Author(s): Monica McGoldrick

Science

In a revised edition of her revelatory work You Can Go Home Again, veteran family therapist Monica McGoldrick explains how understanding family patterns and history through the use of the genogram—a more in-depth version of the traditional family tree—can reveal a family's history of estrangement, alliance, divorce, suicide, or disease and help us to learn, grow, and deepen the bonds with our own families. McGoldrick uses famous families as examples to bring the discussion to life—the Obamas, the Ghandis, the Roosevelts, the Kennedy's, Frida Khalo, Freud, Che Guerva and the Hepburns, among others, are all included. By drawing on these examples and incorporating new illustrations and updated genograms, she shows how issues of sibling rivalry, birth order, family myth, marital relations and parent-child relationships can all play a role in how we perceive our family history, our sense of 'home,' and, therefore, our identity.

In The Genogram Journey McGoldrick examines our collective past while informing us about how to use it wisely to shape the future.