Sibling Matters

A Psychoanalytic, Developmental, and Systemic Approach

Debbie Hindle, Susan Sherwin-White, Debbie Hindle, Susan Sherwin-White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429919190
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This original book gives a timely exploration of the importance of sibling relationships from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It presents for the first time an account of the work on brothers and sisters by Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and Anna Freud, whose pioneering and vital work on sibling issues has not been systematically examined before. It also explores the important contributions to our understanding of siblings from developmental research, systemic therapy and attachment theory. Through infant observation and clinical work with children and young people, the book reveals the ways in which sibling relationships can be illuminated by these different perspectives. The book aims to stress the importance of multi-disciplinary thinking and to encourage further an interface between psychoanalytic thinking and other disciplines. It is a must for clinicians and other professionals working with children and families and of interest too to the general reader.

Part I
Psychoanalytic Perspectives

Part I is devoted to chapters on the work on siblinghood of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud. These three giants were (inter alia) pioneers not only in the new field of child analysis, but also through their substantial work on brothers’ and sisters’ significance in the external and inner realities of an individual’s development and personality. The scope and importance of their work on siblings has been largely overlooked by subsequent generations, partly because of a mistaken belief that this was due, especially perhaps in the case of Freud, to a focus on the Oedipus complex and the relationship between child and parents (see chapter 1).

In chapter 1, Susan Sherwin-White explores the development of Freud’s work on sibling issues from the early 1880s (e.g., sibling sexual abuse, the impact of the birth of a new baby on siblings, sibling rivalry, the role of identification with brothers and sisters, the impact of a sibling’s death). The chapter charts the development of his concept of the “family complex”, where brothers and sisters are recognized along with parents as “primary objects” in the oedipal scenario, internalized for life and influential in an individual’s socialization and choice of later partners. Relevant case histories are explored; perhaps the most accessible case study is that of Little Hans, whose mother’s pregnancy and the birth of his little sister opened the door to his curiosity and anxieties about where babies come from and the relationship between his parents. The cases of the Rat Man and the Wolf Man document the central importance (and presence) of siblings in Freud’s clinical cases. Sherwin-White explores also how reasons of confidentiality and social discretion inhibited publication of the actual heady dynamics of the sibling life of some of his patients.

In chapter 2, Sherwin-White briefly discusses Klein’s development of her play technique from 1922 to explain how she amassed hitherto unimagined clinical data of early (and primitive) unconscious phantasies and of the psychic processes of very small (and older) children. The chapter focuses on the material from the analyses of 20 children in the Berliner Psychoanalytische Poliklinik, which Klein indicated included sibling difficulties; it also includes a section on her latency patient, “Richard”, who reveals a host of sibling issues, and refers to her work with adults where sibling problems were a concern. Following on from Freud’s views on the “family complex”, brothers and sisters feature constantly in Klein’s writing as elemental in the development of “object” relations from infancy and also of intergenerational potency.

Klein noted both sibling sexual relations as being beneficial for emotional development and object choice and, along with Freud, the damaging nature of abusive sibling sexual relationships, which are clearly transgressive. Klein’s view as expressed in early writings of the probable frequency of early sibling sexual activity is discussed and is set in context. The chapter closes with Klein’s thoughts on the important role of sibling relationships in facilitating the socialization of the child outside the family (now well attested by developmental psychology research: see chapters 4 and 8); this is set in the context of working through to feelings of love and reparation towards a brother or sister and thence to others (Klein’s “depressive position”).

In chapter 3, Inge-Martine Pretorius explores the development of Anna Freud’s understanding of sibling relationships from her earliest (pre-war) work in Vienna with infants and families to her post-war research and therapeutic work at the Hampstead Clinic (now the Anna Freud Centre). Pretorius notes how sibling relationships are the focus of Anna Freud’s first psychoanalytic publication (“Beating Fantasies and Daydreams”; 1922), in which the nature of erotic and masochistic sibling relations is explored in the oedipal context. Pretorius traces how throughout the 1920s and 1930s Anna Freud and her colleagues began longitudinal observations of mothers, babies, and young children which were to document the strong negative reactions to a sibling’s birth and sibling rivalry (see chapters 1 and 2).

In wartime London, Anna Freud’s Hampstead War Nurseries for infants and young children separated from their families, besides its therapeutic and educational aims, also researched the psychological needs of children and their development; this was to provide significant data about the children’s attachment to their natural siblings and their peer group. Recognition of the importance of the sibling relationship meant that, as Pretorius describes, the nurseries took in and kept numerous sibling groups together whose interactions could valuably be studied. In this context, the author also discusses the important work of Anna Freud’s colleague, Dorothy Burl-ingham, on twin psychodynamics, parental “twinning”, and the imaginary twin, which the Hampstead Nurseries’ intake of four pairs of twins made possible (see also chapter 8). Concomitantly, Pretorius examines Anna Freud’s well-known research papers on the group of war orphans liberated from a concentration camp who were cared for by her and her colleagues. Anna Freud, as Pretorius notes, recognized that this quasi-sibling group could, to a degree, compensate in providing mutual care and meeting emotional needs in the absence of parental care.

Anna Freud’s and colleagues’ subsequent work on sibling issues at the Hampstead Clinic is usefully traced through the data provided by the Hampstead Psychoanalytic Index and relevant writings of Anna Freud. It includes favouritism (and its dynamics) and the impact on a healthy sibling of an ill or disabled sibling (see also chapters 8 and 13). A main theme of Anna Freud’s work, which ends the chapter, is the importance of the role of the mother in mediating the development of positive, loving, and sociable relations between siblings.

One
Freud on brothers and sisters: a neglected topic

Susan Sherwin-White

The aim of this chapter is to provide a primary and needed review of the (rich) material on brothers and sisters in Sigmund Freud’s publications. The impetus for this research was twofold. In my child and adult mental health service (CAMHS) setting, I had a number of cases in which sibling issues were central and quite intractable (a Cain-and-Abel flavour).

At that time, 2003, two new books on sibling psychology had just been published: Prophecy Coles’s The Importance of Sibling Relationships in Psychoanalysis and Juliet Mitchell’s Siblings: Sex and Violence.

Reading these books, I was struck by a very basic, and seemingly strange misconception, on the part of both authors, that Freud himself neglected the importance of brothers and sisters in emotional development because of the Oedipus complex, and so marginalized brothers and sisters. But, after all, Oedipus had four half-siblings—two half-brothers and two half-sisters (Antigone and Ismene)—of whom he was, unwittingly, the father. And Freud was very well read in contemporary scholarship on the myth of Oedipus (Timms, 1988).

Both authors claimed, since the work of Judy Dunn (1985; Dunn & Kendrick, 1982a), a comparative neglect of brother–sister psychology and of this very basic relationship in family dynamics. It is absent, for example, from attachment theory in the work beginning with John Bowlby. However, I noted too that there was no reference in either book to the work of child psychotherapists or to the Journal of Child Psychotherapy, the 2004 index of which has a number of references to articles exploring sibling issues. I found it interesting that both authors cherry-pick a very limited number of references to brothers and sisters in Freud’s works, more or less reflecting the similarly selective index of the Standard Edition, Volume 24, published in 1974 (a decade—and a lot of work—after the penultimate volume), which lists only 10 entries. As a consequence, it is Freud’s work on siblings that is misrepresented and marginalized, in a way that has become institutionalized.

Having had the task, and challenge, of teaching about Freud for a decade at the Tavistock, I knew that this was bizarre and that Freud had a wide and judicious grasp of the potential importance of sibling dynamics for therapeutic work, which is still relevant today. I re-read Freud and found an enormous wealth and richness of discussion of various aspects of the psychology of siblings and its importance for psychic development, from childhood to puberty and into adulthood. References to siblings are spread throughout Freud’s works—actually in 56 papers in the Standard Edition, spanning the years from 1893 to 1938. This alone demonstrates the ongoing interest that Freud had, among many other current and new issues, in brothers and sisters, as does his practice of including new material on siblings in the notes with which he updated the new editions of his works.

Freud himself [b. 1856] was the eldest of a large sibling group of five sisters and one surviving brother [Anna b. 1858, Rosa b. 1860, Marie (Mitzi) b. 1861, Adolphine (Dolphi) b. 1862, Paula b. 1863, and Alexander b. 1866]. His elder half-brother Emanuel had emigrated to England. His first full sibling brother, Julius, was apparently born in 1857 and died at age 8 months, a death that reverberated with Freud. Freud’s letters as a schoolboy and university student to his close friend Eduard Silberstein, spanning the years 1871–1881 (see Boehlich, 1990), present lively glimpses of his attention to, for example, the birthdays, illnesses, activities, flirtations, and education of the sisters Anna, Rosa, and Dolphi and the well-being of Alexander.

From the wide range of references to brothers and sisters in Freud’s works, it is possible to abstract a number of themes that persist, throughout the volumes of the Standard Edition, to illustrate the ongoing interest that Freud had in siblings, both as regards clinical practice and also theory (quite apart from their role in his own life and in that of his children, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren and in the lives of his friends and colleagues, as is well documented in the many publications of Freud’s correspondence).

Themes on brothers and sisters in Freud

• The incestuous relations of brothers and sisters, linked initially to child sexual abuse—that is, the abuse of sisters by brothers, of brothers by sisters, and same-sex sibling abuse, following actual abuse of the abusing child by parents/carers.
• The affective intensity of emotions during early childhood and their range (positive and negative) that inform also the relations between siblings (as well as with their parents), with which Freud is very in tune and which he eloquently, and respectfully, articulates very early in the history of psychoanalysis.
• The important impact that the birth of a new baby has on his or her older brother or sister, involving the experience of loss and deprivation of the maternal object.
• The consequent sibling jealousy, rivalry, envy, and death wishes that may be stirred against the new arrival.
• The emotional and intellectual development that is (or is not) stimulated in the sibling by the arrival of a new baby: “Where do babies come from? How? Where? By whom? Who can give birth to babies—boys as well as girls? What are the sexual differences and what do they mean?”—that is to say, the concepts of epistemophilia (a word deriving from the Greek words philia, love, and episteme, knowledge; i.e., love for knowledge), penis envy, and castration.
• The concept of the “family complex” (not given an entry in Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973), in which brothers and sisters are consistently cited with parents as being among the “first” objects of a child. This concept of Freud’s also gives brothers and sisters, alongside parents, a key role in the future socialization of a child and his or her ability to function socially.
• The concept of “psychic infantilism” (German, ein Stück des psychischen Infantilismus)—that is to say, those who cannot move on from their “primitive”(early) object choices with regard to their parents, brothers, or sisters, for their “adult” choice of partner.
• The role of identification with brothers and/or sisters and their part in his or her inner world.
• The potential importance of birth order.
• The impact of the deaths of brothers and sisters on siblings.
• The replacement baby.
• Sibling transference in clinical work.
• Freud’s mythical primitive band of brothers, patricide, and primitive brother–sister incest.

In an earlier (and more exhaustive) version of this chapter, I organized the material into four sections:

1. the early psychoanalytic papers (Standard Edition, Volume 3);
2. The Interpretation of Dreams;
3. Freud’s subsequent work (excluding the case histories);
4. the case histories.

Not all of this, unfortunately, can be included in the space available here.

Right from the start, in five of the early psychoanalytic papers (1895c [1894], 1896a, 1896b, 1896c) Freud refers to siblings with a variety of foci—primarily in terms of the impact of incestuous relations between siblings in the context of sexual abuse, but already other aspects such as the impact of new babies on their sibling(s) are present (1899a). Freud recognized the brutality and imbalance of power that is involved in adult-to-child abuse, the repetitive cycle of abuse for siblings, the potentially long duration of incestuous sibling behaviour, and the impact of premature sexual enactment that leads to further sexual activity (1896c, pp. 214–215). The potentially serious psychic consequences he highlighted, appropriately for this era of his theory, in the words, “It is not at all rare for both of the two children to fall ill later of defence neuroses—the brother with obsessions and the sister with hysteria” (1896b, p. 165).

In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), there are some 40 references to brothers and sisters, which I gathered under the headings: Freud’s own siblings; Object choice and identification; Siblings and maternal identification; Sibling relations; Parental favouritism (birth order and gender); Hostilities between siblings; Freud’s comment on his own observation of early sibling dynamics; Freud on a child’s perspective on death-wishing a sibling; Replacement babies; Sibling incest; Sexual difference.

I am going to discuss, necessarily selectively, some of Freud’s subsequent work on brothers and sisters, which I will approach thematically and, mainly, chronologically within selected themes that, unsurprisingly, often interlink.

By 1908, as the Minutes of Freud’s Vienna Psychoanalytic Society show, in the Scientific Meeting of 22 April, the potential clinical importance of sibling issues in psychoanalytic treatment was recognized in a questionnaire for patients prepared by Dr Eduard Hitschmann (Nunberg & Federn, 1967, p. 377), “Siblings: Age, sequence, sex. Special preference? Hatred? Their abnormalities; childhood habits, peculiarities. Sexual frankness.”

A second (lengthy) questionnaire prepared by Dr Magnus Hirsch-feld, especially to explore homosexuality in patients, also acknowledged the importance of sibling relations, specifically birth order and gender (pp. 380–381). Sibling issues were a major concern.

The impact of babies on siblings

In an important paragraph, Freud made clear at the turn of the century what are cogent (if still unpalatable and potentially shocking) truths about sibling relations:

I do not know why we presuppose that the relation must be a loving one; for instances of hostility between adult brothers and sisters force themselves upon everyone’s experience and we can often establish the fact that the disunity originated in childhood or has always existed…. The elder child ill-treats the younger, maligns him and robs him of his toys; while the younger is consumed with impotent rage against the elder, envies and fears him, or meets his oppressor with the first stirrings of a love of liberty and a sense of justice…. Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them—especially as against rivals, other children, and first and foremost as against brothers and sisters. [1900a, p. 250; emphasis added]

It is in “The Sexual Enlightenment of Children” (Freud, 1907c, p. 135) that Freud, in discussing a child’s search for enlightenment “in the riddle of the sexes”, first refers to “The second great problem which exercises a child’s mind … the question of the origin of babies. This is usually started by the unwelcome arrival of a small brother and sister.” The assumption that a new baby is unwelcome, from the older toddler or child’s viewpoint, was to be focal and controversial (cf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• Introduction
• PART I Psychoanalytic perspectives
• PART II Developmental, attachment, and systemic perspectives
• PART III Aspects of siblinghood from early childhood to adolescence
• PART IV Sibling relationships in different family contexts
• PART V Siblings in adversity: effects of death and illness on siblings from childhood to adulthood
• Endpiece
• REFERENCES
• INDEX