Genograms: Assessment and Intervention, Third Edition

Monica McGoldrick
Randy Gerson, and Sueli Petry

Praise for Genograms

“Entertaining and instructive, Genograms is the ideal guide for introducing all those involved in family treatment – family therapists, doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors and trainees in these fields – to this essential assessment and intervention tool."
—Karnac Review

“This book continues to be the definitive work in the field. An  excellent, comprehensive, and beautifully written and illustrated  text, the third edition is a must-read....I thoroughly   enjoyed reading this superbly written updated text."
—Robert C. Like, MD, MS, Professor and Director, Center for Healthy Families and Cultural Diversity, UMDNJ–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

“With searching insight and compassion, master clinician McGoldrick and her coauthors have done it again! By providing a crucial framework for understanding family experience in the context of history, and offering helpful questions to ask family members when constructing genograms, McGoldrick explores the power of stories to promote change. All in all, a delightfully wise, elegant, helpful, and practical clinical book."
—Maureen Leahey, RN, PhD, Manager, Calgary Health Region Outpatient Mental Health, Calgary, Alberta

“This theoretical exposition of an important approach to families is worthy of a place in the child psychiatry departmental library."
—Laurence Jerome, M.D., FRCPC, Canadian Child Psychiatry Review (on the second edition)

“[A]n informative and comprehensive guide for mapping family systems….[A] well-written and helpful guide. An added bonus is the in-depth genograms of famous families….We highly recommend this book for all who would like to supplement their practice with this valuable therapeutic tool."
—Milton H. Erickson Foundation Newsletter

“Monica McGoldrick, godmother of genograms, has triumphed again with this third edition of her classic text….Genograms are predominantly used by family therapists; however, in this book McGoldrick and colleagues do much to broaden their appeal. General adult psychiatrists will be interested in the practical applications of community genograms. Similarly, genograms mapping relationships with work colleagues have broad appeal, from junior doctors struggling to manage inevitable multidisciplinary rivalries and tensions to managers introducing organisational change....There are few scholarly books that entertain, delight and educate in equal measures. This is one of them."
—The British Journal of Psychiatry

“[A] seminal work….This new edition has been expanded to incorporate slightly modified symbols to enhance the usefulness of the genogram in the clinical and research settings….[A] necessity for clinicians and researchers working with families. However, the clarity with which it is written, along with the step-by-step instructions for creating and using genograms in various settings, make it a valuable addition to anyone’s reference bookshelf."
—The Family Psychologist

Overview—Contents—Excerpt

Widely used by both family therapists and all health care professionals, the genogram is a graphic way of organizing the mass of information gathered during a family assessment and finding patterns in the family system for more targeted treatment.

Now updated and expanded in its third edition, and featuring revised genograms for easier reading, reflecting the growing and widespread use of genograms for clinical intervention, this best-selling text provides a standard method for constructing a genogram, doing a genogram interview, and interpreting the results.

Genograms of famous families—Sigmund Freud, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, the Kennedys, Jane Fonda and Ted Turner, Bill Clinton, Princess Diana, the Roosevelts, and Thomas Jefferson, to name a few—bring the text to life, and help to elucidate the principles of family systems theory and systemic interviewing, which form the basis of genogram work.

Once these principles have been explained, the authors go on to present the important clinical applications of genograms in both family therapy and family medicine. These applications include the effective assessment of patients’ risk for emotional problems such as anxiety or depression; structural patterns among families such as divorce and remarriage; relationship patterns such as enmeshment, conflicts, and cut-offs; recent and chronic life stressors such as pregnancy, acute illness, poverty, and racism; and family life cycle transitions and developmental crises, among other uses.

By providing a fascinating view into the richness of family dynamics, McGoldrick and her coauthors provide an invaluable guide to clinicians for accurately charting a family’s structure, making it easier to scan for potential problems and take proactive steps to utilize resources when necessary.

Color insert sample:

Contents

Preface

1. Genograms: Mapping Family Systems

2. Creating Genograms

3. The Genogram Interview

4. Tracking Family Patterns Through Time and Space

5. Interpreting Family Structure

6. Assessing Family Patterns and Functioning

7. Relational Patterns and Triangles

8. Tracking Individuals and Families Througt the Life Cycle

9. Clinical Uses of the Genogram

10. Family Play Genograms

11. Using Genograms for Family Research

Appendix

References

Bibliography by Topic

Biographical References

Excerpt

Genograms appeal to clinicians because they are tangible, graphic representations of complex family patterns. The need for such maps has reached such a point that the Salzburg Music Festival recently offered a kind of genogram to follow the family relationships of a Mozart opera. Had they known about genograms, of course, they could have done an even better graphic, such as the one we did for one of the most complicated opera plots ever, Il Trovatore . . . .

Genograms allow you to map the family structure clearly and to note and update the map of family patterns of relationships and functioning as they emerge. For a clinical record, the genogram provides an efficient summary, allowing a person unfamiliar with a case to grasp quickly a huge amount of information about a family and to scan for potential problems and resources. Whereas notes written in a chart or questionnaire may become lost in a record, genogram information is immediately recognizable and can be added to and corrected at each clinical visit as one learns more about a family. Genograms can be created for any moment in the family’s history, showing the ages and relationships of that moment to better understand family patterns as they evolve through time. Soon software will allow clinicians to track the family’s timeline or chronology—to follow the details of key developments in relationships, health, and so on over the entire life cycle of the family.

About the Authors

Monica McGoldrick, MA, MSW, Ph.D. (H.C.), is Cofounder and Director of the Multicultural Family Institute.

Randy Gerson, Ph.D., was Director of Atlanta College for Systemic Thinking until his death in 1995.

Sueli Petry , Ph.D., is an Associate Faculty Member of the Multicultural Family Institute and is in private practice.

ISBN 10: 0-393-70509-9
ISBN 13: 978-0-393-70509-6
2008 / 400 pages / 32-page color insert / paper