastating aspect of the mother’s messages, the flow of the
drama had given him a sense of who her mother was beyond the role-playing of simple
messages. He could, in fact, role-create, bringing the drama to a new depth. When Karen
saw that Richard’s improvisation hit home in the protagonist, she could role-reverse
Sandra to her mother to expand it further and deeper. Role-reversal could bring the
dramatization to where Sandra could see the issue belonged to her mother, as much as
her. And the strength of her assertive response could be justified.

In Constellation work, a representative is not likely to get much of the personality of the
person but rather more likely about how they feel physically or emotionally. In
psychodrama you feel into a characterization through role-playing; in Playback Theatre
you feel into the story-teller, and community of actors. In Constellation work the
characterization may be experienced as feeling into you.

What if Karen had had Sandra set up two representatives — one for herself and one for
her mother intuitively at the beginning of her session with Sandra? Then, after watching
 Case study – Family Constellation 10

what happened, had Sandra step in as herself? Would the drama have gone deeper,
faster?

3. Doubling versus resonance

In the psychodrama, a double was chosen to stand with Sandra as a support, voicing the
feelings Sandra was blocking out, helping her to break through inhibitions and to express
what had not been expressed before. With the double’s help, Sandra found her emotional
breakthrough: her catharsis, speaking on her own behalf to her mother for the first time.

In a Constellation, emotions are expressed by the representatives, and the only doubling
is a doubling of the soul by the facilitator. Note how Ron as facilitator asks the
representatives to make specific statements. The facilitator listens to the voice of the
representative for a resonance in the body cavity. If there is none, the facilitator will
search for another statement; sometimes the facilitator will ask the representative to
rework the line until it resonates. These are statements that go to the heart of the matter,
with both economy and precision, expressing what is already there, making it all the
more emphatic.

“I see you now. And now I will grieve for you…”

4. The locus nascendi in one’s lifetime versus in one’s ancestry.

In classical psychodrama we are taught to go to the origin of the issue in the life of the
protagonist. In Constellation work, the source of the issue is frequently in the
intergenerational past, in a trauma from a previous generation, or other distractions from
the natural flow of love through parents to their children as one generation flows to the
next. In Sandra’s family history, her mother’s emotional rigidity to grieving Baby Girl,
prior to Sandra’s birth, made her mother less available to Sandra.

Conclusion

These modalities have different histories. J. L. Moreno was the great innovator of his
time with the development of group psychotherapy and psychodrama. Shortly after
Moreno’s death, Bert Hellinger began his work and finally become the great synthesizer,
drawing not only from Moreno but also from many of the great psychotherapists, while
including the field of physics, notably Rupert Sheldrake and his ideas about morphic
resonance, and the indigenous peoples’ tradition of ancestor reverence.

We believe psychodramatists need not make a decision between psychodrama and

Systemic Constellation Work. Rather, the two modalities compliment each other. As we
see here, the psychodrama worked with Sandra’s conscious issue, and the outcome was
exhilarating for her. The psychodrama helped Sandra separate herself from her mother,
reveling in excitement for the first time about being her own person. The Constellation
helped her and her mother come back together and heal their relationship while also
 Case study – Family Constellation 11

bringing a sense of belonging to her entire family—without taking away from her
separateness.

About the authors

Ron Anderson, LPC, CADCIII, TEP, is a board-certified trainer, educator and practitioner
of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy. He trained at St. Elizabeths
Hospital, Washington, D.C., and with Carl Hollander at the Hollander Institute, in
Denver, Colo., and has worked with many populations and in many treatment settings
throughout the years. He combines an interesting mix of Psychodrama, Systemic Family
Constellation, and other experiential modalities with clients in his private practice at New
Prospects Counseling Center in Milwaukee, Wis., and in his training sessions.

Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP, is a board-certified trainer, educator and

practitioner of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy. She has trained with
Zerka Moreno, Kate Hudgins and Gerald Tremblay and at the Holwell Centre for
Psychodrama, Barnstable, England. She is in private practice at Lake House Health &
Learning Center, Racine, Wis., where she uses and teaches a broad range of holistic and
experiential modalities, including psychodrama, family sculpture, guided imagery and
sand tray and now is introducing Systemic Constellation Work.

Both are faculty members for the Midwest Training Series based at Lake House Health &
Learning Center, Racine, Wis. To contact Ron, anderson4513@sbcglobal.net; to contact
Karen, write karenc@wi.rr.com or call (262) 633-2645. Her Web site is
www.lakehousecenter.com.