Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

SIBLING LOVE AND OBJECT CHOICE. Sander M. Abend, M.D.

Dr. Abend observed that analysts routinely encounter material indicating conscious or unconscious erotic interest in siblings, but this is usually regarded, and

correctly so, as a preliminary layer, a more easily accessible derivative of incestuous wishes and fantasies. It may be that analysts have generally viewed this material as only defensive, only secondary in nature, and presumably producing no lasting impact on the psychic life of the individual distinguishable from the effects of the oedipal conflicts. Dr. Abend stated that, while this may usually be true, his observations suggest that it is not always so. He described two of his analyzed patients, each of whose preference in love partners in adult life was very much influenced by an unconscious incestuous attachment to a sibling.

The first, a man of twenty, was depressed and unable to pursue any relationship with a woman to a point of emotional or physical intimacy. The patient's conscious attitudes toward his mother, who had been seductively flirtatious as well as hostile and belittling to him, were those of fear, revulsion, and hatred. He had a sister, three years his senior, who was unusually warm, loving, and sensitive and whom he idolized. During his adolescence, they would visit each other's rooms, sometimes in nightclothes, to have long talks, at times accompanied by affectionate caresses or massages, which avoided becoming frankly sexual by only a narrow margin. It was possible to observe a distinct pattern in his choice of love partners after his sister married. They were all three to five years older than he and bore certain significant resemblances to his sister, especially in the ways they behaved toward him.

The second case was that of a young woman whose father had been stricken with a chronic, slowly progressive, ultimately fatal neuromuscular ailment, as a consequence of which he had grown gradually more self-centered and regresse