Sibling Abuse Trauma: Assessment and Intervention Strategies for Children, Families, and Adults, by John V. Caffaro, published by  Routledge, New York, 2014.

Bowlby developed attachment theory to highlight the different patterns of behaviour prevalent between parents and their children to draw attention to the vulnerable position within society that children naturally assume. Since then, another important piece of family work, the sibling relationship, has gradually but surely begun to draw attention. Sibling Abuse Trauma does not explore this relationship per se but instead takes a critical look at the nature, origins, and impact of traumatic sibling relationships across the life cycle.

The first part of the book takes an extensive look at the sibling domain, giving it a general overview and putting it into historical and evolutionary context using Biblical stories, folklore, legends, and fiction to emphasise how ancient the concepts of rivalry, violence, and abuse are. For instance:

Charles Darwin noticed that most siblings in the animal kingdom are not intrinsically kind to one another, and this has now been documented in all sorts of creatures. For newborns of every species, the first order of business is looking out for number one by securing maximum parental resources for oneself; in the competition for survival, the goal is to ensure that you are the fittest. The ruling drive is the urge to become the favourite child - or the only one left - by any means necessary. Raising siblings without rivalry is probably impossible. (p. 4)

Caffaro points our attention to the group behaviour of ants and suggests their behaviour elucidates the nature and origin of altruism but also its counterpart, an inclination towards collaboration in times of threats. He cites Reeve and Hölldobler (2007) who suggest that:

the dynamic of groups is a constant back and forth between one tug of war nested inside another. The first tug of war is selfish competition for resources within the group. The second is the group's competition with rival groups. The theory suggests that self-sacrificing devotion to the group, involving cooperation and altruis