Sibling rivalry at work; from family to groups

Abstract

Sibling relationships are ambivalent. They are full of love and hate, and therefore, our most basic wish cannot simply be to get rid of our siblings. Many of the conflicts we find ourselves in, either with friends or within institutions, may need a complex and subtle understanding of sibling dynamics. The famous Controversial Discussions that nearly destroyed the Institute of Psychoanalysis in the early forties could be partly attributed to the unacknowledged and unconscious dynamics of the sibling transferences that swirled around Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and Freud. One of the tasks of therapists is to explore how we all must live within a society, with our contemporaries. This difficulty involves observing that sometimes in therapy we are part of the nursery quarrel itself, rather than superior. And so in adult sibling conflict within an institution, there may be a need for an outside moderator, like a parent, to sort out the quarrel; for when sibling passions are revived at work or in the consulting room, they can knock one sideways with the unmeditated quality of the encounter.

Keywords:

• sibling rivalry
• sibling love
• sibling transference
• sibling death
• Controversial Discussions
• institutional conflict

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.