Family Tree, Psychoanalysis and Fossils Research

 Have you figured out the connection between psychoanalytic therapy genealogy ( family tree research), and paleoanthropology( the search for our human origins in Africa)? It is all about who we are and where we come from. In psychoanalytic therapy you go back through your childhood. I have fortunate to have done that. In Family tree research you take it a step further to your historical childhood and the tracing of your ancestors to their begining. I have done that as well. And if you travel to Africa ( as I also did) you go all the way back to the beginning of your roots in humankind's origin......It was having to complete a family history genogram during pastoral psychoanalytic psychotherapy training in 1992 that first got me started on this journey. Latet I discovered that one county over from our home here in Virginia was the home of my 10th great grandfather, Silas Melton, whose Will from 1768 I read in the Albemarle County Courthouse. Nor that the Melton clan landed in VA from England in 1620, shortly after Jamestown, and settled a few more miles up the James River at New Kent, VA......So, that genogram got me started in family tree research. I had already done psychoanalytic psychotherapy. And the Africa trip of a lifetime came 15 years later. But the combination of all three of these experiences led me to truly know who I am and where I came from!!

2Kathy Melton and 1 other