Thomas Geßner

Dipl.-Theologian, Teaching Therapist for Systemic Constellations (DGfS), Counselor, Author Born in 1964 in Halle (Saale), grew up in a Protestant parsonage, father of two, married, practice “Gessner Constellations” in Halle (Saale), lives in Halle (Saale, Germany.

Thomas Geßner practices and teaches phenomenological constellation work, life-integration process (LIP according to Nelles) and counseling. Methodologically, he stresses the distinction between the relatively safe “now” of a person and his perhaps threatening “then”, and in terms of content what life wants from us and how we can follow it. To be able to see his work more clearly, he writes about it. As a child he uses to live in the country side between chickens, as a teenager in the city between cars. After handicraft apprenticeship and carpentry as well as the matura at the evening high school he studied theology in Leipzig. The Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the wall surprised him there. He then had the opportunity to experience and reflect on twenty years of pastoral soul care, most recently as a city church pastor at the Herderkirche in Weimar. At the same time he encountered constellation work. It grew in a way that there was no longer enough room for it in the pastoral service.

In 2011 he took leave of the parish office in order to be able to concentrate on constellation work. Now he works as a teacher for phenomenological constellation work and as a consultant in free practice. He completed his diploma training with Wilfried Nelles and Heinrich Breuer at the former European Institute for Systemic Constellations (eurasys). This was followed by further training in hypnotherapy for systemic constellations (Heinrich Breuer), organizational constellations (Jan Jacob Stam, NL) and the Life Integration Process (LIP) with Wilfried Nelles. Together with Wilfried Nelles there is a book about this method of working developed by him. It is about an innovative, contemporary view of counselling and therapy that fits well with Thomas Geßner’s spiritual roots in pastoral care. In his current book „How we love“ he describes what he sees in his counseling and constellation practice about the human inner life and its effects on the outer everyday life. It is about “how our life is shaped by unconscious love out of an inner necessity”.

Thomas Geßner: How we love. And what we do or avoid everything out of love. Innenweltverlag Cologne, 2018.