Cristina Cáceres Mangas is a Spanish Family Constellations facilitator with a specific focus on the systemic work of **perinatal grief and child death**: miscarriages, voluntary abortions, neonatal deaths, infant deaths, children given up for adoption.
Her distinctive contribution: a careful methodology for symbolically including these lost children in the family system, respecting their ordinal place, distinguishing between desired abortions (X) and undesired abortions (darkened circle), and working through the grief of the mother and the clan without moralizing the original decision.
Her articles published on *cristinacaceresmangas.com* are an accessible clinical reference for Family Constellations facilitators who need to work with this territory with subtlety. They include published cases, criteria for symbolic inclusion, and frequent systemic readings on unnamed abortions.
For the Constelando site, she is especially relevant because the female audience often carries this territory in silence. Cáceres offers a respectful and clinically sound working framework.
Evidence and contemporary voices
There is no verifiable academic evidence about Cristina Cáceres Mangas in peer-reviewed databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science) or in institutional repositories of Spanish universities. Research on perinatal grief and transgenerational trauma in the context of Family Constellations lacks controlled studies validating the method's efficacy. Available studies on Family Constellations (Ulsamer, 2005; Ortiz-Tallo & Gross, 2012) document serious methodological limitations: absence of control groups, lack of longitudinal follow-up, and confusion between attributive and causal changes. Clinical literature on perinatal grief (Cacciatore, 2013; Rando, 1986) is based on grief psychology and complex trauma, not on unverifiable systemic frameworks. No academic publications by Cáceres Mangas have been identified in indexed journals, nor documented contributions to clinical research on this topic.
Researchers and references
- Joanne Cacciatore — Arizona State University — perinatal grief and complex trauma
- Therese A. Rando — Institute for the Study of Grief & Loss — models of grief and loss
- Bert Hellinger — method creator (1925-2019) — systemic Family Constellations
- Albrecht Mahr — German physician — clinical applications of Family Constellations
Auditable sources
Notes and Open Debates
Family Constellations lack a plausible biological mechanism for the transgenerational transmission of trauma beyond documented psychosocial factors (attachment, behavioral modeling, family narratives). Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance, on which the Hellinger model is based, has been rejected by the mainstream scientific community (Sheldrake, 2009). Working with perinatal grief through constellations presents documented risks: induction of false traumatic memories, victim-blaming, loss of decisional autonomy, and deviation from evidence-based psychological interventions (CBT, EMDR, complicated grief). There is no methodological differentiation between narrative/attributive changes and verifiable clinical changes.
Additional research generated with consultation of academic sources (Perplexity Sonar Pro). Citations and URLs are the responsibility of their original source; verify before formal citation.
Bibliography
- Importance of including abortions in the family system (article) — Cristina Cáceres. cristinacaceresmangas.com.
- Love's Orders — Bert Hellinger. Herder, 2001.
These books are in the reference library that nurtures Constelando el Origen.
Site Articles Addressing This Topic
Related terms
Abortion in the genogram — conventions
McGoldrick: small filled triangle + cross (spontaneous) or triangle + horizontal line (induced). In Hellinger interpretation: sometimes a darkened circle. The divergence is deliberate and clinically significant.
See entryOrdinal place of the lost child (Hellinger's rule)
In the systemic system, a deceased sibling —including abortions and premature deaths— retains their ordinal place. If there was an abortion before the first living child, the first living child is "the second."
See entryExcluded from the system
A clan member whom the system erases from the narrative. When someone is excluded, the system assigns a descendant the task of representing them.
See entryA session that namewhat hurts
If you recognize this dynamic in your own history, a Family Constellation can reveal where it comes from and what movement brings it into order. Daniela respectfully accompanies each case.
Sessions in Spanish only