Structural lines record facts and emotional lines record judgements
A genogram has two families of lines, and a reader must never confuse them. The structural lines are black and belong to the skeleton of the chart. A couple line drops from two partners and runs beneath them, and its style says whether they are married, living together, separated or divorced, with the years written on it. A child line drops from the couple line to a child, and its style says whether the child is biological, adopted, fostered or a step-child. These lines record facts that could be checked against a register, and they are drawn first.
The emotional lines are drawn in blue and red, and they run between any two people on the chart whether or not they are related. A grandmother and a grandchild, two sisters, a man and his former wife, or a child and a step-parent can each have one. Every such line is a judgement, made by the person drawing the chart from what they were told or saw, about the quality of the bond on a particular date. That is why a genogram carries a date, and why the emotional lines are revised as the family changes while the structural lines stand.
The three lines of connection differ only in degree
The plainest line is a single straight line, which says that two people are connected and nothing more. It is used for a bond worth marking that is remarkable neither for its warmth nor for its strain, such as a child and a relative who keep in touch. Two parallel lines mean a close relationship, warm and supportive, and it is the line most charts use most. Three parallel lines mean a fused relationship, in which the two people are so bound up with each other that they find it hard to think or act apart. Fused is not a stronger form of close and should not be drawn as praise. It names a pattern, often called enmeshment, that a therapist will want to look at.
The choice between the three is a matter of judgement, and the test is independence. If each person keeps their own views and their own friends while remaining warm towards the other, the relationship is close. If a decision by one is unthinkable without the other, if a quarrel with one is a quarrel with both, or if a daughter telephones her mother several times a day and reports every conversation, the relationship is fused.
Connected
Close
Fused
Distance, conflict and cutoff are three different things
A dashed line means a distant relationship, in which contact continues but with little warmth. A zigzag means a hostile relationship, in which conflict predominates, and it is used for open and continuing conflict rather than for a single quarrel. The two combine with the lines of connection. A zigzag between two parallel lines means close and hostile, a bond that is both warm and full of fighting, which is a common description of a teenager and a parent. A zigzag between three lines means fused and hostile, a later addition to the notation for relationships that are both enmeshed and at war.
A line interrupted by two short bars means a cutoff, and it is a stronger statement than distance. The two people have ended contact, usually by decision, and the line is drawn even when the cutoff is decades old, because the silence between a father and a son shapes everyone around them. Two bars with a small circle between them record a cutoff that has since been repaired. The distinction between distant and cut off should be kept, since a reader who sees a dashed line will assume that a telephone call is still possible.
Distant
Hostile
Close-hostile
Fused-hostile
Cutoff
Cutoff repaired
Six lines carry an arrowhead and must point the right way
Focus, care and abuse are not mutual, so the lines that record them have a direction. A straight line ending in a filled arrowhead means that one person is focused on the other, and the arrow points at the person who receives the attention, as when a mother is preoccupied with one son. A zigzag with a filled arrowhead means that the focus is negative, as in scapegoating or constant criticism. A line ending in a double arrowhead means that one person is the caretaker of the other. It is used for a daughter who looks after her father as much as for a parent who looks after a child, and it is often the line that shows a child has taken on the role of an adult.
The three abuse lines are zigzags with an arrowhead at the person who was harmed. Emotional abuse has an open arrowhead, physical abuse a filled one, and sexual abuse a filled arrowhead on a zigzag drawn between two straight lines. These are recorded plainly when they are known, because a genogram that leaves them out misrepresents the family, and they are recorded only when they are known, because the line is a serious claim. The editor draws physical abuse and negative focus the same way, so a label on the line should say which is meant. The notation has no line for neglect, and a distant line with a label is the usual way to record it.
Focused on
Focused on negatively
Caretaker
Emotional abuse
Physical abuse
Sexual abuse
A line is routed around names so that the chart stays readable
An emotional line often has to cross the chart, because the two people it joins may stand on different rows or at opposite ends of a generation. The rule is that the line passes clear of every name, every year and every symbol that is not its own, and that it never runs along a structural line for long enough to be mistaken for one. On paper this is done by bowing the line into an arc, by stepping it around an obstacle or by bringing the two people nearer to each other before the line is drawn. Where a line crosses a name, a reader will misread who is tied to whom.
The editor routes each line for you. It draws the line straight where the way is clear and steps it around any symbol or year that lies in the path, and the route can be changed to an arc, a step or a free line with bends you place yourself. Where many lines meet at one person, the better remedy is usually to move people rather than lines, since a genogram with a dozen curving ties becomes a tangle. The key then lists every kind of line the chart uses, so a reader can tell a close line from a fused one without counting strands from memory.
Before you decide
How many emotional lines a chart should carry
As few as will show the pattern. A family of twelve rarely needs more than five or six, and a chart in which every pair of people has a line says nothing because it says everything. Draw the lines that bear on the question the genogram was made for, and leave the ordinary relationships unmarked, since the absence of a line is readable as nothing remarkable.
Whether a line can join two people in different generations
It can, and many of the most telling lines do. A grandmother who is fused with a grandchild, a father who is cut off from his son and a daughter who is the caretaker of her mother are all lines across generations.
What to do when two people disagree about their relationship
Draw what the person the chart is for reports, and say so in a note. A genogram drawn in therapy is the picture of the family held by the client, and a sister who would describe the same bond differently is not wrong, she is drawing a different chart. Where the disagreement is itself the clinical point, a label on the line can record both views.
How the lines are drawn in this editor
Point at the first person and choose the heart button on the ring, then click the second person and pick the line from the list, which is grouped as on this page. A directed line points at the second person clicked. Clicking a line afterwards shows a toolbar for changing its kind, its shape and its label, and the key on the canvas lists the lines in use, with a definition beside each when Explain is on.
Draw the lines on a family of your own, with every line routed clear of the names and listed in the key. No account is needed to begin.
Open the editor