A genogram is a visual map of a family across at least three generations that records who is in the family, how they are connected, and the quality of those connections. A family tree answers who is related to whom; a genogram answers what happens between those people and what keeps happening.

What are the standard genogram symbols?

Squares for men, circles for women, and a diamond where gender is unknown or does not fit either. A cross through the shape indicates death. A solid horizontal line shows a partnership, one slash separation and two slashes divorce. Vertical lines drop to children, oldest to youngest, left to right. A dotted line around a group shows the current household. Relationship lines show closeness, distance, conflict and cut-off.

Is a genogram the same as a family tree?

No. A family tree records who is related to whom. A genogram adds facts, events and, most importantly, the quality of relationships, including closeness, distance, conflict and cut-off, which is the layer that does the clinical work.

How do you draw a genogram with a family in the room?

Draw somewhere everyone can see rather than on your notepad, start with low-stakes structural questions, let family members and especially children hold the pen, ask relationship questions circularly, name repeating patterns out loud, and leave the genogram unfinished so you can return to it in later sessions.

What if a family does not fit the standard genogram symbols?

Extend the notation rather than forcing the family into it, and say out loud that you are doing so. Blended families, same-sex and queer families, kinship and residential care, donor conception and gender diversity all commonly need adapted symbols, and inventing one together makes the map belong to the family rather than the practitioner.

Genograms

What is a genogram? Symbols, how to draw one, and how to use it in the room

By the AkindaCo education team · Adelaide, South Australia

A genogram is a visual map of a family across at least three generations. It records who is in the family, how they are connected, and, crucially, what the quality of those connections is like. That last part is what separates it from a family tree.

A family tree answers "who is related to whom". A genogram answers "what happens between these people, and what keeps happening".

What goes on a genogram

Three layers, drawn on top of each other:

Structure. Who exists, how they are related, births, deaths, partnerships, separations, children, who lives in which household.
Facts and events. Ages, dates, diagnoses, migrations, losses, significant transitions, occupations, anything the family names as important.
Relationships. Closeness, distance, conflict, cut-off, over-involvement. This is the layer that does the clinical work.

Standard genogram symbols

The conventional notation is broadly consistent across the literature:

Squares for men, circles for women, and a diamond where gender is unknown, not disclosed, or does not fit either. Age usually goes inside the shape.
A cross through the shape for someone who has died, with the year alongside.
A solid horizontal line between two people for a partnership or marriage, with the year it began.
One slash through that line for separation, two slashes for divorce.
Vertical lines dropping down to children, drawn oldest to youngest, left to right.
A dotted line drawn around a group to show who currently lives in the same household. This is often the most revealing single mark on the page.

Then the relationship lines between individuals:

One line for a connected relationship, two or three lines for close or enmeshed.
A dashed line for distant.
A jagged or zigzag line for conflict.
A line with a break in it for cut-off, where contact has stopped.
Combinations matter. A relationship that is both close and conflictual, drawn as a jagged line over a double line, is a very common and very useful finding.

Where the standard symbols stop working

The conventional notation was built around a particular idea of family, and plenty of the families you work with will not fit it. Blended families with children across several households. Same-sex and queer families. Children in residential or foster care with significant relationships to workers and carers who are not kin. Donor-conceived families. Kinship care. Families where a person's gender is not represented by a square or a circle.

The answer is not to force the family into the notation. It is to extend the notation and tell the family you are doing it, out loud, as you go. "There isn't a standard symbol for this, so I'm going to invent one, and you tell me if it's right." That moment is often where the therapeutic work starts, because you have just made the map theirs rather than yours.

How to actually draw one with a family in the room

Most practitioners have drawn a genogram. Far fewer have drawn one live, with the family watching, and had it change the conversation. That difference is mostly about stance.

Draw where everyone can see. Big paper or a whiteboard, not your notepad. The moment it is on your lap, it becomes your document about them rather than their document about themselves.
Start with structure, because it is the safest. Names, ages, who lives where. Low-stakes questions build the habit of answering before you get anywhere near the difficult material.
Let them hold the pen sometimes. Especially children. Ask a nine-year-old to draw the line between two people and you will learn more than an hour of questions would have given you.
Ask relationship questions circularly. Not "are you close to your dad" but "if I asked your sister who in this family your dad is closest to, what would she say?" The answers go on the page and the family hears each other answer.
Notice out loud what repeats. "That's the third generation where the eldest daughter has looked after everybody. Has anyone else noticed that?" Naming a pattern is an intervention, not an observation.
Leave it unfinished. A genogram is a living document. Coming back to it in session six, with new information, is far more powerful than a tidy one filed after intake.

Handling it when the drawing surfaces something

It will. Genograms reach material fast, which is exactly why they are useful and exactly why they need care. Someone will name a death, an estrangement, an abuse, a person nobody mentions. High affect in the room is not the genogram going wrong. It is the genogram working.

What matters is that you have somewhere to put it: slowing down, checking who in the room did not know, deciding together whether it goes on the page, and knowing how you will close the session. Working this through properly is most of what our one-day genogram training in Adelaide is for.

Genograms are an intervention, not paperwork

If a genogram lives in a file, it was assessment. If it lives on the wall and the family argues about it, it was therapy. The tool gathers information about family patterns, interactions and values, and it acts as an intervention in work with individuals, couples, children and families at the same time.

You can use one with a single client sitting in front of you. The family does not need to be in the room for the family to be in the room.

Where to learn this properly

AkindaCo runs The Therapeutic Use of Genograms, a one-day course in Salisbury and North Adelaide covering assessment and intervention with individuals, couples, children and families, engaging children in the process, managing high affect, creative modalities, and ethical considerations including cultural safety and work with LGBTQIA+ clients and children in residential care.

Genograms are also taught inside our two-day Family Therapy Foundations course, which is the better starting point if you want the wider systemic frame as well. Related reading: circular questions you can use in your next session.

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