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I feel very honoured to discuss the work of Juliet Mitchell.
Juliet Mitchell is a British psychoanalyst and one of the first feminist theorists to reread psychoanalysis as a theory of the social construction of gender within the institution of the patriarchal family. Mitchell's work remains central to the ongoing dialogue between psychoanalysis and feminism. Her original theoretical orientation was strongly influenced by Jacques Lacan's reading of Freud (Mitchell & Rose, 1982). Since then, Mitchell has moved in the direction of object relations theory and has written many original psychoanalytic papers and books, including an edited volume, Selected Melanie Klein (1986).
The main tenet of Mitchell's Siblings: Sex and Violence (2003) and her preceding work, Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria (2000) is that siblings are essential in any social structure. Mitchell tells us that we need a paradigm shift that includes a consideration of the lateral dimension of the sibling relationship as an independent factor in the structuring of the psyche. She argues that the sibling complex contains the key to a more complete understanding of the psychodynamics of hysteria, which had always eluded Freud.
Mitchell sees the family dimension as acting on two separate planes: the vertical axis, which is the relationship between parents (including their representatives, such as teachers, and adults in general) and children; and the horizontal axis, which includes all sibling (or sibling-like) relationships. The horizontal, or lateral, dimension is woven into the vertical dimension. Psychoanalysis has neglected the concept of laterality.