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Systemic Structural Constellations with Doris Landauer

Political Constellations

Politics concerns every aspect of our social life. As systemic structural constellations are good guides for complex processes, the combination of politics and constellation work is self-evident.

Political constellations have several specialties:

Systemic structural constellations can be applied to any unresolved political issue. If a decision has already been made, constellations can help to assure that each stakeholder’s interests are accounted for.

A Specific Example

At a workshop at the Constellation congress in Gmunden “Das weite Land der Aufstellungsarbeit” (the wide open space of constellation work) in October 2001 the (then recent) 9/11 attacks were chosen as the issue. As a first step a specific sentence had to be found as a common request of the group. This sentence reads:

“Is there anything, which takes effect beyond power and powerlessness, enabling us to react appropriately and solvingly to the present situation?”

The core realisation of the constellation was that “powerlessness”, feeling very powerful, had an intimate relationship to “power”. Vice versa, “power” itself felt a deep relatedness to “powerlessness”. “Enabling” and “react” were identified as goals, “appropriately” and “solvingly” turned into supporting resources. The “present situation” soon joined the focus “us”; they actually merged. The strong phalanx of “anything”, “is there” and ”takes effect” was placed behind the “dual”-focus and “actual situation”, backing them. Interpreting, we could say that the deep believe that “there is something which takes effect” should support our “enabling to react” as a rear cover. The qualities, which had to be kept in mind, were “appropriately and solvingly”.

The constellation followed the grammar of a tetra lemma constellation with an imbedded problem constellation. Power and powerlessness represented the “one” and the “other”. The question mark, the comma and the “and” together formed the “both”, and the “beyond” represented the forth position of “none”.

See also

“Political Constellations–A New Approach for Problem Solving”
English translation of a paper in KDZ Rundschau 2/2004
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