The guide

A genogram, explained

Nothing replaces reading a real diagram. This one has four generations and about twenty people. It is entirely synthetic: the « Exemple » family does not exist, and no patient data was used to build it.

Genogram of the Exemple family: four generations, two grandparent couples of whom three members are deceased, three couples in the second generation including one divorced, two households in dashed frames, a pair of twins and three children in the fourth generation. — Example record from SpatioPsy Genogram, exported as vector. The diagram scrolls horizontally if it is wider than your screen. Names and household labels appear exactly as they were typed: the software never translates entered data.

What reads without any training

What you read	What it means
m 1954, m 1956	Two marriages in the fifties: the first generation on the diagram
m 1988 d 2009	Married in 1988, divorced in 2009. The union line carries the two slashes of divorce
LT 1990, LT 2018	Living together. The line is dashed, and there is no marriage year because there is no marriage
1929 2011 then 81	Birth and death at the corners, age at death inside the shape. The shape is crossed out
1934 then 91	A single date: the person is alive, and the age is the current age
A dashed frame	These people live under the same roof

Reading it generation by generation

Top: the grandparents

Two couples, married in 1954 and 1956. Three of the four are deceased — their shape is crossed out and carries two dates instead of one. The fourth, born in 1934, is 91: a single date, no cross.

That is already clinical information. A generation almost entirely gone, and one very old survivor, do not weigh on a family the way a couple of living grandparents would.

Middle: the parents and their sibships

Three couples, and three different forms of union on the same row: a marriage from 1982, a marriage from 1988 ended by divorce in 2009, and living together since 1990.

The divorce shows as two slashes on the union line. The dates stay: a divorce does not erase a marriage, it dates it a second time.

Then: the children grown up

This is where the diagram gets dense. Two people born the same year are joined by a Λ: twins. The Λ starts from a single point on the parent-child line, which distinguishes them from an ordinary sibship.

A green line joins two people of that generation: it is a close relationship. The structure says who descends from whom, the emotional layer says how they get on, and the two read separately.

A word on colour, because this guide claims elsewhere that a genogram reads without a legend: it is the form of the line that governs, not its hue. Colour is screen comfort only, and the diagram stays readable printed in black and white.

Bottom: the grandchildren

Three children born in 2014, 2018 and 2020. Their presence is what warrants a fourth generation: without them, one would have stopped at three.

The two households

Two dashed frames surround groups of people. They say who lives under the same roof, which the kinship structure does not.

It is often the most useful piece on the diagram, and the fastest forgotten when drawing it. Two people can be mother and daughter without sharing a roof; two others can share a roof with no kinship at all.

What this diagram does not say

Worth naming, because a genogram easily gives the impression of saying everything.

It does not say why. The 2009 divorce is dated, not explained.
It says nothing about the people absent from it: friends, colleagues, professionals, everyone who matters without being family. That is another tool's job, the ecomap (Hartman, 1975), which puts the family at the centre and draws its ties to its environment.
It freezes a moment. A genogram is dated; a family's changes with it, and relationship qualities change faster than the rest.
It does not interpret. Spotting a repetition of dates is an observation; drawing a conclusion from it is a clinical act, and belongs to the practitioner alone.

Drawing your own

This diagram was drawn with SpatioPsy Genogram and exported as vector — it is the very file you are looking at. Generations, unions and sibships are placed automatically.