Conflict
A zigzag line drawn straight between two people means a relationship marked by conflict.
How to read it
The Multicultural Family Institute’s chart of interactional patterns calls the zigzag hostile. The 1980 legend in The Journal of Family Practice and a University of Texas at Austin social work guide call it a conflictual relationship, and the 2021 Research in Practice guide labels it conflict. The zigzag combines with the lines for closeness: between two parallel lines it is close-hostile, and between three, fused-hostile.
Also searched as: conflict symbol, conflictual genogram, genogram conflict, hostile genogram.
This explains what a symbol records on a genogram. Clinicians vary the notation, and a genogram’s own key takes precedence.
Zigzags with arrowheads
A zigzag that ends in an arrowhead is a different mark. On the Institute’s chart these lines record abuse, with separate forms for physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The Practice Supervisor Development Programme’s guide for social workers, funded by the Department for Education, draws violence from one person with an arrowhead at one end and violence to each other with arrowheads at both ends.
Read next
- Next in Genogram symbolsDistant relationshipA dotted line drawn straight between two people means a distant relationship.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of EthiopiaEthiopia’s flag is green, yellow and red in equal horizontal stripes with a blue disc in the centre holding a yellow star of equal lines with yellow rays. Ethiopia’s Flag Proclamation makes the green labour, fertility and development, the yellow hope, justice and equality, and the red sacrifice and heroism for freedom and equality; the blue disc is peace and the star the unity of Ethiopia’s nations, nationalities and peoples.
More genogram symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with circles, lines or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- Standard Symbols for Genograms, The Multicultural Family Institute (copy on a PBworks course wiki), Page 2
- The Genogram, Winifred Jolly, Jack Froom and Melville G. Rosen, The Journal of Family Practice 10, no. 2 (1980): 251–255, The Journal of Family Practice (MDedge archive), Figure 2, Genogram symbols
- Genogram (TXPOP practice model tools guide), Texas Permanency Outcomes Project, Steve Hicks School of Social Work, The University of Texas at Austin, Symbols for drawing the genogram
- Using genograms in practice, Practice Tool, Hannah Scott, February 2021, Research in Practice (The Dartington Hall Trust), Figure 2, page 11
- Drawing a genogram, PSDP Resources and Tools, November 2019, Practice Supervisor Development Programme, funded by the Department for Education (copy hosted by Tri.x procedures online), Figure 1, example of a genogram
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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