Siblings, Galit Atlas writes ‘are our first peers, rivals, witnesses and companions, a source of love, envy, compassion and identification. So much of competitiveness and envy is shaped by our experience of siblings.’ And as other psychoanalytic folks write, it’s a horizontal influence rather than the one most often explored, the vertical influence of parents, from top down.
When I was small I felt no great need for friends outside of my family. My siblings were my friends, especially those closest in age, my two slightly older brothers and my younger sisters. My older sister led the way, and the two eldest brothers belonged to the realm of adults and therefore counted less, except as further authority figures who came and went. While the two below them and the one below me were my best friends.
We spent hours, weeks, months in one another’s company and their presence softened the blows of all the abuse we copped at the hands of our father.
I well remember the story of the babes in the wood, two children orphaned and left to fend for themselves. Together they wandered lost through a forest, and exhausted, stopped at the base of a tree where they died. Soon a Robin redbreast covered them in leaves. But no, as Atlas writes, ‘Abuse in families separates siblings into what she describes as ‘a solitary survival strategy, while aggression in the family can be enacted among the children.’
Juliet Mithell in her turn writes about the law of the mother, a law that ensures siblings do not kill one another, but as each new baby arrives, supplanting the one before, the child enduring the arrival of a sibling must learn the difference between the same and other. Before the new baby comes along there is a sense this baby will be the same as me. But after the baby is born, comes the realisation, this baby is other than me. The toddler, or older child whatever age, will need to find ways of coping with the arrival of this rival and it’s their mother’s awareness of the pain of this and her efforts to help them negotiate the new order that makes all the difference.
I well remember the jealousy I felt towards my immediately younger sister. The way I considered her so much more beautiful than me. It rankled. My mother told the story of how walking along with my sister in her pram people stopped to admire the baby while, toddling alongside, I attracted none of their admiration.
Years later, she told me how she tried to soften the blow by alerting admirers to me but it made little difference. I continued in my jealousy towards my beautiful sister who looked more like our dark-haired movie star mother, at least in her youth, while I took after my father with my long face, fair hair and less well-balanced features.
Small things like this matter when you’re little. The understanding I gained here from my analyst stays with me still.
She pointed out how my mother found it difficult to tolerate the competition and rivalry between us siblings. When we argued and fought, she fell in a heap, weeping. ‘How can you behave so?’ She was the eldest of her tribe of seven, followed by five brothers and only one sister, a twin six years younger.
Atlas describes the eldest, like my mother, as the ‘melancholic child’, one who has endured early loss repeated again and again depending on the number of children.
In any case, when I told Mrs Milanova about my jealousy towards my sister and my mother’s disapproval of such feelings, she suggested it was not helpful to disapprove of any uncomfortable feelings.
Feelings such as jealousy need understanding. It’s a painful feeling, and let’s face it, it’s universal for us all at various times in our lives. If you then get the message from your parents that there’s something wrong with you for feeling this way, then the feeling is ten times worse. And you feel bad for feeling it in the first place.
You cannot help a feeling. Feelings come on us unbidden. But it helps to interrogate them first before responding rather than simply reacting.
And it’s not easy.