According to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultation at PINC by Visions, Inc., many members, even some who are highly involved, experience a feeling of being on the outside. A feeling of better than/lesser than appears to exist, along such dimensions as PINC graduate or not, personal/supervising analyst or not, longevity of involvement, gender, and economic status. A feeling of an unspoken hierarchy at PINC was also cited. Additionally, some non-member attendees at PINC events report feeling unwelcome. There is a strong desire at PINC to cultivate a more inclusive and welcoming environment, and the culture at the Institute has been evolving in that direction. However, it appears important to better understand the experience of feeling “other” at PINC, as we continue to try to become a more welcoming place for BIPOC individuals. I would like to bring attention to one of the more unconscious forces that may be involved in othering, which is sibling rivalry. That is, one may wish to be in the position of chosen, special, and on the inside.
Sibling relationships mark the beginning of finding one’s place laterally in relation to an “other.” Siblings are like one another, in being children of the same parents. We intensely love and hate these similar beings – the longed-for soulmate, and the threatened replacement. Juliet Mitchell (2000) states that the threat of being displaced causes annihilation anxiety, due to dependency upon the mother for survival. According to Mitchell, whether a new sibling is born, or a younger child realizes that an older sibling is valued in ways he/she is not, it is the experience that the sibling “replica” has a place or position that one cannot occupy that evokes annihilation anxiety. As we know, in response to the threat of displacement, children want the maternal object to themselves, and wish to get rid of the sibling. Mitchell theorizes that if the threat becomes a trauma, hysteria results. The wish to be the only one cannot be relinquished. However, the underlying wish is not to possess the parent, but to be recognized as a unique subject. Parental favoritism is among the circumstances that I have found often result in sibling trauma and hysteria (Haas-Lyon, 2007). Both chosen and unchosen children develop the belief that the only options are to be “in” or “out,” the “have” or “have not” (Bieber, 1977). Favored children suffer guilt, but may also guard their positions because the only other option appears to be “out.” Unfavored children feel guilty due to envious, murderous wishes to displace the sibling into their position of second-class citizen. Dynamics of “in” or “out” are of course also common in and among groups, organizations, nations, ethnicities, and religions. Christians, Muslims, Jews, White supremacists, and America have all wished to be the only one in God’s eyes. There are particular aspects of psychoanalysis that may involve wishes and fears of being chosen. Psychoanalysis is an elitist field, financially formidable. Candidates share analysts and supervisors, potentially exacerbating competitive feelings. Further, psychoanalysis has a history of fratricide, probably partly due to Freud’s sibling trauma. As we know, Freud was his mother’s chosen child, and he experienced his little brother’s birth as a betrayal. Intense jealousy was followed by guilt when this brother died in infancy. Sibling death concretizes the fantasy that one will be either annihilated or annihilating. Psychoanalytic “sons” were likely more tolerable for Freud than more collegial “brothers,” who disagreed with Freud’s privileging of the Oedipus complex. For myself, becoming a psychoanalyst evoked wishes and fears of being chosen by my father, who favored my younger sister. She was the star, and a replacement for his sister, who was killed in the Holocaust. When in training at PINC, the arrival of new candidate siblings evoked the dread of being surpassed and relegated to the margins. When a fellow candidate was asked to join a committee, feelings of being unchosen were elicited. At PINC events, I have genuinely embraced beloved colleagues, while at times feeling like I was performing for outsiders – also versions of potential sibling replacements – that I belong to an elect group. On the other hand, coming forward to make a place for myself has felt tantamount to murdering my sibling peers, due to inheriting my father’s survivor guilt. Writing this essay has itself felt fraught. I have played a part in feeling like an outsider at PINC, and at times wanting to make others feel so as well. Recognizing how annihilation anxiety related to siblings may affect us individually, at PINC, in psychoanalysis, and beyond, is not easy. However, it may help us progress toward the diversity, equity, and inclusiveness we seek. We are all alike and different. We each have value. There is a place for all of us.
Bieber, I. (1977), Pathogenicity of parental preference. J. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal., 5:291-298.
Haas-Lyon, S. (2007), To outdo or undo? Siblings and hysteria. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 8(1):1-26.
Mitchell, J. (2000), Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria. New York: Basic Books.
Sue Haas-Lyon, Ph.D., will be presenting her paper Murder on the Couch: Sibling Rivalry,
Transference, and Countertransference at the 2021 IPA Conference.
