some significant query help, please

firstly, I am not a db programmer. I ply my trade on WordPress stuff, but not in-depth db structuring from scratch. please keep that in mind as I do my best to ask this question?

I have two tables that I think will almost, kinda do what I want, which is an outline like this, only MUCH bigger:

• Phillips pid1
  • Barnes pid2
    • Moore pid3
      • de Mohrenschildt pid4
        • Oswald pid5
  • Hunt pid6
    • Sturgis pid7
      • Moore pid3

This is a (very lengthy) outline I've created in html that simply shows:

Phillips (knows) » Barnes (supervised) » Moore (supervised) » de Mohrenschildt (knows) » Oswald ...

AS WELL AS, Phillips (knows) » Hunt (knows) » Sturgis (followed, who also knows) » Moore (same one, pid3) ...

I put Sturgis followed by Moore specifically to show that these relationships are in no way numerically sequential. There will be 4 or 5 hundred Persons, (and 40 or 50 Organizations, once I get this solved).

You can see an example of it here (there's lots of data going on in this outline):
http://stemmonsfreeway.com/military-industrial-intelligence-anti-castro-syndicated/

So I have these tables:

    [persons]
    id, name             
-----------------
    1   Phillips
    2   Barnes
    3   Moore
    4   de Mohrenschildt
    5   Oswald
    6   Hunt
    7   Sturgis

    [assocs]
   p_id, a_id
----------------
    1     2
    2     3
    3     4
    4     5
    1     6
    6     7
    7     3

Code (markup):

and this query:

   
    SELECT a1.p_id, p1.name AS 'Name', a2.p_id, p2.name AS 'FName1', a3.p_id, p3.name AS 'FName2'
    FROM assocs a1
    JOIN assocs a2 ON a1.p_id = a2.a_id
    JOIN assocs a3 ON a2.p_id = a3.a_id
    JOIN persons p1 ON a1.p_id = p1.id
    JOIN persons p2 ON a2.p_id = p2.id
    JOIN persons p3 ON a3.p_id = p3.id
    WHERE p1.id = 1 AND p2.id = 2 AND p3.id = 3;

Code (markup):

which returns:

1 Phillips 2 Barnes 3 Moore

*** The problem I have is where a branch ends - Phillips to Oswald - and another starts again - Phillips to Moore, for instance.

*** What I need is a way to define an end to a string of associations and a start of the next one, perhaps with another field or two in the ASSOCS table, or another table... (I'd also love to be able to denote one of a few types of relationships, i.e. "friend" "foe" "supervised" "worked for" ...)

*** I'm hoping some kind soul can help me with a query that can do this, and some advice on how to handle it in the tables I've started with...?

 

Perhaps creating a sqlfiddle will help people solve your problems. The easiest way is probably to run the logic in PHP, you can also add in relationships to the assocs table