An Introduction

For many years, Juliet Mitchell has been Hunting down the Elements of a mystery: Why has there been no place for the topic of siblings in the psychoanalytic superstructure? Historically, the lateral dimension in psychic life was seen largely as a displacement from the more-important vertical, or parent-child, relation. The sibling relationship taken on its own merit has been a long time in the making. Notwithstanding the publication of numerous papers that address this imbalance, the subject of siblings sticks to the margins of theory. Mitchell's 2003 volume, with the fittingly direct title Siblings, demonstrated the fruits of her quest to parse this conundrum, and succeed she did. She extracted her central thesis from this book in her presentation at the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society Symposium in 2011. The paper, “Siblings: Thinking Theory,” which stands as the centerpiece of this section, is an author-edited version of her presentation.

Her work uncovered several unanticipated interlocking clues: the penetrating and abiding structures of phallocentrism in Western societies, and psychoanalytic theories concerning the origins of hysteria. Her perusal of early psychoanalytic explanations placed its “truths” about hysteria within the parent-child dimension in pre-oedipal and oedipal iterations. Mitchell provides the following account: The hysterical girl—though true too of the rarer example of the hysterical boy—flaunts a fantasied position of owning the phallus to captivate the mother. This kindles a seductive intensity in the child in the hope that the arrival of