This feels especially poignant around gender and sexual identity symbols. Once you’ve learned the language, improvise and adapt to your client or patient’s needs. It gives you vocabulary that weaves together into a meaningful language. Learning/memorizing symbols is important. Centering client experience and self-identification helps this tool empower and spark growth rather than label and pathologize. In the opinion of this author, the ethical use of genograms integrates an individual’s own self-representations and symbolic identifications as the basis. Learning/memorizing genogram symbols is important. If you are interested in learning more about genograms, check out Genograms: Assessment and Interventions (by Monica McGoldrick, Randy Gerson Ph.D., and Sueli Petry Ph.D.) The visual language of Genograms concisely represents the complexity of relationships and intergenerationally transmitted issues. Genograms can serve as a bridge between the seen and unseen, accessible to artists and non-artists alike. While art therapy offers a more visual approach, art therapy can be off-putting to individuals who don’t identify as artists. Seeing something tangible that has only been discussed in the intangible can bring clarity for many individuals. For visual thinkers, however, visual aids help make important connections. I think talk-therapy has incredible value. Recently Added Updates to this Genogram Key: Once aware, we can become empowered to make more informed decisions about our own behaviors. (The field of intergenerational trauma seeks to understand these links in psychology and genealogy.) The genogram is a helpful tool to help us notice patterns.

In America, we are especially individualistic and often forget how influenced we are both explicitly and implicitly by our ancestors. It can even be used to track seemingly random events through generations, like religious devotion, teenage pregnancy, miscarriages, sexual abuse, or just about any other human experience. Genograms can be developed for an individual specifically to track addictions, cancers, emotional fusions, estrangements, psychiatric disorders, and more. While there are some standard symbols – many illustrated in this chart – genograms can be adapted in countless ways. One thing I love about genograms is that a genogram can be very flexible.

Key to genogram symbols