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This is a complex book for, as Mitchell says, ‘This book should be read as a verbal picture rather than a narrative. Its structure is like a dandelion flower, a compositae in which each floret is an independent unit but each is needed to make a connected whole’ (p. 42). I will return later to the difficulty that this structure places upon the reader.
There are two interrelated arguments that weave through this richly documented book. The first argument puts forward the idea that psychoanalytic theory has neglected our lateral relationships with our siblings and peers. The second argument claims that psychoanalytic theory has turned its back upon hysteria. These two ideas fit together in the following way. Mitchell believes that hysteria has not disappeared, though its features have been obscured by the failure to recognize its precipitating causes. Hysteria is the anguished response of the infant who feels displaced and dispossessed by the birth of a sibling. The birth of a sibling overthrows the certainty of things, and one's place in the world is no longer felt to be secure. Suddenly the elder child finds his position is threatened by someone who stands essentially in the same relationship to the parents. This can be a ‘catastrophe’ (p. 331) and an experience of fragmentation can take place. ‘Where am I?’ (p. 319) is the theme of this childish nightmare. The result of this experience is to push the displaced child into a regressive position, in the hope of gaining the mother's attention and love again. However, this regressive position is overlaid with other developmental experiences. The elder child will have begun to have sexual fantasies and will be aware of absences and endings and have some concept of death. Therefore this regressive pull will be complicated with fantasies of sex and violence attached to it. Murder will be ‘in the air’ (p. 20) as the elder child wishes to murder the intruder. This is the basis of hysteria and we all wish to repudiate it, for i