Genogram

About genograms

A genogram is a family diagram that goes beyond the names-and-dates of a traditional family tree: it records the emotional and medical texture of a family across three or more generations. Therapists, social workers, and genetic counselors use them to surface patterns — cut-offs, over-involvement, recurring illnesses — that are hard to see in prose case notes.

Schematex follows the McGoldrick, Gerson & Petry (2020) standard used in clinical training, plus the widely adopted GenoPro 32-type emotional-relationship taxonomy. For theory and history see Wikipedia: Genogram. This page documents what the parser accepts today.

1. Your first genogram

The smallest clinically useful genogram: two parents, one child.

Four rules cover 80% of usage:

1. Start with the keyword genogram, optionally followed by a quoted title.
2. Declare each person on their own line: id [attributes]. Attributes go in square brackets, comma-separated.
3. Connect two people with a couple operator — -- (marriage) here; see §4.1 for all six. A trailing quoted string is the relationship label.
4. Indent under the couple line to add their children.

Comments must be on their own line, starting with #, //, or Mermaid-style %%. Trailing inline comments (bob [male, 1978] # ...) are not supported and will break the parser — see §8.

2. Individuals

An individual line is id [attr1, attr2, …]. Attributes are comma-separated, order-independent, all optional.

ID rules. Must match [a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*. IDs are case-insensitive internally but preserve their original casing as the display label (override with label:"…").

Attributes accepted by the parser today:

3. Shapes

Status modifiers layer on top of the base shape:

4. Connections

4.1 Couple operators

The parser tries these in order. The first one that matches wins — so -x- beats --.

A trailing quoted string becomes the relationship label (a -- b "m. 2005").

4.2 Inline individual on the right side

If the right-hand person hasn't been declared yet, you can declare them in-place:

4.3 Children (indented under a couple)

Indentation under a couple line = "these are the children of this couple." Any indent greater than the couple's indent works; by convention use 2 more spaces. Children are rendered in order of declaration (render also sorts by birth year when present).

Special child attributes:

4.3.1 Dual-parent families (foster, adoption, guardianship)

Children placed with a non-biological caregiver while biological parents are still part of the case can be declared under both couples. Declare the child with full attributes the first time (under the biological couple), then redeclare with just [foster] / [adopted] / [guardian] under the current caregiver. The first declaration wins layout; the second is drawn as a secondary dotted "current caregiver" link that does not pull the child away from their biological position.

The same primitive serves adoption (closed/open), foster placement, and guardianship by a relative — only the keyword differs. Re-declaration merges non-conflicting attributes (sex, birth year, label, index marker) into the original; declaring a conflicting male vs female raises a parse error rather than silently overwriting.

4.3.2 Unknown-count siblings

When a case file mentions "the child has siblings" without naming them, use either the ? shorthand on its own line, or [unknown-siblings] on a regular id. Both render as a single diamond with a "?" glyph — the standard pedigree marker for "one or more siblings, identities unknown."

4.3.3 Sibling-of (known relative, unknown ancestry)

To express "X is a sibling of Y" without inventing parents, use the sibling-of: <id> property. The renderer pins X to Y's generation and draws a dashed bracket above the two — the standard pedigree convention for a known relative whose ancestry is not part of the case.

4.4 Emotional relationships

Separate line, parser pattern A -TYPE- B (non-directional) or A -TYPE-> B (directional). An optional quoted label goes at the end. Both individuals must already be declared before the emotional line.

harry -cutoff- petunia           # non-directional
harry -hostile- dudley "since 1991"
uncle -abuse-> nephew             # directional (arrow)

All 32 types the parser accepts today:

5. Medical conditions

Syntax: conditions: name(fill) [+ name(fill, #color)]…

father [male, 1945, conditions: heart(full, #E53935)]
mother [female, 1948, conditions: diabetes(half-left) + anxiety(half-right, #26A69A)]

• name — any identifier you choose (displayed in legend/tooltip).
• fill — required, controls which region of the shape is colored. See table below.
• color — optional hex. Default depends on the renderer theme.
• Multiple conditions are joined with +. Each needs its own (fill).

Fill positions:

6. Labels & comments

• Title: genogram "Smith Family" — first line only.
• Person label override: alice [female, label:"Dr. Alice Smith"].
• Relationship label: trailing quoted string on a couple or emotional line — alice -- bob "m. 2005".
• Comments: #, //, or %% at the start of a line (after leading whitespace). Inline comments are not supported.

genogram "Smith Family"
  # this line is a comment — fine
  %% Mermaid-style comment — also fine
  alice [female, 1980]   # ← THIS trailing comment breaks the parser

7. Reserved words & escaping

Reserved at line start: genogram (header keyword).

Reserved operator tokens inside a line — avoid using these sequences in IDs: --, ~, ~/~, ==, -x-, -/-, -//, -o-, and any -<type>- / -<type>-> matching an emotional-relationship type.

Reserved id ? — bare ? on a child line auto-generates a synthetic placeholder with the unknown-siblings marker. Do not use ? as a real id.

Strings with spaces must be double-quoted: titles, labels, label:"…". Single quotes and backticks are not recognized.

8. Common mistakes

Real parser errors, what triggers them, and how to fix.

9. Grammar (EBNF)

document       = header (blank | comment | individual | couple-block | emotional)*

header         = "genogram" ( WS quoted-string )? NEWLINE
quoted-string  = '"' any-char-but-quote* '"'

individual     = INDENT id ( "[" attrs "]" )? NEWLINE
couple-block   = INDENT id WS coupleOp WS right-side ( WS quoted-string )? NEWLINE
                   ( deeper-indent child )*
child          = INDENT id ( "[" attrs "]" )? NEWLINE
               | INDENT "?" NEWLINE                              // unknown-count sibling shorthand
right-side     = id ( "[" attrs "]" )?

emotional      = INDENT id WS "-" type "-"  id ( WS quoted-string )? NEWLINE
               | INDENT id WS "-" type "->" id ( WS quoted-string )? NEWLINE

coupleOp       = "~/~" | "-//" | "-x-" | "-/-" | "-o-" | "==" | "--" | "~"
type           = "harmony" | "close" | "bestfriends" | "love" | "inlove"
               | "friendship" | "hostile" | "conflict" | "enmity"
               | "distant-hostile" | "cutoff" | "close-hostile" | "fused"
               | "fused-hostile" | "distant" | "normal" | "nevermet"
               | "abuse" | "physical-abuse" | "emotional-abuse"
               | "sexual-abuse" | "neglect" | "manipulative" | "controlling"
               | "jealous" | "focused" | "focused-neg" | "distrust"
               | "admirer" | "limerence"

id             = [a-zA-Z] [a-zA-Z0-9_-]*
attrs          = attr ("," attr)*
attr           = "male" | "female" | "unknown" | "other"
               | "deceased" | "stillborn" | "miscarriage" | "abortion"
               | "adopted" | "foster" | "guardian"
               | "twin-identical" | "twin-fraternal"
               | "index" | "unknown-siblings"
               | digit digit digit digit                         // year
               | "age" ":" digits
               | "death" ":" digit digit digit digit
               | "label" ":" quoted-string
               | "sibling-of" ":" id
               | "conditions" ":" condition ("+" condition)*
               | key ":" value                                    // custom
condition      = name "(" fill ("," "#" hex)? ")"
fill           = "full" | "half-left" | "half-right" | "half-top" | "half-bottom"
               | "quad-tl" | "quad-tr" | "quad-bl" | "quad-br"
               | "striped" | "dotted"

comment        = INDENT ( "#" | "//" | "%%" ) any NEWLINE

Authoritative source: src/diagrams/genogram/parser.ts. If this diverges from the parser, the parser wins — please open an issue.

10. Standard compliance

Schematex genograms follow McGoldrick, Gerson & Petry (2020), Genograms: Assessment and Treatment, 4th ed. for structural symbols, couple operators, and generation alignment. Emotional-relationship taxonomy follows GenoPro's 32-type classification (we do not implement GenoPro's 34-type set in full; focused-admirer and one duplicate are folded into focused and admirer).

What is implemented today vs. the standard:

• ✅ Core structural symbols (male/female/unknown, deceased, stillborn, miscarriage, abortion)
• ✅ McGoldrick 6-operator couple system
• ✅ GenoPro 32 emotional types, directional where clinically specified
• ✅ Medical condition quadrant fill system (4-position + stripe/dot patterns)
• ✅ Index person (concentric shape)
• ✅ Twin groupings (identical / fraternal)
• ⏳ Bennett 2022 gender inclusivity additions — see §13
• ⏳ Donor / surrogate / step-child connection types — see §13

References:

• McGoldrick, M., Gerson, R., & Petry, S. (2020). Genograms: Assessment and Treatment (4th ed.).
• Hardy, K.V. & Laszloffy, T.A. (1995). The cultural genogram. J Marital Fam Ther, 21(3), 227–237.
• GenoPro symbol reference — https://genopro.com/genogram/

11. Related examples

Ready-to-use scenarios from the examples gallery:

13. Roadmap

Planned — not yet parseable. Do not use these in generated DSL today; the parser will reject them.

• Bennett 2022 gender inclusivity — nonbinary, intersex as sex values; transgender as a marker. Currently typed in src/core/types.ts but the parser's VALID_SEX set does not yet include them.
• Triplets and higher-order births — triplet-identical, triplet-fraternal.
• Modern family structures — surrogate, donor, step as child-type attributes.
• Category shorthand for conditions — conditions: cardiovascular + depression without (fill), auto-assigning quadrants and default colors.
• Domestic partnership operator — ~dp~ / explicit DP label.
• Heritage annotations — cultural-genogram heritage identifiers on individuals.
• Household boundary boxes — group nodes that share a roof (foster placement, multi-generational household).

Track in the GitHub issues if you need any of these sooner.