The Natural Ancestors. An Ethnography of Family Constellation Therapy

In this paper, the practice of a particular kind of systemic psychotherapy called Family Constellation Therapy (FCT) is taken as an anthropological fieldwork. FCT draws its inspiration both from ethnographic experience and from the Christian Catholic religion. It relies on the idea of a ''natural'' or ''true'' family and it is practiced by psychologists as well as by 'alternative' therapists. Its main feature is that it works through ritual and through what, in anthropology, would be called possession by a spirit, most likely an ancestor. Ethnography collected in Italy, Spain and India will show that FCT deals with a specific idea of ancestrality seen as both 'natural' and 'good', and thus defines the individual-cum-ancestors' primacy over any wider social structure. Sociality, citizenship and state are mainly constructed as dangerous though historically unavoidable disturbances to nature and, ultimately, to health and morality. Conversely, it will be argued that precisely because it includes history as a specific set of ancestral relationships, in its practice FCT rescues any ancestorship as moral. This, for its middleclass patients, seems a good way to retrieve some power over themselves.