In Psychogenealogy, working with the genosociogram – commented family tree with dates and stories from at least three generations, allows us to write and narrate the history of the family, to see the inconsistencies that can hide a secret, the dates or the recurring names that show the repetitions in the family history, often indicating the presence of unresolved grief, surrogate babies, unrevealed traumas, etc.
All these elements, emerging from the graphic representation of the psychogenealogical tree or through other instruments such as the metaphorical genogram, photographic genogram, social atom, dream contents, systemic constellations, allow us to formulate hypotheses about what may have happened in that family system, what undisclosed facts – called unspoken in the first generation and secrets in the following generations – which then became “unnamable” and may have imprisoned their descendants.
There are secrets in every family, but some condition the lives of individuals and their descendants. The severity of their influence depends on many factors: the importance of the veiled fact, the suffering of those who hide (protect) it, the extent of disturbances generated in communication between members of the family nucleus. Secrecy isolates and divides the family system into two groups: those who know and those who do not, thus creating marginalization and exclusion.
These problems do not only involve the children from whom something was hidden, which may even have happened with the intention of protecting them, but the secret often also involves successive generations who receive it as an inheritance, without being able to understand the difficulties that the parents experienced. and grandparents for the sake of such secrecy.
As the French psychogenealogist Serge Tisseron says: “we become prisoners when we are not conscious”.
It is important to understand that there are secrets and dramatic facts in every family: “secrets are like a hot potato that passes from hand to hand, burning the hands of all generations”. This repetition can be interrupted by finding the origin of the secret and trying to perform symbolic acts that conclude this transmission.
When can we hypothesize a secret? When there is a lack of news about a family branch, when there are contradictions in the narration, when faced with specific questions, discomfort and evasive answers manifest themselves in the family member who must answer.
Furthermore, we can assume that there is a secret when there are repetitions of events over more generations and when there are tragedies and madness (psychoses).
Like detectives in crime books, we must inquire about every possible clue: first of all about the familiar myth that very often hides a shameful fact that one wants to hide at all costs. But unlike the "idler" in police movies, the family myth is only possible to perceive through the family's particular rituals and customs.
Françoise Dolto said that it takes three generations of unspoken and family non-communication to raise a psychotic child.
Psychogenealogy, through its work of transgenerational analysis of family experiences, of the “sense project” or genealogical program that is the unconscious task assigned to the baby at birth, helps to shed light on secrets and make them less harmful.
Neuroscience explains that the anterior part of the brain is divided into the left hemisphere, seat of digital, analytical, logical thinking, and a right hemisphere, which coordinates analogical, intuition and emotional thinking. As you know, when the two hemispheres work together, growth and evolution take place.
Therefore, it is important to analyze the genealogical history through the genosociogram, which is a logical-rational operation, but it is necessary to use resources that allow us to communicate with the unconscious (right hemisphere) through symbols, metaphors, analogies, which are specialties from the creative, emotional and intuitive part of our brain.
Family Constellations are also a great instrument for working with the enormous reserve of possibilities and creativity that “jump out” from the collective and family unconscious: “putting on stage” family dynamics favors the emergence of emotions, memories and experiences lived by our ancestors.
After having experienced and studied Transgenerationality in a Systemic Family Therapy approach, Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger's Psychogenealogy, Bert Hellinger's Family Constellations and James Hillman's Archetypal Psychology, I understood that these approaches integrate and when used together can greatly enhance the transgenerational work and family secrets. I named this transgenerational therapy practice APPLIED SYSTEMIC PSYCHOGENEALOGY.
APPLIED SYSTEMIC PSYCHOGENEALOGY Transgenerational practice by Jaqueline Cássia de Oliveira
Psychologist - CRP 04/7521 Systemic Family Psychotherapist (Brazil) Psychogenealogist (Italy)
