Constellations and twin system

When, in 2016, I submitted my first book to the publishing house, I already knew that introducing the Twin System into the realm of Family Constellations would profoundly change the methodological approach. At the time, I was not ready to embrace the responsibility that my observations would entail. Thus, I preferred not to include what was clearly emerging in every Twin Constellation: the connection between the quality of intrauterine life and the subsequent entanglement in the family system.

This book recounts the past 10 years of studies and experiential work on Constellations and the Twin System, as well as the confirmations my intuitions have received during the practical application of my method.

Bert Hellinger, who in 2014 in Milan had the opportunity to glimpse part of my work, told me then: “It’s an immense dimension.” For me, it remains a miracle what Bert observed and formulated in the Orders of Love and the Different Dimensions of Consciousness without knowing about the Twin System. Every single step of my work confirms his genius and teaching. What differs is the field of application: the Morphogenetic Field of the Twin System precedes the morphogenetic field of the family system and all other systems that the person subsequently joins in life. Consequently, the quality of intrauterine experiences forms the foundation of every future life experience. The Twin System is the First Social and Belonging System. All initial relational experiences occur within the amniotic sac and in relation to all other sacs present in the mother’s womb. The first approaches, interactions, communications, and even the first ‘abandonments’ thus act as relational templates for all subsequent bonds. Naturally, the quality of intrauterine relationships determines the family entanglement we take upon ourselves.

It is therefore evident that the movements of the soul and blind love observed in family constellations are movements toward our ‘missing’ twin siblings. In other words, in family constellations, the interactions and movements toward our twin siblings emerge, which we later repeat toward the surrogate twins of our family system and in all subsequent systems we approach in life—intimate, familial, social, professional, and spiritual. The interrupted movements observed during constellations are the suspended movements toward our twin siblings at the moment of their disappearance. Thus, blind love is not blind; it is unconscious—if we define ‘unconscious’ as the lack of awareness that only the cerebral cortex can provide through a clear processing of the information it receives, anchored to a unique image imprinted in our memory.

Our love is not blind. It knows exactly to whom it is directed and invests all its energy so that love can fulfill itself.
It is our mind that ‘is blind,’ lacking images, leaving us groping in the dark, unable to understand the recipient of our love. Our cerebral cortex was not yet formed and functioning when our first relational templates existed: the embryonic organisms coexisting in the physical space of the maternal womb, that is, our twin siblings. By consciously integrating the intrauterine experience, we consciously take our place within our Twin System, and only then do we take our place in every other subsequent system and in life.

There are no images in our cerebral cortex of those first life experiences. It is our body—cellular memory, our soul, our sensations, and emotions—that holds all the necessary information to guide our movements, so we can always return to the circumstances where the bond was interrupted: ‘blindly,’ we enact a chain of events that constitute a ‘repetition compulsion,’ retracing the same path to return to the moment before the interrupted movement, as if, by continuing to repeat the same actions, we could prevent a different outcome. In this, we are indeed blind: We mistake the interlocutor, enacting a substitute dynamic.

During my work with Twin Constellations, it becomes apparent how our body takes its place in space through sensory organs that continuously probe stimuli in the confined environment, namely within the immediate boundaries of the amniotic sac and the broader confines of the maternal womb. Within this continuous and indiscriminate collection of information, all co-present physical ‘factors’ acquire the value of coordinates for a bodily map, enabling the organism to orient itself within its environment. The more stable these coordinates remain with each sensory probe, the more the space becomes familiar, routine. This allows the organism to perceive itself as safe, confident that it does not need to expend vital energy, constantly alert to variables that disrupt routine and may potentially pose a threat.

Thus, our body functions through the cerebral mapping of the space it inhabits. From this perspective, other co-present embryonic organisms serve as cardinal points within the map. This clearly explains the state of suspension, disorientation, and complete loss of trust in the environment—their own sac—and in themselves, confined in the inability to retain their twin siblings.

The twin trauma is therefore not constituted by the twins’ disappearance, but by the fact that the internal mapping within the Survivor’s body—the infrastructure created through neural pathways—remains intact. The Surviving Twin simply finds no confirmations in the surrounding environment for their inner world, based on the presence of their reference points: the appropriate interlocutors.

The other embryonic organisms represent the constellated space, reference points for the internal map that allowed the Survivor to orient themselves, feeling part of and in their place within the whole. And it is this map that pushes the Survivor to seek new interlocutors to recreate the original constellations: the Substitute Twin allows the Survivor to recognize themselves by continually recreating the same space—the sac, the sacs, the womb—retracing the same relational templates—older sibling, younger sibling, within my system, outside my system.

In other words, we do not interact with the people we meet in life but react only to some of their characteristics, which are traceable to experiences already learned within our Twin System in utero. Thus, we remain true to ourselves, recognizing ourselves through our perceptions, feeling secure and ‘right.’ The other, the Substitute Twin, must instead change, be different, to better adapt to our need for correspondence between the original template and the incorrect interlocutor—blind love, precisely.