Siblings in the Unconscious and Psychopathology: Womb Fantasies, Claustrophobia, Fear of Pregnancy, Murderous Rage, Animal Symbolism, Christmas and Easter “Neuroses” and Twinnings or Identifications with Sisters and Brothers (2nd ed.), by Vamik D. Volkan and Gabriele Ast,  Karnac Books, London, 2014,  184 pp.

Just as we are about to leave id psychology in the dust we are exposed to, in this slim paperback's heavy-handed style, libidinal and aggressive drives played out in the literal and figurative nursery of our minds. It is the melodrama of childhood's primitive, primary process thinking that the authors capture in their adult patient's dreams and enactments. They interpret symbols in narrative or behavior as road signs of desire and defense to keep an exclusive relationship with the maternal object—preferably with the maternal womb. Siblings inevitably create a rift in this bond. The conflict often gets repressed for fear of greater rupture but can get reactivated and re-experienced psychosomatically or in an unconscious narrative—often there is a fluidity between both. The activation—most common for analysts—is stimulated by the regressive relationship that psychoanalysis fosters and the fact that we have multiple patients that occupy our attention and care. No matter how separate our entrance and exits are to and from our consulting rooms the reality of the non-exclusivity of our relationship with our patients comes to their notice. They comment, compare, and resent those relationships or if they deny and ignore them it is incumbent on us to not collude with their negative hallucination.

Some of those moments, when we are not conspicuously alone in the room with our patients, are the most memorable—Emily told me, our first session after I had been widowed, that “There is only one thing more that needs to happen…your sons should die…and then I'd have you all to myself.”