“Where does this come from?” – the question arises when symptoms stubbornly refuse to respond to the usual treatment, when relationship patterns repeat although you have seen through them, and when the feeling will not let go that the answer lies somewhere in the family history, even if you do not know where. Dr med. Birgit Hickey looks for the answer where, by her own account, it remains “largely unused” in the constellation field: in the systematic analysis of the genogram.

Who Is Birgit Hickey?

Dr. med. Birgit Hickey is a physician and diploma biologist, in private practice since 1992, a recognised systemic constellation facilitator, training therapist and systemic mediator. Her training encompasses systemic family therapy, family-biographical genogram work, systemic structural constellations, solution-focused brief therapy and hypnotherapy – a combination that suggests she did not stop searching until she had found the approach that works.

What makes her approach distinctive is the weight she gives to the analysis. In the introduction to her book she writes that family-biographical genogram analysis remains “largely unused in connection with systemic constellations” – and that this is precisely why it became the focus of her book. The insights it yields, she writes, often lead “during the genogram work itself to marked improvement or even resolution”. The analysis is therefore not preparation for the actual procedure. It is one.

The Family-Biographical Transgenerational Approach

Hickey's core thesis is as unsettling as it is plausible: many problems that persistently elude purely individual therapy have their roots in unresolved themes of the family system. Transgenerational bonds of fate – unconscious loyalties to earlier generations – can manifest as physical symptoms, relationship problems or professional blocks, and the insidious thing about them is that they disguise themselves as "one's own" problems.

The family-biographical genogram analysis systematically captures:

• Fateful blows: Early deaths, losses, displacement, war trauma, and their transmission across generations.
• Representation tasks: Unconscious identifications with family members who suffered a hard fate – a subject Hickey devotes a section of her own book to, with its own orderings.
• Interrupted reaching-towards movements: Relationship cutoffs, adoptions or family secrets that burden the system.
• Repetitions and patterns: Striking parallels in illnesses, separations, career choices or life crises across several generations – often a sign of representation tasks taken on from others.

The method: hypotheses from the genogram

Hickey describes her procedure as a three-step sequence – conversation, genogram work, constellation. The weight lies on the first two steps, because that is where the hypotheses arise:

1. Phase 1 – Creating the genogram: Systematic recording of the family history across at least three generations. Not only facts are gathered but also emotional qualities, family secrets and significant life events documented.
2. Phase 2 – Analysing patterns: Together with the client, transgenerational patterns are identified. Where do themes repeat? What parallels exist between the current problem and events in earlier generations?
3. Phase 3 – testing the hypotheses: What emerged as a hypothesis during the analysis can be tested in a systemic constellation. Representatives or symbols stand for family members and their relationships – the constellation thus answers a question the genogram has asked.
4. Phase 4 – integration: The insights are brought together and related to the present. Images of resolution emerge that can free the client from transgenerational entanglements.

Areas of Application

Hickey's approach is used in various therapeutic and advisory contexts:

• Treatment-resistant symptoms: Physical or psychological complaints that elude conventional treatment may be caused by transgenerational entanglements.
• Relationship patterns: Recurring conflicts, separations or difficulties in partnerships that do not resolve despite couples therapy.
• Parenting questions: Parents who relapse in child-rearing into patterns they actually wished to avoid.
• Professional blocks: Inexplicable difficulties at work or in self-realisation that may be connected to family loyalties.

Experiencing Genogram Work Live: Seminar in Berlin

Those who wish to experience Dr. Birgit Hickey's approach in practice have the opportunity to do so at Systemisch.Weiter.Denken. In introductory seminars and practical workshops, Hickey works live with genograms and systemic constellations – a unique opportunity to experience the methodology through one's own family system.

Digital Genograms for Practice

Whether in preparation for a seminar, in individual therapeutic work or in supervision – a digital genogram considerably eases the family-biographical analysis. Patterns can be highlighted with colour, changes are possible at any time, and the finished genogram can be exported as PDF, which becomes important at the latest when one wishes to present it in supervision.

GenoEasy was developed for precisely this need: standards-compliant symbols, encrypted storage of sensitive data and an operation that gets by without a manual. Because the tool should remain in the background, so that the therapeutic work can occupy the foreground.