Psychogenealogy explained
How our family's past impacts our present and what to do about it
The power of marrying genealogy with psychology, and how it helps
Psychogenealogy connects genealogy with psychology. It uses our genealogical knowledge about our family to understand what is happening to us and it helps us live a more fulfilling life.
The word psychogenealogy has been coined and is being used by many authors, such as Alexandro Jodorowsky (even though he now prefers the term Metagenealogy as he entitled one of his books), Anne Ancelin Schützenberger and Elisabeth Horowitz.
It is emerging as a new field in psychology that allows us to better understand our family history and discover connections between the past and our present life.
As opposed to most psychoanalytical approaches, psychogenealogy takes into account where we are coming from, going back to four or five generations. Indeed, we do not come into this world as a blank page, but rather as a new chapter in the family book, which it is our task to make as meaningful as possible.
To understand psychogenealogy, we must assume that a family unconscious exists, to which each family member is connected. It contains the memory of everything that ever happened to the family and acts as a program implementing repetitions, generation after generation, as it makes us repeat problematic situations until we understand the hidden reasons behind them, and forces us to finish what has remained unfinished in previous generations.
How to proceed
Faulkner aptly wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past”.
We can understand this persistence of the past as we dive into our psychogenealogical journey.
To begin with, you need to gather all the information you have on your family for at least four generations, i.e. you, your parents, your four grandparents, your eight great-grandparents, and all their brothers and sisters.
The information we are looking for includes dates of birth, weddings (as well as divorces or separations), and deaths.
To be complete it should also include the places where your ancestors lived, their jobs, occupations, hobbies, diseases, accidents, and whatever notable facts happened to them, as well as their entanglements with History (wars, exiles, epidemics, historical events such as the Great Depression, etc.).
Pictures and handwritten notes or letters are also very telling and should be preciously kept as they can be analyzed to understand better who your ancestors were.
All these elements are important to consider and when you have collected them and organized them in the form of a family tree you can begin to notice the links with your own life and how it has or may still influence you today.
Repetition vs creation
This detective work of gathering as much information as possible is necessary to pinpoint the repetitions of patterns of behavior that are not efficient anymore but may still be at work in one’s life. Once uncovered they will be easier to let go. Recognizing the repetitive patterns and influences of past generations on your present life will help you heal and discover your own path.
As Jodorowsky explained, we are torn between two forces: repetition and creation. We can either repeat familial patterns from the past, or create our own destiny. Discovering our family’s history is the first step towards enabling the expression of our uniqueness.
Very well, but what if you can’t find any information on your family’s past? Suppose you have exhausted every rational way of exploring your family’s history and followed the classical genealogical path to retrace it, but you’re missing crucial data. In that case, you can tap into the family’s unconscious and get answers through dreams and creative practices.
Deep inside us lies the memory of those before us and it can be expressed and become conscious through different, sometimes unexpected, ways.
But there is no need to obsess about finding every missing piece of the genealogical puzzle. What you know and find out is often enough to stop the transmission of negative patterns to future generations and reconnect with your true self and unique creative purpose in life.
Whether you need to fix some real issues you inherited from the past or feel curious about your family’s history, it will always be rewarding to undertake a psychogenealogical journey. It is also essential to pass on our family history to our children.
Discover more about psychogenealogy with my psychogenealogical analysis of French writer Guy de Maupassant’s tragic life:
A Writer and His Doppelganger: Guy De Maupassant's Tragic Fate Deciphered Through Psychogenealogy
Also available in pdf format: https://ko-fi.com/s/106b5dcf85
If you can read French, here’s my book: https://amzn.to/46UlJjT
Other interesting books about psychogenealogy in English:
Suffering in Silence: The Legacy of Unresolved Sexual Abuse by de Ghislain Devroede and Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger: https://amzn.to/3TlhDMr
The Ancestor Syndrome by Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger: https://amzn.to/3YSsaCj
Fascinating topic and I look forward to reading so much more about it! Recognizing patterns of behavior across generations is such a great add on to all the other ways we give meaning and relevance to genealogy. Oh and thanks for the reading recommendations too!
Not so long ago people - the blank slaters - scoffed at the idea of this, especially the four generation part. But of course we as children are responding to our families views of the the world, and those views were formed but their interactions with their family and so on back.