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The phenomenon of siblingship has been an undertheorized topic in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic thinking about the impact of siblings on the psyche and on later relational dynamics has tended to stress the effects of sibling rivalry, which implicitly privileges the centrality of parents. That is, psychoanalytic literature on siblings focuses on such dimensions as the relative availability of the parent, the parent's marriage, and parental behavior toward siblings as shapers of the sibling bond, particularly rivalry and competition. However, the sibling bond has unique features of its own that distinguish it from the hierarchical structure of the parent-child relationship. A primary goal of this essay is to review existing literature and to identify some of the unique aspects of this essential relationship.
This essay will also attend to some of the more beneficent aspects of sibling relationships, including their function in the regulation of psychological states and in potentiation of “mutual recognition” (Benjamin, 1995) through encounters with one's first peers. Group psychotherapists have always recognized the importance of the peer group in promoting social norms and providing meaningful, intimate feedback that in turn shapes (and reshapes) the unconscious structure of the self. For example, siblings and other peers may be more honest than parents and other caretakers (including analysts), and therefore their reactions may be experienced as more meaningful and useful in understanding the world outside the family. Marital therapists also are accustomed to seeing manifestations of sibling transferences in their work with couples, who may unconsciously fall into early patterns of relating to brothers and sisters. Abend (1984) also notes that the pattern of the sibling bond unconsciously influences the choice of marital partner. A successful intervention in couple therapy often involves an identification of the unconscious projections of sibling transferences that