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Someone is dead
Even the trees know it
Those poor old dancers who come on lewdly
All pea green scarfs and spine pole
I think. …
I think I could have stopped it
[from “Lament,” Anne Sexton, 1981].
The impetus for this paper was the production of a play, Groundhog, by the contemporary writer and composer, Elizabeth Swados (1992). It showed the anguish and undiluted remorse with which this creative artist remembered the life and death of her brother (described in greater detail in Swados [1991]). It reminded me of several patients whose lives were transformed by the suicide of a sibling. Two of them were women who were unable to bear children until they had worked through the unconscious effects of their brothers' deaths.
Analytic work underscored how necessary it is to work through the hidden paths of guilt and showed the various ways in which identifications became entrenched and were reworked after a sibling's suicide.