Family Constellations Work was founded by world renowned therapist, author and teacher Bert Hellinger. Before Hellinger became a therapist he was a Priest and lived in South Africa for more than 16 years working as a missionary with the Zulu people. After returning to Germany, Hellinger left the priesthood and began to study psychotherapy. After working with families for some years, Hellinger began to realized that some family problems went beyond the confines of psychodynamic work. Over many years, Hellinger experienced and became influenced by many different people doing their own ground breaking work in the therapeutic field.

Some of these influences include the transgenerational foundation of Family Therapy, Satir's model of Family Reconstruction (Family Sculpting), Salvador Minuchin's model of Structural Family Therapy, Jake Moreno's Psychodrama approach, Erickson's Hypnotherapy and Pearl's Gestald Approach. An earlier influence which also needs to be mentioned and acknowledged is the influence of the Zulu people and their culture. While living with the Zulu people Hellinger saw how important the ancestors are and the impact they have on the lives of the living. He experienced the strong respect, acknowledgement and honouring the Zulu people gave to the ancestors in all areas of their lives. It can not be forgotten that this experience had an impact on Hellinger as a young man living in Africa.

 
During this early development of this model, Hellinger worked closely with many colleagues and at no point tried to guard and claim this work as his own.

In 1993, his first book on the subject, which was written by Gunthard Weber from transcripts of Hellinger's workshops, was published in German. This book was later translated into English by Hunter Beaumont. Since the release of this book Family Constellations Work has become well established and known in the field of psychotherapy and more recently into other areas such as medical, organisational and school systems. Over the past 15 years Constellations Work in all its forms has spread around the world and can now be experienced here in South Africa.