Siblings in Early Childhood: Some Direct Observational Findings

Athough the importance of siblings is well appreciated in clinical psychoanalysis, what we analysts know of the subject, to the best of my knowledge, has not to date been topically conceptualized and organized. Most of our attention in discussing genetics and dynamics of intrapsychic conflicts, objects relations, and the development of object relatedness has been given to the parent-child relationships. Furthermore, psychoanalysts generally agree that in the clinical situation representations of the parents are the central objects in the transference, and representations of siblings are not usually externalized onto the analyst to become central transference objects.

Nonetheless, in both adult and child clinical analytic work, our patients' siblings become known to us to a greater or lesser extent. In fact in some patients, siblings play a vital part in the analysis of their neurotic conflicts and symptoms. To the extent that they are selected objects vital to our patients' neurosis-inducing fantasies, episodic sibling transference constellations do occur. In one instance, my patient's transference allowed the analysis not only of her brother's seducing her but, critical to her neurosis, of the part she played in that seduction as well as her reactions to it and to him. In another case, the transference gave the opportunity for the