Customer Reviews

Siblings: Sex and Violence

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Siblings is a brilliant psychoanalytic study of lateral relationships and sibling dynamics. I've found it to be very useful as a writer and critic interested in the workings of aggression. Even groundbreaking.

March 13, 2005

(c)2005 Jean Hantman www.psychoanalysisfrp.com

On "Siblings" by Juliet Mitchell

Polity Press, 2003

"I was struck that the father was not credited with any role in the aetiology of Sarah's

illness." J. Mitchell

Mitchell, a brilliant psychoanalyst has written a book that is certainly a valuable addition to psychoanalytic literature.

All the stories we hear from patients about the major influence their brothers and sisters have

had on their psychic lives has been a significant omission in the literature. She makes a good

case for considering that the core event in many people's lives revolve around their experience

with their siblings.

And yet the question remains: Where are the parents? Where were the parents?

Mitchell herself writes: "Western psychiatrists and psychotherapists confirm that sibling

incest occurs most frequently in the context of an absence of vertical--usually, that is

parental--care. Although the context will change the implications considerably, the child feels

this neglect very acutely... the absence of adult protection is present in all cases" (italics

mine).

What then could the reason be for shifting etiology from the vertical (parental) to the

lateral (sibling)?

Mitchell makes the same omission that Freud does with the Oedipus myth: the circumstances

of Oedipus' birth and infancy: his parents abandoned him when he was born. Both Freud and

Mitchell (and most other Oedipists) skip to the patricide and incest part of the story, stricken

with the usual psychoanalytic amnesia concerning Oedipus' abandonment at birth by his parents.

Later on, when writing about patients' childhood experiences, the same amnesia and omission is

repeated. Focus on incestuous fantasies and activities and ignore the historical abandonment,

the 'absence of adult protection'. All of us in practice repeatedly hear about bad things

happening to our patients in childhood, and for some reason we collude with them by not asking

the obvious questions: Well, where were your parents?

And, because we can't be protecting the children every minute of the day, the equally

important questions: Could you tell your parents about it afterwards? Did they help you? Why not?

Raise your hand if you left your little boys and girls together in a room and walked away

for longer than it takes for one of them to get hurt. And how many times did you turn your back?

Once? Twice? Always? Where are the parents? Where were the parents?

Let's say we can't control every second of our children's time in a home. Anyone out

there let a violent situation go by without immediately taking to task the brother or sister who

stepped over the physical line and hurt his or her sibling? So that the violent child knew that

you, the parent, were unconflicted about demanding a home in which the difference between verbal

anger (murderous wishes) and physical assault (murderous actions) is discussed constantly, and

discussed again and again, and understood and abided by?

And in those (hopefully) rare situations when you (or designated other adult) weren't

where you were supposed to be, protecting your kids from their violent impulses, didn't you

generate discussion afterwards with them about the difference between impulse and action, until

they learned to put their wishes into words, discussions, stories, art etc. forever after (i.e.,

civilization), rather than punches and pushing, or repression resulting in hysteria, in homes

where discussions are forbidden?

Most of my patients have horror stories to tell about unpleasant or unspeakable

experiences they had with their siblings over time. Sometimes I wonder to myself, and sometimes

I ask, "Where were your parents when this was going on?"

This is not to discount the pain lived by people who experienced sibling violence and

deprivation and unfulfilled longing. But I continue to disagree that these experiences are core

rather than secondary to parents who look the other way. Calling sibling violence the core

issue, rather than secondary--the consequence of parents who turn their heads--is another way of

protecting the bad object.

Who is behind the secrecy that siblings share and suffer from? Are babies born learning

to keep secrets from the people who are supposed to be protecting them from danger, or are they

taught to silence themselves, and by whom? Where are the parents?

There are so many ways that therapists from every discipline protect parents from

admitting responsibility for how the phantasies of the children are negotiated in the home.

Mitchell's book, though wonderfully rich in clinical material and meticulous research, is an

addition to that particular literature, the literature that protects the bad object by drawing

attention away from the source. My own preference for the title would be "Siblings Whose Parents

Turn Their Backs". Same material, same research, same case illustrations, different core issue,

different title.