Sourozenecká dynamika – Sohni Hans (2019)

People associate the idea of deep alliance and rivalry with siblings. However, in a surprising contrast to everyday experiences, psychoanalysis devoted scant attention to this topic until the 1980s, and even today there are few professional publications on the subject. The relationship with siblings, however, is often the longest in a person's life and serves as a source of many relational experiences throughout its duration. The author thus suggests paying attention not only to the vertical dimension of family relationships (with parents) but also to the horizontal plane (with siblings), demonstrating the existence of so-called horizontal transfer. He describes how the topic of siblings is approached in individual, family, and group psychotherapy for both children and adults. He reveals how deficiencies in the parental and couple dimensions lead to the destruction of sibling relationships, and conversely, how liberation from parental projections in middle age can be associated with increasing sibling closeness. The book includes examples from everyday life as well as numerous case studies and proposes what good psychotherapeutic practice involving sibling dynamics should look like.