Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Vader is a slightly distant father figure and prone to acts of violence. His acts of violence are not only
targeted at his children, but also at anyone he perceives to get in his way. During one of his more
dramatic acts of violence, Darth Vader destroys the entire planet of Alderaan, which kills Leia’s adopted
parents in the process. Of course, this is after he gives the order to kill his half-brother Owen and his
wife, who were Luke’s adopted parents. As we said earlier, families are complicated and messy.
Now, we used the Star Wars world as a tool to help illustrate how genograms can help us breakdown
family histories and understand family dynamics. Let’s look at a genogram from a real family. The
following genogram is created without names, but all parts of the genogram represent an actual family
(Figure 11.8).
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Figure 11.8.
Real Family Genogram
Take a few moments and look at this genogram. What do you see? How would you characterize
this family? You have a number of close relationships. You have two children who were adopted. Both
of whom have repaired the relationships with their birthmothers, but have no apparent connection with
their birth fathers. You have single adults with pets. You have three marriages that ended in divorce. For
a couple of people, we have no information, which is why we have question marks for two males in the
genogram. We have a situation where two male siblings had an intense hatred for their stepmother. We
have one gay man who is single and a bisexual woman who is now living with another bisexual woman.
We also have one male suspected of alcohol abuse.
We show you this genogram because it’s more realistic of how modern families look. Modern family
systems aren’t always clean and easy to follow. Sure, we could put all of these people on leaves in a family
tree, but you would only get a fraction of the picture of what this family looks like. Genograms are an
excellent tool for getting a bird’s eye view of how a family functions.
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