The biggest compliment that can be given to a friend or girlfriend is “You are like a brother to me”, “You are like a sister to me”. But why do we not always feel the same warm family feelings for a real brother or sister? The book “Brothers and Sisters: Myth and Reality” by Jungian analyst Henry Abramovich will help to understand the complex relationships of siblings. We have selected key points.
We have a special bond with brothers and sisters, says Henry Abramovich. As children, we often spend more time with them than with our parents, and our relationship with them usually lasts longer. In an era of divorce and alienation, sibling relationships are often the only ones that truly last.
The birth order of children, their struggle for their place in the family system directly affects the formation of their personality. This connection is of fundamental importance, although depth psychology has long underestimated it.
From love to hate
At the same time, sibling relationships are very complex, very emotionally charged and contradictory. We will find here the whole palette of emotions from love to hate, from attachment to complete alienation.
Steven Bank and Michael Kahn, in their classic book The Sibling Bond, identified eight main models of such relationships, from cooperation-rivalry, from complete merger to ultimate hostility:
- twin fusion: “We are one, we are the same. There is no difference between us.”
- Blurred connection: “I don’t know exactly who I am. Maybe I can be like you.”
- Perfect Hero Worship: “I admire you so much that I want to become just like you.”
- Interdependence, Committed Acceptance: “We are similar in many ways. We should always take care of each other despite our differences.”
- Dynamic independence, constructive dialectic: “We are similar, but different. This is a challenge that gives us room to grow.”
- Rigid differentiation, polarized rejection: “You are so different from me. I don’t want to depend on you, I don’t want to become like you.”
- Renunciation, deidentification: “We are different from each other in everything. I don’t need you, I don’t like you, and I don’t care if we ever meet again.”
The drama, if not tragedy, notes Abramovich, is that too often siblings take different emotional positions towards each other. One may be an example for idealization, while the other for the first – de-identification.
One is hostile to the other, while the other tries to unite with him. Brothers and sisters are often involved in a hurtful dance of intimacy. They can achieve a happy balance only when they are interdependent or dynamically independent.
Why are they so different?
It would seem that brothers and sisters have more in common than all other people. They have many similarities in nature and upbringing. One would expect the siblings to be extremely similar. However, behavioral geneticists have found that siblings are no more alike than strangers. Why can children in the same family be so different from each other?
In fact, brothers and sisters live and do not live in the same family. Each of them receives different parents, differing in age, experience, level of happiness or wealth. To paraphrase Heraclitus, “you can never enter the same family twice.”
The firstborn in the family has the opportunity to occupy any niche, and most of them choose a niche typical of the first child, developing “team” characteristics.
The second child enters a family where one “children’s” niche is already occupied, and he must look for another that is available to him. If for some reason (temperament, disability, illness) the older sibling did not occupy this niche of the firstborn, it becomes available to the one who was born later.
When niches are mutually exclusive, each sibling develops a polar identity with respect to the other. If one is bad, the other will be good. If one sister is considered beautiful, the other will be diligent, perhaps to hide the fact that she feels ugly. If one is mother’s favorite, the other will be father’s favorite, or nobody’s.
Polarization will be most extreme for siblings of the same sex and close in age who have the greatest need to differentiate from each other.
Seniors and juniors
Niche firstborns strive to be closer to parenting values, to fulfilling parental expectations, and therefore to higher achievements.
They have more reason to be jealous of their siblings than younger siblings.
In the first child from the very beginning of his life, parents invest everything they have. Those born later and accustomed to sharing parental contributions with other children never suffer the birth of a new brother or sister in the same way as the first child.
Parents may try to discourage jealousy, and firstborns can often suppress the feeling. But when parents aren’t watching, displaying a firstborn’s rage can be an effective way to intimidate younger siblings.
Siblings, to the chagrin of parents, are often obsessed with questions of distributive justice (“Who got more?”) as a way to reassess parental investments.
Younger children usually have better social and interpersonal skills. They are more open to experience, travel, new ideas.
Because firstborns are identified with the established order, they tend to be more conservative, more inclined to assert their authority, and less open to new experiences.
Younger children come from families with other children and therefore tend to have better social and interpersonal skills. They are more open to experience, travel, new ideas.
They have the luxury of not growing up when another child is born. But for them there is a danger that they will never grow up or overcome their identity as a “child” in the eyes of older brothers or sisters.
Get out of the shadows
When the psychological space is divided according to the principle “either – or” (“whatever is yours is not mine”), then the brother or sister becomes the shadow of the sibling. Shadow brothers or sisters divide the world between themselves and then forbid the other from entering their psychological territory.
“If I am a smart sister, I can never be beautiful. Trying to be beautiful, I will be forced to invade my sister’s territory. If I don’t do this, I will never face the beautiful side of myself and live a life cut off from it, just as my sister will never connect with her intellect,” writes Abramovich.
How can this polarized world be healed? Can siblings become more whole? When a person is faced with a difficult situation and his weaknesses come to the surface, the analyst asks him the question: “How would your sister/brother cope with this situation?”
He gives the example of his client Helen, free, energetic, but somewhat disorganized, artistic by nature. Her brother Paul, a successful accountant, was, on the contrary, a neat and logical person, but somewhat emotionally limited. As a result, Helen viewed Paul as an obsessive-compulsive personality and Paul saw her as chaotic.
While working with the analyst, Helen realized that Paul had many valuable qualities that she herself lacked. She discovered her hidden logical skills, developed a system for completing her paperwork, and filed her tax return on time for the first time.
Simultaneously, Helen’s internal changes were reflected in the Field. He was suddenly able to access previously hidden creativity by starting to paint. They have more common topics of conversation than ever before, they have become much closer.