MEET THE AUTHOR
DR PENNY WALTERS follows up Ethical Dilemmas in Genealogy with a new book that investigates The Psychology of Searching
What themes do you explore in the book?
The first chapter answers the question, “Why do we even do genealogy?” The second chapter tackles, “What is a relative?” Is a DNA match that is your fourth cousin two times removed actually a relative, or are just siblings and aunties and cousins relatives? The third chapter is looking at reconstructing the past, which is how we take all of these snippets of information and turn them into a story and then our ancestor’s story becomes ours. So we become very proud of specific ancestors, but we ignore other relatives and ancestors because they don’t fit into our story. The fourth chapter covers the psychology of naming. The fifth chapter answers the question, “How do you visually represent your family?” The final chapter looks at how people die in different cultures and different religions.
What do you think attracts different people to researching family history?
What I’ve noticed in America is that many of my genealogy colleagues are interested in crafting and weaving and sewing. But when I ask some of my friends in England, they all seem to be interested in Sudoku and crosswords and jigsaw puzzles. I then wondered, is genealogy something to do with your personality? A person whose hobby is crafting and weaving, are they looking at the ‘rich tapestry of life’? Whereas in
England, maybe it’s more to do with filling in pieces of your puzzle.
The book’s last sentence is: “Are we searching for who they were or who we are?” If you’re researching a tree, you could argue that you’re looking for other people. But when you create a tree you often find out stuff about yourself.
What are the positive and negative aspects of researching your family history?
If you find out interesting information then there can be a lot of positives, but everything’s on a continuum. It might be that you find out that you had an enslaved ancestor, or it might be that you find out that a relation’s conception was a result of a rape. The hideous thing in my family was that they had to flee Ireland because of famine. Some people even argue that you can actually find inherited trauma in your narrative, for example if you’re descended from Holocaust victims. Others argue that they can feel that pain like it’s a scab that they keep picking with some terrible stories they’ve found in their family. Some researchers might even need counselling if they find certain things in their tree. The majority of the time there are fantastic stories and family history adds to your narrative – it really informs your identity. However, a small percentage of the time looking into your tree can lead to family historians finding a less happy story.