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Despite growing recognition of the influence of siblings on personality formation, systematic exploration of sibling relationships is a commonly neglected aspect of psychoanalytic inquiry. Sibling attitudes have been explored in the context of the parent-child relationship, but traditional focusing on the “mothering one” or the father tends to obscure the often powerful impact of relatively independent sibling interactions. Brothers and sisters usually spend at least as much time together as each spends with the parents, but the significance of their reciprocal influences tends to be overlooked. Indeed, inattention to feelings and attitudes rooted in sibling relationships can be a source of therapeutic stalemate, if not failure.
In her reanalysis of 37 patients, Szalita (1968) reported that “omission of an important early relationship, usually with a sibling,” was one reason for dissatisfaction with previous analyses. My own work with patients in second and third analyses reinforces Szalita's finding that sibling relationships often go unexplored. Supervision of candidates in psychoanalytic training also highlights the consequences of inadequate attention to sibling influences in the candidate's personal analysis. Since personal analysis is probably the most important aspect of training for analytic work, inattention to sibling influence tends to be perpetuated.
My purpose here is to direct attention to the therapeutic import of investigating sibling interactions, particularly as they are reactivated in the transference. Traditional biases, countertransferential tendencies, and other factors that have obscured the significance of sibling transference are discussed.