Caroline Moore dissertation

Institute for Clinical Social Work

I Am Billy’s Sister: The Psychological Life of Siblinghood

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work

in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By Caroline Marbury Moore

Chicago, Illinois June 2020

Abstract

This exploratory research project employed a psychoanalytic case study methodology, subjectively interpreted and epistemologically situated within a hermeneutic framework. This research study sought to identify and describe remnants of siblinghood in the psychological lives of four adults. The central proposition for this study included that psychic remnants of siblinghood universally have significant impact on psychological life in adulthood.

Individual case studies were created for four participants based on the data that emerged in each of their four to five, 60 to 90-minute interviews. Data analysis occurred in two phases. In phase one, within-case analyses were performed on the narrative data for each participant. Interpretation of the data was performed through the researcher’s utilization of her own subjectivity within a psychoanalytic theoretical lens, and major themes were identified. Phase two of the data analysis involved an in-depth cross-case analysis of all the themes that emerged from the within-case analyses.

The findings in this research project strongly supported this study’s central proposition that psychic remnants of siblinghood are significantly impactful in adult psychological life. The supraordinate finding in the cross-case analysis involved the profound significance of the psychic impact of gender in sibling related mental life.

Remnants of sibling related fantasy were also identified in a number of other significant aspects of participants’ psychological lives, the subjectively interpreted and psychoanalytically informed meanings of which were described and discussed.

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For my husband and my brother, and for Grace, Charlotte and Margaret, sisters.

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The nature and quality of the human child’s relations to people of his own and the opposite sex have already been laid down in the first six years of his life‌. The people to whom he is in this way fixed are his parents and brothers and sisters. ~Sigmund Freud

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Acknowledgments

For each of the following, and for your contributions to this dissertation, I am most grateful. Jennifer Tolleson, Ph.D., over 14 years, remnants of whose integrity, generosity and freedom of mind appreciably remain with me. Joan Servatius Ph.D., Edward Haley, LCSW, Kerstin Blumhardt, Ph.D., Andrea Harris-Alpert, Ph.D., Amy H. Moore, M.A., Laurel Dunn, Ph.D., Amelia Clark, M.S., Joana McMullen, Amy Eldridge, Ph.D., Virginia Shropshire, LCSW, and Sherwood Faigen, LCSW each made thoughtful and insightful contributions and held useable and useful psychic significance during my research and writing processes.

And to this study’s participants: with my respect and gratitude for your sharing of yourselves, this research project was made manifest through the willingness of each of you.

CMM

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Table of Contents

Page Abstract……………………………………………………………………..........………ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………..............……....v Chapter I. Introduction…………………......................……………………………………........1 Statement of the Problem Significance for the Study of Clinical Social Work Theoretical and Operational Definitions of Major Concepts Statement of Assumptions Epistemological Foundation of Project Foregrounding

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Table of Contents—Continued

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II. Literature Review……………………………...……...……………........….22 Preface Mental life Internalization Mental Objects Phantasy Psychological Deep Structures Preconception Mechanisms of Activation III. Methodology………………………………………...……………........….115 Introduction Sample And Screening Process Research Design Data Collection Plan For Data Analysis Issues Of Trustworthiness

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Table of Contents—Continued

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IV. Findings……………………………………………………………...…….128 Introduction Research Sample Case Study 1: Andrew Case Study 2: Doug Case Study 3: Michael Case Study 4: Maud V. Discussion………………………………………………………......……….293 Introduction Summary of Findings from the Cross-Case Analysis Theoretical, Research and Clinical Implications Summation Appendices A. Recruitments Flyer.........................................................................340 B. Brief Telephone Pre-Screening Script...........................................342 C. Script for Informed Consent...........................................................345 D. Interview Guide................................................................................348 E. Informed Consent Form..................................................................351 References...............................................................................................356

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1

Chapter I

Introduction This qualitative research study involved a psychoanalytically informed investigation of mental life. The specific purpose for this psychoanalytic case study research project was to seek to understand, describe, and theoretically situate the subjective meanings and fantastic remnants of siblinghood in the psychological lives of four adults. In her seminal work on the role of siblings in psychoanalytic theory and practice, British psychoanalyst and theorist, Juliet Mitchell (2000) writes, “Sibling relationships are the great omission in psychoanalytic observation and theory- its practice, as set out by Freud and all subsequent psychoanalytic theorists, militates against seeing their importance…once resurrected, siblings come out of their hiding places and are everywhere noticeable” (p. 39).

Citing the fact that siblings are missing from the psychoanalytic literature, in both major case studies as well as in theoretical constructions, Mitchell (2000) writes, “Yet, though once we think of siblings they seem to be everywhere, they never get taken up into the theory” (p. 39). British object relations theorist and psychoanalyst, Prophecy Coles, is one of the few psychoanalytic theorists to have taken up the ideas posed by Mitchell (2000). She writes in her book, The Importance of Sibling Relationships in Psychoanalysis, “Where have our siblings gone? Why do they not feature as significant

2 figures in psychoanalytic accounts of the inner world?” (2003, p. 1). Psychoanalytic researchers and clinicians, Vamir Volkan and Gabriele Ast, (1997) write, “The role of childhood sibling representations in the intrapsychic experiences of adults, whether it leads to positive (adaptive) or negative (psychopathological) outcomes, in its own right, has not received a systematic investigation in the psychoanalytic literature” (p. 8).

With few exceptions, (Agger,1988, Bank and Kahn 1997, Coles 2003, Colonna and Newman, 1983, Mitchell 2000, 2003, Sharpe and Rosenblatt 1994) psychoanalytic theory has almost exclusively privileged the significance of parental impact on children’s psychic development. Coles (2003) writes, “It is rare to find a psychoanalytic book on theory or technique in which siblings play a part in the way the internal world is conceived” (p. 9). She suggests that, in part, “One result of Freud’s comparative neglect of the place of siblings in emotional development, has been that there is almost no mention of siblings in psychoanalytic theory or practice and it is assumed that siblings play little part in people’s health or mental distress, with the exception of Mitchell (2000)” (p. 21).

According to Coles (2003): He [Freud] did not much care for them [siblings], his own or those of anyone else, and there are only passing references to them in his theoretical work, (1900a, 1905d, 1910a, 1914f, 1916-1917, 1931b), and no reference to them in his intellectual autobiography (1935a).... The place that siblings have in Freud’s work is as competitors for parental attention. He has been credited, quite rightly, with having normalized sibling rivalry” (pp. 21-22).

3 While Freud did not significantly develop the theoretical and clinical role of siblings beyond rivalry, he did actively allude to the significance of lateral axis relations in two seminal texts. His concept of the primal horde in Totem and Taboo (1918), and his thinking about group hysteria and lateral attachments based on a shared ego ideal, or master, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), represent some of his thinking about the impact of the dynamics involved in horizontal relations.

Regarding the importance of the inclusion of the potential psychic impact of siblinghood in psychoanalytic theory and practice, Mitchell (2003) writes: The proposition here is this: that an observation of the importance of siblings, and all the lateral relations that take their cue from them, must lead to a paradigm shift that challenges the unique importance of understanding through vertical paradigms. Mothers and fathers are, of course, immensely important, but social life does not only follow from a relationship with them as it is made to do in our Western theories. The baby is born into a world of peers as well as of parents.

Does our thinking thus exceed the binary? (p. 3) Mitchell is clear that she is not seeking to diminish or replace the significance of the Oedipus Complex, and its attendant vertical interpretations, rather, that she is suggesting the addition of a lateral axis of sibling significance, “I do not for one moment want to contest the importance of either the Oedipus or the castration complex; what I want is to propose is a different ordering which implicates siblings� (Mitchell, 2000, p.

37).

In considering the possible reasons that discussions of the significance of siblings and other peers in the psychic lives of adults are largely missing from the psychoanalytic

4 canon, Prophecy Coles (2003) writes, “Psychoanalytic theory seems to have colluded with the wish to be an only child…. Siblings are scarcely mentioned in the literature, and the concept of a sibling transference is not mentioned in any of the psychoanalytic dictionaries” (p. 1). Mitchell (2000, 2003) has written two seminal texts on differing aspects of the effects of siblinghood’s absence in psychoanalytic theory (and therefore, practice). In her first book on this topic, Mad Men and Medusas-Reclaiming Hysteria, she writes that she believes there has been, “a massive repression of the significance of all the love and hate in sibling relationships and their heirs in marital affinity and friendships” (p. 77). In her second book on this topic, Siblings: Sex and Violence (2003) Mitchell writes, …this book argues that siblings are essential in any social structure and psychically in all social relationships, including those of parents and children.

Internalized social relationships are the psyche’s major elements. More particularly, the work here considers that siblings have, almost peculiarly, been left out of the picture” (p. 14).

Regarding the importance of including sibling and peer influence on the fantasies, conflicts, loves and work of adulthood, in addition to the influence of parental objects, Mitchell (2003) writes: Why have we not considered that lateral relations in love and sexuality or in hate and war have needed a theoretical paradigm with which we might analyse, consider and seek to influence them? I am not sure of the answer to this question; I am sure we need such a paradigm shift from the near-exclusive dominance of

5 vertical comprehension to the interaction of the horizontal and the vertical in our social and in our psychological understanding (p. 15).

For this project, I defined siblings as peers sharing parents, concretely and in fantasy, and I posited that a psychological experience and utilization of siblinghood is arguably universal in western culture. Mitchell’s (2003) definition of siblinghood is similarly broadly inclusive, she writes, “In referring to these (lateral relationships) as ‘sibling’ relations, I am using the term extensively to include all those who stand in the position of siblings, whether biologically related or not (2000, p. 11). Additionally, she posits that siblings are present regardless biological kinship, I am naturally aware of the only child. Although this may change, I believe so far in the world’s history we all have, or expect to have a sister or brother, and this is psychically and socially crucial; in a complex way, peers replace siblings.

Everyone, always, of course knew about the importance of siblings but linking them to everybody’s actual pathology, to the depths of our loves and lives, hates and deaths, opens up a rich vein of enquiry (p. 7).

This dissertation utilized a psychoanalytic case study methodology (Tolleson, 1996) which involved deeply listening, multiple times, to a small number of adult participants from within a hermeneutic epistemological stance which emphasized subjective meaning. Further, a psychoanalytically informed, interpretive theoretical framework was employed in exploring and describing where it seemed lesser conscious psychic remains of sibling related fantasy may have been identified.

6 Significance of the Study for Clinical Social Work For psychodynamic clinical social workers, consideration of the lesser conscious effects of early life seems integral to the way we listen and work. Listening for how those with whom we work may make meaning of their associations, experiences and fantasies is often a fundamental component of psychoanalytically informed clinical treatment. As all “lateral relationships”, (defined as) those relationships which take place on a horizontal axis starting with siblings, going on to peers and affinal kin” (Mitchell 2003), are an intrinsic component of psychic and social realms, it seems essential that we consider listening clinically and theoretically for the lesser conscious psychological impact of the horizontal axis, as well as for those related to the vertical axis.

Increasing our conceptual understanding of what may be psychically meaningful in adulthood to include consideration of remnants of sibling related fantasy, may be useful for psychodynamic clinical social workers interested in working with understanding subjective meaning making. Raising awareness regarding the potential psychic impact of siblings and their peers on the horizontal axis, in adulthood, may allow for a greater number of possibilities to be considered in seeking to understand the meanings involved in psychological associations, conflicts, and fantasies. Mitchell (2003) writes, “Why should there be only one set of relationships which provide for the structure of our mind, or why should one be dominant in all times and places?” (p. 15).

In this post-modern era, psychoanalytically informed clinical social workers may be interested in considering that the concept of a single influence, such as parents, is generally imagined to be the most significant origin of important psychic fantasy and conflict, may be too narrow in scope. Considerations of likeness and difference, and

7 awareness of one’s place in the social world, for example, are facilitated by a sibling sense through lateral relationships. Mitchell (2003) writes, Some psychoanalytic accounts of group psychology offer not only observations of the importance of lateral relations but also…the prospect of a theoretical understanding of their relative autonomy…. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Freud comments how all aspects of a demand for social justice emanate from the situation ‘in the nursery.’ The intense jealousy, rivalry and envy among siblings (and later, schoolchildren) are reversed into demands for equality and fairness...and, where the primary identifications made with parents are subject to trauma (you think you are like your parents or one of your parents but you are not—at least, not yet), the primary identification with the peer group is positive and subject not to negation but to differentiation: you are like the others but with differences. This means that in later life the peer identification can be total or can incorporate diversity—groups are at times constructed in uniformity, at times they dissolve into their individual parts. It also means that love and hate, rivalry, jealousy and envy are social, and can be specifically lateral acquisitions in a group (pp. 11-14).

In sum, psychoanalytically informed clinical social workers may find significant benefit from consideration that remnants of sibling related fantasy may be among potential influences on adults’ psychic contents.

8 Statement of the Problem and Specific Objectives to Be Achieved As stated, consideration of the psychic impact of siblinghood in psychic life seems to be largely missing from the psychoanalytic lexicon (Mitchell, 2000/2003 and Coles, 2005). Current psychoanalytic theory and practice represents a wide range of thoughts, ideas and beliefs, generally including a significant interest in the lesser conscious impact of early parental influence on psychic life. There is very little in the literature, however, about the psychic shaping of early experience by sibling related fantasy. I suggested that sibling experience, concrete and fantastic, is a significant and inherent aspect of primordial psychic, social and family life. This study was specifically interested in how the remains of siblinghood are made manifest in the psychological lives of adults. What psychically becomes of siblinghood, with its elemental conflicts and fantasies, in adulthood? This project sought to understand and describe the impact of the residual effects of siblinghood in adult psychological life.

Interest in the unconscious effects of concrete and fantastic childhood experience, specifically related to the psychic consequences of a child’s love and desire for a parent, has been a foundational tenet in psychoanalytic theory and practice from its inception.

Differently, substantive discussion of the presence of psychic remnants of sibling related fantasy in adults’ psychological lives within the constructs of gender, love and sexuality seems significantly underrepresented in the psychoanalytic literature.

Mitchell (2000) writes, In psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus Complex is the “nuclear complex” which structures the personality and orientates human desire. It is the major axis from which psychopathology, or so-called normality, originates…both the Oedipus

9 Complex and the pre-Oedipal relationship stress vertical, generational relationships between children and parents at the expense of…the lateral relationships of children, peers, and affines” (p. 34).

Interestingly, though he does not elaborate the role of siblings in psychic life beyond rivalry, in Totem and Taboo,, Freud writes “Psychoanalysis has taught us that a boy’s earliest choice of objects for his love is incestuous and that those objects are forbidden ones— his mother and his sister” (1912-1913, p. 17). Clearly, the impact and significance of the fantasies and conflicts involved in a child’s love and desire for a parent are well documented in the literature, but what psychically becomes of fantasies of love and desire for our siblings? Mitchell (2003) writes, Freud argued that in order to marry our wife, we need to know in childhood that we cannot marry our mother (the Oedipus complex). I suggest that at the very least we also need to know we cannot marry our sister, if we are to be able to marry our sister's (not just our mother's) psychological successor. But do we in fact marry someone who resembles in some way our sister or brother?... We often hear it said that she's married her father (mother)—is it not, perhaps, that we have married a sibling? (p. 15).

Psychic derivatives of siblinghood may be found in any aspect of adult psychic life, interestingly including within the multiplicities and fantasies of whom we imagine we were/were not, are/are not, and may/may not become. Essentially, sibling related psychic influence may be found in any aspect of identity. Gender and sexuality seem to be fundamental aspects of sibling related psychological life, and as such, lasting sibling

10 related psychic influence in these constructs may be likely and should perhaps be considered. Mitchell (2003) writes, An examination of siblings and sibling relationships will bring both genders into the analytical picture. The sibling, I believe, is the figure which underlies such nearly forgotten concepts as the ego-ideal – the older sibling is idealized as someone the subject would like to be, and sometimes this is a reversal of the hatred for a rival. It can be an underlying structure for homosexuality. Siblings help too with the postmodern concern with the problem of Enlightenment thinking in which sameness is equated with the masculine and difference with the feminine (p. 16).

A significant aspect of psychic life in which I further imagined that sibling derivatives may be found, included how we consciously and unconsciously locate, organize, and manage our experiences of self and other. Mitchell writes, “The sibling is par excellence someone who threatens the subject's uniqueness. The ecstasy of loving one who is like oneself is experienced at the same time as the trauma of being annihilated by one who stands in one's place� (2003, p. 10).

It is well documented (Coles, 2005, Mitchell, 2000, 2003) that the residual effects of ordinary siblinghood in adult psychological life is a topic that is, interestingly, sparsely represented in the literature. In psychoanalytic theory, early familial contexts and relationships are generally considered central in the development of unconscious dynamics; contiguous with which, the requisite unconscious impact and meaning of early parental experience is well represented the adult literature, but the psychic consequences

11 of sibling experience have not been widely explored. This study was intended to contribute to this notable gap in the literature.

It is generally agreed, across the arc of the psychoanalytic theoretical spectrum, that early psychic life is highly influential in forming powerful associations, conflicts, and fantasies; the residual effects of which may be found in both the joys and the sufferings of adulthood. Mitchell (2000) writes, Siblings are everywhere in psychoanalytic accounts-even though they are absent from the theory and the clinical practice. Together with the death drive, they help account for many things we are otherwise puzzled by in social situations if we stay only with the vertical axis of explanation (p. 12).

In “Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology,” Freud writes, The nature and quality of the human child’s relations to people of his own and the opposite sex have already been laid down in the first six years of his life.... The people to whom he is in this way fixed are his parents and brothers and sisters (1914, p. 243).

In this, as well as in a small number of other instances, (1912/13, 1914), Freud does seem to address the psychic importance of sibling experience, but, interestingly, he does not further elaborate on the subject, which has resulted in meaningful omissions in the theoretical and clinical literature.

Volkan and Ast (1997) write: The role of childhood sibling representations in the intrapsychic experiences of adults, whether it leads to positive (adaptive) or negative (psychopathological)

12 outcomes, in its own right, has not received a systematic investigation in the psychoanalytic literature.

The significant impact of early parental (vertical) experience in psychic life is widely written about in the psychoanalytic literature, but, notably, there is not similar representation regarding the psychic impact of ordinary sibling (horizontal) experience (Coles 2005, Mitchell 2000, 2003). This dearth of psychoanalytic literature on the topic of the psychic effects of siblinghood seems to suggest that siblinghood, an ordinary and intrinsic aspect of childhood and adolescence, may not have been given sufficient consideration in psychoanalytic theorizing, teaching, training and clinical work beyond Freud’s concept of rivalry. This project aimed to contribute to the scant discussion in the psychoanalytic community about how, where, why, and, in what ways the derivatives of ordinary siblinghood may be found in the psychic lives of adults.

Arguably, the most significant recent contributions to the psychoanalytic literature on the unconscious significance of siblings/sibling relationships include the work of two British psychoanalysts, Juliet Mitchell and Prophecy Coles. It is unclear why the psychoanalytic literature and discussions are remarkably historically sparse in the area of the psychic impact of siblinghood in adults, as well as why, with the significant contributions of Mitchell (2000, 2003), and Coles (2005) did the topic still not seem to develop substantial clinical or theoretical traction. Initial speculations included that the lesser conscious tensions and conflicts involved in siblinghood are profound and complex, and often remain under resolved into adulthood.

As previously described, it seems that the richness which may be found with an investigation of sibling related fantasy have, for many reasons, often been subsumed by

13 parental effects and the privileging of the vertical axis. Volkan and Ast (1997) cite some possible explanations: Agger (1988) speculates that Freud's relationships with his siblings were conflictual and that they might have played a role in his minimizing the role of sibling experiences in the formation of psychopathology.

Graham (1988) described how his own countertransference difficulties interfered at times with his appreciation of sibling representations in his adult patients. And, Sharpe and Rosenblatt (1994) stated that the analyst may forget about siblings, not only out of theoretical bias, but also due to “countertransference issues related to personal conflicts with siblings” (p. 505) Psychoanalytic theory was founded on the concepts of vertical hierarchy, and as such, psychoanalytic practice is a pedagogical system with an emphasis on the Oedipal conflict: a vertical concept which emphasizes specific aspects and contents of parent/child fantasy. Psychoanalytic theory has had little historical interest in, nor paid significant attention to, how we are psychically informed and impacted by peers. Calling attention to the power of horizontal relationships and dynamics may challenge the traditional psychoanalytic status quo, and perhaps it is not therefore surprising that, to date, psychoanalytic theory has offered limited ways of thinking about the lifelong psychological impact of sibling related fantasy.

The lasting psychic profundity of siblinghood is well described by Adam Phillips, in his 1998 essay, “Sameness Is All.” He writes, “One of the characteristics of contemporary culture has been a longing for community, for a sufficient sense of sameness with others; and at the same time a suspicion of people’s wish to believe

14 themselves to be too similar to each other.” Phillips (1998), in writing about a child’s fantasies about cloning (‘twinning’) says, “cloning…seems to be a final solution to problem of otherness. And, of course, the end of any continuing need…for two sexes in the task of reproduction. In one fell swoop, cloning is a cure for sexuality and difference” (p. 88).

Phillips goes on to say that, psychoanalytically, “one of the individual’s formative projects, from childhood onwards, is to find a cure for- or…some kind of solution to…sexuality and difference, the sources of unbearable conflict” (p. 89).

Regarding the power of sibling influenced fantasies of sameness and difference within the concepts of gender and sexuality through a child’s perspective on cloning, Phillips (1998) writes, “The art of self-cloning is an attempt to stop time, by killing desire” (p. 92). Mitchell (2003), also cites the powerful role of similar fantasy in discussing the intersections of gender and sexuality in siblinghood: In Monika Treut's film, My Father is Coming (1990) the hero, as he drives along, repeatedly muses about his face in the car mirror. He shows a young woman a photograph: ‘Is that your sister?’ she asks; ‘Closer than that,’ he replies. Brothers and sisters represent the minimal distance between people that must be preserved if incest is to be avoided. The photograph is not of the hero's sister, it is of himself before he had a ‘sex change’ operation. I want to suggest that the term ‘gender’… has come to prominence even within psychoanalytic discourse because what is being described is not the maximal difference between mothers and fathers but the minimal difference of sibling sexual relations, which

15 themselves are only a shade away from a narcissistic economy in which the other is the self, ‘closer than that’ (pp. 111-112).

In addition to the above, perhaps the conscious and/or lesser conscious wish for singularity, to be our parents’ only child, and the potential continuity of sibling envy/rivalry, as well as the possible psychic complexities inherent in the incest taboo at play between peers, are additional reasons why this topic has remained underrepresented in the literature.

I have posited that the psychological remnants of siblinghood are widely available and generally significant, and that traces of subjectively determined meanings made from it are both idiosyncratic and universally present in adult psychological life. For the purpose of this project, these realities combined were well suited to the utilization of the psychoanalytic case study research method: the utilization of a narrative approach, focused on the exploration of subjective experience, subjectively interpreted within a psychoanalytic theoretical framework. The utilization of Tolleson’s (1996) psychoanalytic case study research methodology for this project allowed for the development of a depth of understanding that facilitated a rich description of aspects of each participant’s significant psychological utilization of siblinghood, as well as the opportunity to perform a rigorous, psychoanalytically informed cross analysis of all the participants’ data.

The main objective and benefit of this psychoanalytic case study project was to build theory. The need for this study is supported by the significant underrepresentation of this relevant topic in the psychoanalytic literature. Mitchell (2003) writes,

16 It can and has been argued (Winnicott, 1958) that it is essential we work out the problems of future social interaction with siblings in our early childhood. If we fail to overcome our desire for sibling incest or for sibling murder, will versions of these be more insistently played out with later lateral relationships, with peers and so-called equals – in love and in war? (p. 15).

Perhaps members of the psychoanalytic community may find it useful to consider how lesser conscious psychic effects, utilizations and representations of siblinghood may contribute to increasing understanding and contextualization of individuals, groups, and/or sociopolitical phenomena (e.g. policies, social mores, political movements, etc.).

Theoretical and Operational Definitions of Major Concepts The supraordinate construct for this research project was the psychic utilization of siblinghood in adulthood. Specifically, the focus of this research involved the possible identification and interpretation of subjective meanings and fantastic remnants of siblinghood in adult psychological life. For the purpose of this project, I defined siblinghood as the state of being a sibling: concretely and fantastically, peers sharing parents.

Statement of Assumptions 

Siblinghood is a significant and universal psychic phenomenon.

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Remnants of sibling related fantasy in adult psychological life may be identified, and the meanings of which may be subjectively interpreted within a psychoanalytically informed hermeneutic paradigm of inquiry.

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The potential utility and benefit for the psychoanalytic community in considering siblinghood’s implicit representations in adulthood is widely applicable, therefore, a broadly inclusive psychoanalytically informed theoretical approach to analyzing the data was well suited to this research study.

Epistemological Foundation of Project The epistemological foundation for this project was a hermeneutic paradigm of inquiry. Specifically, a psychoanalytic case study research project which focused on the interpretation of meaning, rather than discovery. Hermeneutic research is a methodology of interpretation through which it is not possible, nor of interest, to arrive at a concept of absolute truth. Rather, hermeneutic research allows for the building of theory and the location of meaning through a listening stance.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is a leading twentieth century German philosopher whose (1975) work, Truth and Method is widely considered a magnum opus in the field of philosophical hermeneutics. Four points seem to anchor and organize the importance and uniqueness of his thinking as reflected in his (1975) work: hermeneutic philosophy is elementally practical philosophy, truth is not reducible to scientific method, knowing is always historically contextual, and all understanding reflects the omnipresent nature of language.

Gadamer’s work provides a way in which to methodologically situate this project that supports the validity of clinical interview as a method of data gathering, as he is one of few philosophers who regard the “interview” as a significant category of philosophical production (Hahn, 1997, 588-599, Gadamer, 2001, 2003). As well, the following values:

18 lived experience, mutuality, thick description, the ubiquity of language, and a descriptive concept of truth, are all reflected in his thinking and writing, and contribute to the reason a hermeneutic paradigm was specifically chosen to philosophically frame this psychoanalytic case study research project.

Gadamer describes his concept of “truth” as fundamentally connected to an ability to recognize “something and oneself (1975, p. 114). Truth is an occurrence, a situation in which one experiences something that is beyond oneself. He writes, “in understanding, we are drawn into an event of truth, and arrive, as it were, too late, if we want to know what we are supposed to believe” (1975, p. 490). For Gadamer, truth is not the result of the application of any number of criteria involving distanced judgment and assessment.

His (1975) account describes the event of truth as an elliptical experience of mutuality though which one is drawn away from oneself into something larger and more expansive than oneself, after which one returns to oneself, changed from the experience.

Specifically, the “return to self” involves one’s understanding of meaning as it is cocreated through dialogue in a way that creates change in oneself.

Foregrounding I was drawn to this research topic because of my fundamental sense that I am Billy’s sister. As I became steeped in the literature related to this project, and further as I conducted interviews and interpreted data, I noticed psychic traces of myself as an older sister which, for me, had not been previously recognizable. The psychological impact of siblinghood in how I have increasingly understood who I am, and in how I have lived my life, is prodigious. My interest in the potential scope of sibling related fantasy in adult

19 mental life meaningfully raised my curiosity about how my own experience may be reflected and formulated in psychoanalytic theory and practice. I was surprised to find a dearth of substantive discussion on this topic in the psychoanalytic literature.

In their (1997) work, Siblings in the Unconscious and Psychopathology: Womb Fantasies, Claustrophobias, Fear of Pregnancy, Murderous Rage, Animal Symbolism, Christmas, and Easter “Neuroses,” and Twinnings, or Identifications with Sisters and Brothers, Volkan and Ast write, “it summarizes our clinical experience and supports our premise that siblings in the unconscious can lead to psychopathology in adults” (p. 161).

This example, from the sparse literature available on this topic, is significant in that it represents the (perhaps not historically uncommon) idea that internalized object representations related to siblinghood in adults may necessarily be characterized as pathological. Volkan and Ast’s supposition represents the still too ubiquitous psychoanalytic thinking that psychic life which evidences a differing of meaning, order, structure, content than that which reflects the oedipal construct as its central organizing principle, suggests abnormality and psychic pathology, rather than variations of normalcy and psychic health. I find inhabiting ideas, “unthought” assumptions and/or biases suggesting any implicit pathology regarding the varieties of ways in which siblinghood may impact the psychic lives of adults, including the innumerable ways we may make psychic use of the horizontal axis, risks interfering with the freedom of mind needed to be open to substantive exploration and understanding of the subjective meanings in psychic contents.

Undertaking this research project has usefully even more broadly shaped my listening stance related to what I imagine as “normative” utilization related to potential

20 psychic legacies of sibling related fantasies and conflicts. Siblinghood, in its infinite variations, is widely, broadly, and early available for lesser conscious psychic utilization, with and without the presence of siblings. I contend that psychic use of the horizontal axis may be as valid, and as likely “pathological,� or not, as is use of the vertical axis; I found no solid evidence to the contrary.

My interpretive stance in relation to this project was deeply shaped by my values, many of which were contributing factors to my original interest in clinical social work, and which formatively include that I hold lived experience as profoundly contextual. My immersion in this topic broadened my interpretive stance in ways that have allowed for my thinking and work to continue to evolve toward more fully reflecting my values and beliefs. I hold psychic life as elemental, and inseparable from other aspects of lived experience including the following realities and influences: culture, family, the social world, sex, gender, violence, disease, war, politics, power, ethnicity, race, religion and economy. Clinically and theoretically considering the potential presence of derivatives of siblinghood in adults’ psychological lives allows for greater alignment between my values and my psychoanalytic thinking and work.

I brought myself to this project within multiple temporal contexts, and from within a variety of social locations. I am committed to a willingness to think and imagine within a broadly psychoanalytic frame, without necessarily replacing or foreclosing prior ideas and ways of thinking. Undertaking this research project reflected my interest in increasing my capacity for imagination, and in improving my aptitudes for psychic freedom and flexibility in thought and association.

21 Juliet Mitchell (2000) writes, “The post-modern emphasis on difference has been at the expense of transversality—the variations always present within the universality…lateral relations that take up (a) position which (is) simultaneously the same and different may make a contribution to resolving this dichotomy, to allowing for a perspective of both/and, rather than either/or” (p. 12). I specifically aimed to inhabit an interpretive stance for this project that was characterized by inclusivity, multiplicity, and embedded within a hermeneutic paradigm informed by the accretion of knowledge and experience.

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Chapter II

Literature Review Preface As previously stated, the crux of this study involved a psychoanalytically informed investigation of mental life. Specifically, the focus of this research was on subjectively interpreted remnants of sibling related fantasy in adult psychological life. In support of this project’s aim, and in alignment with a broad theoretical lens, this chapter substantively reviews significant psychoanalytic theoretical contributions regarding how mental life is constituted, sustained and activated, with specific emphasis on potential collocations with psychic vestiges of siblinghood.

First, the psychoanalytic concepts of internalization, introjection, identification and incorporation, including consideration for their specific relationships to the psychic remains of siblinghood, are reviewed.

Second, psychoanalytic ideas related to psychic processes that result in the internal world becoming built up, populated and sustained from the points of view of major theoreticians’ constructs of mental objects and their relations are reviewed. Major concepts related to the psychoanalytic constructs of mental objects and mental object relations, with attention to their potential significance to psychic derivations of siblinghood, are discussed.

23 Third, significant psychoanalytic contributions regarding how the concepts of mental objects and mental object relations become activated and experienced through various constructs, including through aspects of the psychoanalytic phenomena of transference, countertransference, dreams, language and affect, are described.

Additionally, the roles and functions of the psychic activation of mental objects and their relations are specifically considered for their relevance related to psychic remains of siblinghood.

Mental Life What does psychoanalytic theory have to say about how things get psychically taken up, represented, sustained and played out?

1. Aspects of Internalization—Schafer, internalization, identification, introjection, incorporation.

2. Mental objects and mental object relations—Freud, Klein, Isaacs, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Bion, Kohut, Ogden, Mitchell, and Grotstein.

3. Mechanisms of activation—transference, countertransference, dreams, language, affect

Internalization This study’s statement of purpose includes that it will seek to understand the meanings and lesser conscious utilizations of siblinghood in adulthood, and the data produced will be analyzed using a wide psychoanalytic theoretical lens. Given that, it seems important to first describe the concept of internalization, which is fundamental to

24 how psychoanalytic theory holds that the narratives of human functioning, including siblinghood, are taken in and represented in psychic life. Specifically, listening for lesser conscious ways in which siblinghood and its derivatives are represented, requires a fundamental understanding of some of the core constructs that are central in forming an understanding of how siblings may take up psychic residence in oneself.

Internalization, as psychoanalytic theorists have written about it, is a process of mentation that involves taking the outside in. Most simply, that which is without is taken within. Roy Schafer, in his (1990) book, Aspects of Internalization, writes, “Internalization occupies a central place in psychoanalytic propositions concerning psychic development, structure formation, modification of aims, changes of cathectic distributions, and adaptive processes. Psychoanalytic conceptions of narcissism, object love, sublimation, and the ego ideal; of defense, anxiety, guilt, and shame; of loss, trauma, delay, and reality testing: all of these depend in part on the conception of internalization” (p. 1). Sibling experience, with and without biological siblings, become introduced to psychic life through the process of internalization.

Schafer writes that he thinks it is useful to take a “narrational” approach to the definition and study of internalization. Through the lens of narration, internalization is a term that establishes a storyline for understanding and explicating certain mental processes in dimensional terms. He writes, “Internalization requires us to give an account of the mind, the personality, the ego, or the self, as an entity in space. For a self or ego to be presented as in entity in space, it requires a boundary; that is to say, some way must be worked out of establishing an inside for it, and an outside. Moving along this storyline, one usually ties notions of essence to interiority and otherness to exteriority” (p. xiii).

25 The elegance and simplicity of the polarities outlined above are not representative of the complexity of most psychoanalytic narratives. Rather, internalization, as well as introjection, identification and incorporation, are most often multifaceted and interwoven mental constructs. Schafer writes: The word itself, internalization, suggests that something initially other and outside the boundary, something with its own essence, has been taken inside…But once taken inside, it may undergo different vicissitudes. First, it may retain its otherness, in which case it will be experienced as a foreign body and as an independent agent, praising, castigating, exhorting, advising, even being dead to the true ‘’inner” self. Second, it may somehow be shorn of its quality of otherness, and be experienced as part of the essential self, or ego; in that case it will be called identification. Third, what is internalized may be seen as being absorbed into an undifferentiated or regressively dedifferentiated or merged selfother; in this account it will be presented as dissolved in symbiotic union, distinctions between self and others having become irrelevant, impossible, or unbearable.

Often, it may seem that the status of the internalized other is not fixed; in these instances it may be best described as shifting between the status of the introject, identification, and the primitively merged. In another kind of repetitive shifting, the internalized other may seem repeatedly to get projected back into the external world and the reintrojected again” (p. xiii).

It is significant to note that although wide variation exists among individual accounts of the variations of internalization, some universal features do exist. Schafer

26 (1990) writes that psychoanalytic theorists commonly agree that the internalized other may be: ...a person, a part or aspect of a person, a fusion of characteristics of more than one person, or a concretized version of what conventionally is regarded as a noncorporeal aspect of the world. Thus, people internalize prohibitions, attitudes, and cultural symbols just as readily as they internalize bodily organs or substances, or pretty much entire persons, as they seem to in the early phases of mourning” (p. xiv).

Much is written in the psychoanalytic literature about the internalization of the vertical axis, specifically the mother and father. However, siblings, peers and other psychic representatives of the horizontal axis are available within the intimate milieu of early life and may also be internalized; the resultant psychic residue of which, in adult psychological life, is the topic of this study.

Schafer goes on to say, “Any adequate study of internalization must also give an account of how the other that is outside gets transposed to the inside” (p. xiv). Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalytic theorist to describe this phenomenon through the primary explanation of incorporation. The psychoanalytic understanding of incorporation involves the “bodily taking in of the other, usually manifested through a physical orifice; most often the mouth, including sucking, biting, and/or swallowing. Psychoanalytic clinicians and theorists have also presented numerous narratives of incorporation fantasies through the nose, ears, eyes, anus, vagina, skin, and lungs (inspiration).

Additionally, Schafer notes that in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the realm of the “more or less abstract”—symbols, attitudes, and values are also incorporated through

27 a bodily experience—the sound of a voice, a touch, bodily substances, a look, and/or, the totality of another person. He writes, By no means should this narrative of pervasive corporeal concretization seem farfetched. Myth, fairytale, religious ritual (communion) humor, idiomatic expression (I eat this up, I can’t swallow this, bad taste) and other cultural forms make it plain enough that the fantasy of bodily internalization is no strange or infrequently encountered concept in the world at large (p. xv).

Schafer makes the point that not only does internalization have a central role in psychoanalytic theorists’ understanding of individual mental processes, but that it is also a significant component of many social processes and cultural constructs. His premise is useful in considering potential implications for the ways in which the concept of internalization may be relevant in thinking about phenomena related to group psychology, and thus to the broadly defined concept of siblinghood and the horizontal axis. He writes that contemporary social theorists, ...present internalization as a process that, among other things, enables the oppressed and exploited to accept and even to idealize the socioeconomic and ideological system in which they and their oppressors are serving as participantvictims (and, more recently) Michael Foucault has explored how those in power in society establish hegemony over mind and body through enforcing the internalization of surveillance and discipline (p. xii).

28 Identification For this project, it is useful to consider the ways in which siblinghood may be informed and mediated through the process of identification. As such, a working knowledge of the rich psychoanalytic concept of identification is necessary in determining and describing psychic derivatives of siblinghood.

As previously referenced, Schafer (1990) writes that which is internalized “may somehow be shorn of its quality of otherness, and be experienced as part of the essential self, or ego; in that case, it will be called identification” (p. xii). The multifaceted psychoanalytic construct of identification is fundamental to the capacity to identify the psychic remains of siblinghood. It is a common thread through psychoanalytic theory that the process of identification is one major way in which siblings take up residence in psychic life. Schafer (1990) gives a broadly encompassing description of identification, In its fullest sense, the process of identifying with an object is unconscious, though it may also have prominent and significant preconscious and conscious components; in this process the subject modifies his motives and behavior patterns, and the self-representations corresponding to them, in such a way as to experience being like, the same as, and merged with one or more representations of that object; through identification, the subject both represents his own one or more regulatory influences or characteristics of the object that have become important to him and continues his tie to the object; the subject may wish to bring about this change for various reasons; an identification may acquire relative autonomy from its origins in the subject’s relations with dynamically significant objects” (p. 140).

29 Shafer (1990) organizes his definition of identification as process. Identifications are not static, rather they may be amended ongoing in myriad forms. Consequently, framing identification as a process, rather than discrete events located in fixed time, is most accurate and useful. Further, he specifies that a subject identifies not with a person, but with one or more representations of a person, and that a subject’s conception, utilization, and experience of a person represent only a single possibility of that person, among innumerable options. The construct of each instance of identification is dependent on, “the subject’s pressing needs and intentions, his mood, his projections, his limited experience with or immature comprehension of that person…as well as by the nature and extent of his objective appraisal of that person” (pp. 142-143).

As the focus of this study involves the lesser conscious psychic effects of siblinghood, early (defined, for this project, as infancy through early childhood, peer experience, both within the family and without) are of significant interest. In clarifying and introducing the utilization of language in describing full and partial identifications in early life, Schafer writes, “Although, it is ordinarily difficult to study thoroughly, the subject’s conception of the object may at any given moment embrace one, several, or many of the object’s aspects” (p. 143). He goes on to say that if the subject is, ...chiefly concerned with only one aspect of the object (e.g. the breast, the penis, or the power) if he centers all his significant ideas, feelings and actions concerning the object on it, then that one aspect is the whole object. If he then identifies with this aspect, his identification may be regarded as identification of the subjective self with the total object. Owing to its global, diffuse nature, this

30 sort of identification takes place most commonly, we assume, in infancy and early childhood and in severely regressed states (p. 143).

Schafer goes on to say that if, however, the subject is concerned with more than one aspect of the object, he may consider each as a part object, or a part of a larger object, therefore his identification with any one aspect may be regarded as identification of the subjective self with part of the object (p. 144). According to Schafer, it was Karl Abraham (1924, pp, 480-501) who first elucidated that partial identification protects and preserves the object as an object, with the exception of one or more of its characteristics—the one(s) to be internalized. Schafer further describes the continuation of the tie to the object, “Identification is based on primary process (ordinarily unconscious) ideation: among other things, it includes the idea of fusing or merging with the object, and in this way continuing a relationship with it” (p. 161). He writes that the object, or the pertinent aspect of the object, is not given up or abandoned altogether, instead it is moved from the external world into the inner world and therefore a piece of the outer world is given up.

In other words, identification is a personified process…to the extent that it retains this personified quality, it is identification and has not acquired relative autonomy from its origins and the subject’s relations with dynamically significant objects” (p. 161).

Regarding the role for the objective assessment of the nature of an identification, Schafer writes that an observer may assess the “relative complexity of the subject’s representations of the object just as he may assess their relative accuracy. Object representations tend to be dominated by primary process ideation tend to be fluid and

31 either simplistically global or fragmentary and uncoordinated” (144). These “primary process” representations are often noted in dreams, for example, as evidenced in “bits and pieces” (p. 144) of the object representation.

As normative psychological development is generally agreed to include an increasing ascendancy of the secondary process: object representations organized chiefly according to the secondary process tend toward complex differentiations, stability, and relative accuracy; they tend toward objective wholeness in the sense of encompassing and organizing enough significant physical and psychological attributes of an object to constitute a substantial, specific and enduring human figure—one that other persons will be able to recognize from its description (p.

144).

Schafer cautions that we do not actually observe total identifications with complex objects, he cites the example of the rigorous conscious effort an adolescent may make to be like a complex object in his/her entirety, but despite the intensity of the desire to achieve total identification, and to their dismay, they can’t succeed. He then goes on to say that “even in marriages of long standing and in the extended aspects of mourning, the identification with the object, though perhaps many sided, is not what one may justifiably call total” (p. 144). This statement has a specific valence for the purposes of this research project, as primary partnerships exist on the horizontal axis, and this project posits that the psychological origins related to the choosing of which may derive in part from siblinghood. Thus for this research project, evidence of object relationships about primary partners, as well as about friends, colleagues, cousins and other peers, (broadly

32 defined) will include consideration regarding the possibility of a psychic lineage that includes siblinghood.

Further to this point, Schafer notes that “Identifications cannot be created out of nothing. They involve selective reorganization of already existing wishes, behavior patterns, capacities, viewpoints, and emphases- and quite possibly earlier identifications too” (147). In keeping with the works previous cited, Mitchell (2000, 2003), Coles (2005), S. Freud (1912-1913, p. 17) and S. Freud (1914f, p. 243), among others, the premise of this research project rests with the idea that the experience of siblinghood is available beginning as early as infancy, with or without the presence of actual siblings, and the psychic impact of siblinghood via (in part) the process of identification, is meaningful and present in many aspects of lived experience. Schafer writes, The major, full-fledged identifications- those that contribute significantly to early systemic development as well as to later systemic change- typically are based on the models provided by parents, siblings, and others with whom the subject is in early, close, dependent, and continuing association. Systems being, by definition, resistant to change, and these full-fledged identifications bringing about systemic organization and progression, it takes a highly significant investment to initiate and sustain major identifications (p. 160).

Schafer goes on to say that these early identifications appear to be the “most solidly established and influential of all. They condition later, usually less primitive and less crucial identifications. They set the directions and the limits of the later ones. And, may lend their own intensity and meaning to the later ones” (p. 160). He writes that over time, new objects and new identifications may appear to rival early ones, but careful

33 analysis will reveal that each new attachment and identification could only have developed in the matrix of those established in early childhood; (among peers and siblings, as well as parents) that features of the new model were singled out, projected onto it, and idealized, all as part of an unconscious strategy of adapting the basic identifications to current problems, possibilities and personalities; and that in this defensive as well as adaptive strategic move, the earlier identifications have been brought up to date (p. 160).

Schafer is clear that affirming the above point does not mean that genuine growth and increasing agency may not be woven into, and a result of, later identifications. Nor, in making the point about the weight of early identifications, does Schafer deny the importance and significance of new experiences. He is clear that he does not subscribe to the reductive idiom that everything in life can be distilled to the “same old infantile things� (p. 161). Rather, he reiterates his intention to, ...call attention to the continuities implied or concealed in apparent discontinuities. It can only be pre-existing organizations of forces that makes it necessary and possible for the subject to change as he interacts with new objects and copes with new experiences (p. 161).

In keeping with this project’s broadly psychoanalytic interpretive frame, it is significant to represent the weight of early, peer related psychic experience. As well, it is also important not to limit the whole of mental life to the consequences of persons and events related solely to a certain handful of years. The woven experiences of object relationships in the psychic world are fluid, and reactive to time and stimulation from

34 both inner and outer experiences. Schafer further refines and summarizes his thoughts in this regard, All of this is not to say that the original connections between the identifications and their motives and models lose contemporary significance altogether.

Psychoanalytic evidence supports the conclusion that the origins of any mental function or organization always retain significance; that later experience inevitably reverberates on infantile levels; that autonomy is always relative; and that, given certain normal or traumatic regression inducing conditions (e.g. sleep, falling in love, realistic terror or actual persecution) these origins temporarily or enduringly regain much of their importance and urgency‌. As Freud pointed out in his study of dreams (1900), the infantile remains as a potential, if not as an active force, perpetually ready to be re cathected and re activated (p. 179).

Mental Objects In considering how siblinghood and peers, become part of the psychic landscape, the mechanism of internalization was discussed. Peers, including biological siblings, are available and experienced in the external world, and through the process of internalization they may be taken into the inner world. In considering what results from this process of internalization, it is useful to introduce the concept of mental objects. The psychic process of internalization results in the creation of mental contents, commonly referred to as mental objects. Siblings and other peers, once psychically internalized, become in whole, or in part, mental objects in psychic life.

35 In Understanding Mental Objects (1995) Meir Perlow uses the term “mental objects” to refer to a collection of concepts that have been used in the psychoanalytic literature regarding, ...various mental organizations, structures, processes, and capacities in an individual which relate to his or her perceptions, attitudes, relationships with and memories of other people. Some of the prominent members of this group are: object images, internal objects, part-objects, object representations, introjects, identifications, transitional objects, selfobjects, psychic presences and object constancy (pp. 1-2).

Perlow (1995) notes that each of the above are embedded within a psychoanalytic theory of mental functioning, but that within the psychoanalytic theoretical paradigm they may represent differing points of view. Perlow (1995) organizes three fundamental meanings to which he believes concepts of mental objects in the psychoanalytic literature refer: “representations (or schemas), phantasies, developmental capacities and deficits” (p. 2).

Object representations.

Regarding the concept of representation, Perlow (1995) writes that it, ...refers to an amalgamation of memories regarding an object, which functions as an anticipatory set for future interaction. As such, a mental representation of an object refers to a “schema” which organizes experience and provides a context both for present perceptions and phantasies, and for the recall of past memories (p. 1). Perlow emphasizes that “the focus of representations and schemas in

36 psychoanalytic theory is on the emotional aspects of the interaction with the object, and representations are conceived of as having an emotional-cognitive character” (p. 2).

Schafer (1990) writes, “One cannot discuss internalization without referring to the object representations that have been or are being internalized” (p. 28). He describes that object representations refer to specific contents of subjective experience, and that they are, ...always involved, at least by implication, in feelings about, and attitudes towards, the person and one’s own person. The object representations may be unconscious, pre conscious or conscious, and its content may designate presumed tendencies of the other person’s (inner psychic workings)…The object representation may range from the highly realistic to the autistic, from the highly organized to the amorphous and fluid, from the intensely physical or emotional, to the abstractly contemplative, from the extremely idealizing to the extremely depreciatory, and from the conditional and hypothetical to the actually experienced. The aggregate of representations of another person may exist with varying degrees of internal contradiction, disjointedness or integration. Object representations are not in themselves motivating and regulatory psychic structures, but they do serve as guideposts of behavior (pp. 28-29).

Schafer also underscores that object representations do not have a metapsychological base. He writes: The so called object is an aggregate of more or less organized representations of another person (or thing or creature), and its details and degree of organization vary over time and between levels of within one subject; and they also vary at any

37 one time between one subject and the next. When one speaks of what the object “really” is, one is inevitably defining that object from one or more historically, personally, and situationally conditioned points of view; that certain points of view have more adaptive utility than others in any given situation does not contradict this proposition (p. 29).

Internal object and internal object relations.

American psychoanalytic object relations theorist, Thomas Ogden, has made significant contributions to the field of psychoanalytic theory. Specifically, for this project a review of the psychoanalytic conceptualizations of the internal object and internal object relations, from his (1983) article, “The Concept of Internal Object Relations,” is particularly pertinent.

For the premise that siblinghood psychically begins in earliest life, the concepts of the internal object and internal object relations are foundational psychoanalytic constructs. It is important to note that for Ogden (1983), the internal object is a dynamic construct, (differing in its dynamism, from the concept of object representation) and object relations theory is a dynamic theory. More specifically he proposes that internal objects be considered as, ...dynamically unconscious sub-organizations of the ego capable of generating meaning and experience, i.e., capable of thought, feeling and perception. These suborganizations stand in unconscious relationships to one another.… What is being proposed here is the idea that the ego is split into parts, each capable of generating experience and that some of these subdivisions of ego generate

38 experience in a mode modelled after one’s sense of an object in early an early object relationship while others generate experience in a mode that remains fixed in a pattern congruent with one’s experience of oneself in the same early object relationship. The two parts of the ego remain linked and when repressed constitute an unconscious internal object relationship (p. 227).

Ogden (1983) writes that object relations theory is, “fundamentally a theory of unconscious internal object relations in dynamic interplay with current interpersonal experience” (p. 227). Additionally, he historically situates the conceptualization of internal object relations as an outgrowth of the work of Freud, Abraham, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Bion, with a significant contribution from Grotstein. He notes that although there are significant theoretical differences between these theorists, the concept of internal objects has been addressed by each of them in a way that has culminated in the groundwork having been laid for the next, and together, in Ogden’s opinion, constitutes the “central line of thought of object relations theory (p. 227).

Ogden’s (1983) working definition of internal object relations provides a significant construct for considering how remnants of siblinghood may be made be made manifest in a psychically enduring way. He writes, ...internalization of an object relationship necessarily involves a splitting of the ego into parts, that when repressed, constitute internal objects which stand in particular relationship to one another. This internal relationship is shaped by the nature of the original object, but does not by any means bear a one to one correspondence with it, and is in addition, potentially modifiable by subsequent experience. The internal object relationship may later be re-externalized by means

39 of projection and projective identification in an interpersonal setting thus generating the transference and countertransference phenomena of analysis and all other interpersonal interactions (p. 227).

Significant contributors to internal object theory.

Ogden (1983) writes, for Freud there are “related, and in part overlapping concepts of memory traces, mental representations of self and object, introjects, identifications, and psychic structures� (p. 227). He continues, saying that: In Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud referred to unconscious memory traces and implied that they had the power to perpetuate the feelings involved in the forgotten early experience, to attract attention to themselves in the course of dream and symptom formation and to press for conscious expression, dream representation, and symbolic representation (p. 228). As siblinghood is a component of early psychic experience, the potential for sibling related mental residue to appear in dream material merits consideration.

Ogden (1983) writes that Freud, in Mourning and Melancholia (1917), explicates that identification is a multifaceted construct. Freud delineates identification as the means through which one remembers, and the way one may emotionally replace an external object that has been lost with an aspect of oneself that has been molded after the lost external object. Specifically, an external relationship is replaced with an internal relationship that is constituted by an interface of dual active aspects of the subject, which have been the result of the splitting of the ego. Ogden (1983) notes that Freud writes that

40 in melancholia, a relationship with an external object is “transformed…into a cleavage of the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification” (p. 249).

In his rich description of Freud’s concept of identification, Ogden (1983) says that in 1923 Freud extended his idea of identification from the concept of molding an aspect of oneself in the form of the external object, to include the process of super ego formation, which is a process through which the specific functions of the external object are “instated within the psyche” (p. 228). Ogden further writes that related to the purpose and function of the super ego, Freud (1940a) described how a new, active agency is created from within his theory of structure formation.

Freud (1940a) writes: A portion of the external world has, at least partially, been abandoned as an object and has instead, by identification, been taken into the ego and thus become an integral part of the internal world. This new psychical agency continues to carry on the functions which have hitherto been performed by the people (the abandoned objects) in the external world: it observes the ego, gives it orders, judges it and threatens it with punishments, exactly like the parents whose place it has taken (p. 205).

Ogden emphasizes that Freud, in the above description, is delineating a “normal developmental sequence wherein the child, in the context of his relations with external objects, establishes a suborganization of the ego that has the capacity for independent motivation and carries on an object relationship with other aspects of the ego (p. 228).

The focus of this research project is to consider the possibility that siblings and peers may be psychically utilized and sustained in mental constructs. Regarding the

41 formation of the super ego, I suggest it is possible to imagine that psychic traces of one’s sibling(s), as external objects in the family milieu, may be able to be identified within in the specific details of one’s superego matrix.

In tracing the substantive contributions to the formation of object relations theory, Ogden (1983) writes that Freud’s concept of psychic agencies, or structures, operating in an “internal world” which evolves within the framework of one’s early relations with external objects, establishes the theoretical context within which all subsequent theoretical additions to object relations theory were developed.

Ogden (1983) describes that in his (1924) work, Karl Abraham assigned greater importance, than did Freud, on the “role of the object in libidinal development…and placed more emphasis on the place of unconscious fantasy in psychological life” (p. 229).

Ogden notes that Abraham’s separation of early development into “pre ambivalent, ambivalent, and post ambivalent phases was the forerunner of Klein’s and Fairbairn’s schizoid and depressive levels of early psychological organization” (229). Ogden emphasizes that inherent in Abraham’s contribution of the concept of separate forms of ambivalence toward objects, is the idea of varying forms of psychological conflict over the experience of self-object differentiation.

Ogden (1983) writes that Abraham’s contributions to object relations theory may generally be described as a shift in emphasis within the paradigm Freud describes, while Melanie Klein’s impactful theoretical contribution begins with the introduction of a new metapsychological perspective, in which the role of unconscious internal object relationships is primary.

42 Ogden (1983) notes that Klein describes the infant at birth as functioning with a ...primitive, loosely organized, but whole ego in relation to an object that is experienced as whole. Under the pressure of the intolerable anxiety of impending annihilation produced by the death instinct, the infant defensively attempts to distance herself from her sense of her own destructiveness by splitting both the ego and the object into more manageable (because separate) good and bad facets of object-related experience” (p. 229).

In this way, Klein’s model of early development, in which an infant manages an unmanageably conflicted (as characterized by intense loving and hateful feelings) relationship with her mother by experiencing that relationship as if it were multiple separate relationships, allows for the multiple aspects of the infant’s relationship with the object (mother) to be kept separate through the mechanisms of introjective and projective fantasies. Ogden (1983) notes that this model of early development facilitates a theory of psychological life that is, “based upon an internal organization derived from the relationship of split off aspects of the ego to associated internal objects” (p. 229).

While Klein’s concepts are both useful and groundbreaking, Ogden points out what he terms “considerable shortcomings” (p. 229) in Klein’s theory of internal object relations. Most fundamentally, he writes, Klein is not clear whether she views internal object relations as fantasies or as relationships between active agencies capable feeling, thinking, perceiving, etc.…she says both and often mixes the two by formulating clinical phenomena in terms of relationships between an active agency and a thought (p. .229).

43 Ogden writes that Kleinian theorist, Hanna Segal, (1964) responded to the above criticism saying, ...’internal objects’ are not ‘objects’ situated in the body or the psyche: like Freud (in his theory of the super ego) Melanie Klein is describing unconscious phantasies which people have about what they contain” (p. 12).

Ogden further writes, that notwithstanding this clarification, it is important to remember that an unconscious fantasy is, in fact, a thought, (he refers here to Isaacs’ (1952) reference to “fantasy thinking” (p. 108), as are all characters within the fantasy.

Ogden notes that if, ...internal objects are thoughts, as Segal and Isaacs conceptualize them to be, then they cannot themselves think, perceive or feel, nor can they protect or attack the ego. Even to the present, Kleinian theorists have not been able to disentangle themselves from the Scylla of demonology and the Charybdis of mixing incompatible levels of abstraction- i.e. agency and thought (p. 230).

Ogden (1983) continues charting the major historical developments in object relations theory, writing that the combination of Freud’s theory of the origin of the super ego and Klein’s theory of internal object relations, “with its unsatisfying mixture of fantasy and dynamism” (p. 230), formed the background for Fairbairn’s object relations theory.

Ogden describes that Fairbairn (1940, 1944), similarly to Klein, conceived of the ego as whole at birth and able to relate to whole external objects, but after that point, Fairbairn has a differing conceptualization. Ogden (1983) describes,

44 ...to the extent that the fit between the mother and the infant is lacking, the infant experiences an intolerable feeling of disconnectedness and defends herself by splitting off the aspects of the ego which are felt to be intolerable to the mother.

These split off portions of ego remain fixed in relationship with the unsatisfying aspects of the object. This part-object relationship (split off ego in relation to an emotionally absent or rejecting object) is repressed in order to master the feelings involved and in an effort to change the object into a satisfactory object. The ego and frustrating object undergo further subdivisions along lines of cleavage determined by different affective qualities of the unsatisfactory object relationship…the tantalizing qualities of the relationship and the rejecting qualities of the relationship become separated from one another in the infant’s internal world. A significant aspect of the ego (the central ego) retains a relationship with the accepting and accepted qualities of the object (the good enough mother, Winnicott, 1951). The central ego is in part the conscious ego, but includes dynamically unconscious facets, e.g., its defensive efforts to make itself unaware of the unsatisfactory aspects of object related experience (pp. 229-230).

Fairbairn was working within a basically Freudian psychoanalytic framework, but struggled with what he perceived to be shortcomings of both Freudian and Kleinian theories. Fairbairn’s issues with Freud’s concepts were largely related to dynamism.

Ogden writes that Fairbairn (1946) noted that Freud (1933) conceived of the id as energy without structure, and the ego, while functionally organized, is essentially structure without energy (230). Ogden notes that Fairbairn (1944, 1946), “replaced the Freudian dichotomy of ego and id, structure and energy, with a notion of ‘dynamic structures’

45 …conceived of as aspects of the mind capable of acting as independent agencies with their own motivational systems” (p. 230).

Ogden notes that in psychological terms, Fairbairn is positing that these dynamic structures have the capacity “to think and to wish according to their own system of generating meaning.” As such, Ogden writes, “each bit of ego (aspect of the personality) defensively split off in the course of development, functions as an entity in relation to internal objects and in relation to other subdivisions of the ego” (p. 230).

Regarding his theoretical concept of internal objects, Fairbairn writes, “in the interest of consistency, I must now draw the logical conclusion of my theory of dynamic structure and acknowledge that, since internal objects are structures, they must necessarily be, in some measure at least, dynamic” (1944, p.132). In response to Fairbairn’s description, Ogden (1983) writes: Fairbairn’s conclusion that…internal objects must be considered ‘in some measure at least’ to be dynamic structures, fully establishes the concept of internal object relations between active semi-autonomous agencies within a single personality (p. 231).

Ogden (1983) notes that Donald Winnicott’s major contribution to the theory of internal object relations is his concept of “multiple self-organizations functioning in relation to one another within the personality system” (p. 231). Winnicott (1951, 1952, 1954, 1960) has a well-articulated theory of early development, including his concepts of “The True Self” and “The False Self.” He writes that the potential for The True Self is present at birth, and gets developed over time, in the context of a good enough holding environment with the mother. Psychoanalytic theorist, Christopher Bollas, (1987)

46 describes what he believes Winnicott most accurately intended to be the understanding of his concept of the True self, I do not think that true self should be identified as the id and differentiated from the ego, I think he [Winnicott] was much closer to the truth when he stated that by True Self he meant the inherited disposition, and as the id is the psychical presence of the bodily instincts, then all id representations involve ego organization…if we place greater emphasis on the individual character of the infant, on that organization of the person that is genetically given, and if we understand this core of the person to be the essence of the true self, then it is possible to link up the idea of the ego with the true self and to see how the ego is in part the organizational manifestation of the true self” (p. 278).

Ogden (1983) writes, The False Self becomes created when ‘impingements,’ defined as the mother’s inserting something of herself (anxiety, etc.) for the infant’s spontaneous gesture are sufficiently frequent to cause a particular infant to experience a traumatic enough disruption that the infant will attempt to manage and defend herself by developing a second, ‘reactive’ personality organization (The False Self) whose role it is to diligently monitor and adapt to the conscious and unconscious needs of the mother. Through this adaptive process, The True Self is afforded protection and privacy, which allows it to maintain its integrity (p. 231).

Ogden (1983) notes that Winnicott does not discuss the theoretical status of the internal object, and that Winnicott’s writings make clear that that he “treats internal objects like mental representations” (p. 232). Ogden further describes that both

47 Fairbairn’s concept of dynamic structure and Winnicott’s formulations of The True Self and False Self represent significant points in the development of an object relations theory in which “unconscious aspects of the person, each with the capacity to generate meanings according to its own patterns of linkage, engage in internal relationships with one another” (p. 232). Ogden states that inherent in ...Fairbairn and Winnicott’s thinking is the idea that conceptualizing intrapsychic conflict as an unconscious fantasy of opposing internal forces does not adequately capture the way in which a person engaged in internal conflicts is, in fact, feeling, thinking, perceiving and behaving in two ways at once and is not simply imagining himself to be doing so (p. 232).

Further, Ogden notes that for Fairbairn and Winnicott, it is more accurate to describe that a person is behaving as two people at one time, than to describe that the person is “thinking about being two people at odds with one another” (p. 232).

With the multifaceted issue of the theoretical status of internal objects undefined, Ogden turns his attention to the contribution of Wilfred Bion. Ogden (1983) describes Bion’s (1962) description of projective identification (in an interpersonal setting), as a phenomenon in which, through an unconscious fantasy, a person engages in, ...ejecting an unwanted or endangered aspect of himself and of depositing that part of himself in another person in a controlling way. There is accompanying real, interpersonal pressure exerted on the “recipient” of the projective identification that is unconsciously designed to coerce her in to experiencing herself and behaving in a way that is congruent with the unconscious projective fantasy (p. 232).

48 Under ideal circumstances, the recipient of the projective identification “contains” (Bion, 1962) or manages, the evocations (ideas and feelings) and through this process, a more manageable version of that which the projector projected is returned to the projector, now more useable and ready for re-internalization.

In his (1957) work, Bion wrote that he understood projective identification to be an intrapersonal, rather than solely an interpersonal, construct. Ogden (1983) writes that it is a “reasonable extension of the theory if one conceives of the individual as composed of multiple personality suborganizations each capable of functioning semi autonomously, and thus capable of processing one another’s projective identifications” (p. 232). Ogden notes Bion’s concept of mind, in this way, can be seen to have grown out of Klein’s, Fairbairn’s and Winnicott’s contributions to the thinking about internal objects and their relating.

Ogden (1983) explicates Bion’s (1956,1957) formulation of projective identification, including his concept of formation of the bizarre object. He writes, “For Bion, projective identification involves the splitting of the personality (not simply a splitting of self-representations) and an ejection of the resulting suborganization into an internal object. The schizophrenic, due to an almost complete incapacity to tolerate reality, replaces perception with an extreme form of projective identification. By fragmenting his perceptual functions into isolated components parts and then projecting these functions (still experienced to some extent as self) into the object, the schizophrenic creates a type of internal object termed a “’bizarre object”.” The object is then experienced as having a life of its own…this type of defensive fragmentation and

49 projection of the mind into an object (representation) is the hallmark of the psychotic personality” (232) Bion stresses the role of fantasy in the process of creating bizarre objects, but Ogden (1983) suggests that an accurate understanding of the formation of bizarre objects involves two differing types of mental operations. One part of the process is a fantasy, simply stated. Though Ogden describes that this fantasy is specifically a thought, “generated by a part of the mind that as, in fact, been split off from the “’non psychotic”” mind and is actually functioning as an active, separate suborganization of personality that experiences itself as a thing” (pp. 222-223).

Further, Ogden notes that James Grotstein (1980a, 1981b) utilized Bion’s theory of the concurrent functioning of the non-psychotic and psychotic aspects of the personality to construct what he (Grotstein) terms, a “dual track model” of the mind, which Ogden describes as a model of the mind, ...in which experience is no longer conceived of as unitary, but as an overlapping of two or more separate experiences generated by autonomous suborganizations of the personality. Only through integration of various experiential perspectives is the illusion of unitary experience created, much as an integrated visual field, with visual depth is achieved through an integration of slightly different visual images perceived by each eye (p. 233).

Ogden (1983) writes that Grotstein’s thinking embodies a significant rediscovery of what he believes is Freud’s most significant contribution to psychoanalytic theory.

Freud, Ogden describes, suggested we view the human mind as constructed with dual facets, the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. Though the modal function of

50 these dual aspects of mind differ, via primary and secondary process modes, they operate simultaneously, and together create an experience of unity in the subject. Importantly, Ogden highlights that the feeling of unity is achieved in the above description, notwithstanding that the unconscious and conscious aspects of the mind function semiautonomously.

In sum, Ogden (1983) reviews the essential features of each of the above discussed psychoanalytic theorist’s contribution to our understanding of the concept of internal objects and internal object relations. With each theoretical contribution to the construct of the internal object and internal objects relations, it is interesting to wonder for this project how/where/why any psychic residue of siblinghood may be therein identified. Specifically, is useful to consider the possibilities of traces of siblinghood in the details involved in the formation of, and/or related consequences of internal objects and internal object relating.

Ogden (1983) writes that Melanie Klein was the first to describe a theory of an internal object world prioritizing internal object relationships consisting of a split off, unconscious aspect of ego in relationship with an internal object. Ogden repeats that Klein’s theory suffered from an incomplete and unsatisfying formulation of the theoretical status of internal objects, which she conceived as unconscious fantasies, but were also capable of thinking, feeling, perceiving and responding.

Fairbairn, Ogden writes, ...clarified the matter by stating that neither objects nor object representations are internalized; rather, that which is internalized is an object relationship consisting

51 of a split off part of the ego in relation to an object which is itself, at least in part, a dynamic structure (p. 233).

Ogden continues, describing that the split-off aspect of the ego retains its ability to function as an active psychic construct, though primitively, due to its degree of isolation from other aspects of the developing personality. Ogden notes that while Fairbairn defines internal objects as dynamic structures, he does not delineate how an internal object (which Ogden is presuming to originally have been a thought) becomes dynamic. Additionally, in his (2010) article on the theoretical and clinical significance of Fairbairn, Ogden writes, “To my mind, Fairbairn's theory of internal object relations constitutes one of the most important contributions to the development of analytic theory in its first century” (p. 101). Ogden writes, I have found that Fairbairn develops a model of the mind that incorporates into its very structure a conceptualization of early psychic development that is not found in the writing of any other major 20th century analytic theorist. Fairbairn replaces Freud's (1923) structural model/metaphor of the mind with a model/metaphor in which the mind is conceived of as an “inner world” (Fairbairn, 1943, p. 67) in which split-off and repressed parts of the self enter into stable, yet potentially alterable, object relationships with one another. The ‘cast of characters’ (i.e. suborganizations of the personality) constituting Fairbairn's internal object world is larger than the triumvirate of Freud's structural model and provides what I find to be a richer set of metaphors with which to understand (1) certain types of human dilemmas, particularly those based on the fear that one's love is destructive; and

52 (2) the central role played by feelings of resentment, contempt, disillusionment and addictive ‘love’ in structuring the unconscious mind (p. 101).

Winnicott, writes Ogden (1983), extended the concept of the splitting of the ego to include “subdivisions of the experience of the self” (p. 233), but that Winnicott did not further contribute to a clarification of the concept of internal objects.

Ogden describes that Bion’s “theory of the pathological formation of bizarre objects” (p. 233) provided significant insight into the formation of all internal objects.

And lastly, Ogden writes that Bion, ...envisioned a defensive splitting of the mind into parts that include active suborganizations of the mind which then experience themselves as having become things. Thus, the formation of a bizarre object is a process by which a suborganization of the mind engages in a specific object related fantasy involving feelings of merger with, or entrapment by, the object (p. 233).

For this project, with its focus on specific derivatives of early mental life, a further review of the details regarding Klein and Fairbairn’s concepts of the internal object, including similarities and differences, may be useful.

American contemporary psychoanalytic theorist, Stephen A. Mitchell, in his (1981) paper, “The Origin and Nature of the ‘Object’ in the Theories of Klein and Fairbairn,” clearly and comprehensively discusses both Melanie Klein’s and W.R.D. Fairbairn’s theories of the internal object. He writes that the theories developed by Klein and Fairbairn are “complex, incomplete, and often internally inconsistent…the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the explication of Klein’s and Fairbairn’s concepts, and their differentiation from each other” (p. 375).

53 Regarding the function of the internal object, Klein’s and Fairbairn’s thinking differs. Mitchell (1981) writes that for Klein, internal objects are established in infancy, are a nascent construction, and become the contents of phantasy. The internal object world is a, ...natural, inevitable and continual accompaniment of all experience. … The internal object world for Klein is the source of both life’s greatest horrors and its deepest comforts. In Klein’s vision of emotional health, internal objects play a central role. Health is constituted by a particular constellation of internal object relations (p. 392).

Differently, for Fairbairn, internal objects are neither elemental nor inevitable.

Rather, they are “compensatory substitutes for unsatisfactory relations with real, external objects, the ‘natural’ primary objects of libido” (p. 392). For Fairbairn, internal object relations are “inherently masochistic. Bad internal objects are persistent temptors and persecutors, while good internal objects do not offer real gratification, but merely a refuge from relations with bad objects” (p. 392).

Mitchell writes that for Fairbairn, given optimal psychic health, internal objects are given up. The ego’s attachment to internal objects is let go, and the central ego is available for relationships in the external world. Simply, for Fairbairn, all internal object relations are born of frustration and are pathological, by definition. With this theory of mind, Mitchell writes, “perhaps the greatest weakness of Fairbairn’s system is his failure to account for the residues of good object relations and the structuralization of the self on the basis of healthy identifications” (p. 392). Mitchell describes a very different theory for Klein. For Klein, phantasied relations with internal objects normatively underlies all

54 experience, regardless its valence in terms of goodness and badness. Whereas for Fairbairn, who believes the human subject is most naturally directed toward relations with people in the external world, internal object relations are a creation intended to manage disturbances in external relationships.

Regarding the content of internal objects, Klein and Fairbairn also have differing ideas. For Klein, objects generally have more universal features. Mitchell writes, In many of her theoretical statements she stresses the a priori origins of object images as: part of a phylogenetic inheritance built into the experience of desire itself, construed from early sensations, or derived from the drives through projections. …Within Klein’s system, the dramatis personae within the external and internal object worlds is standard (p. 392).

In contrast, Mitchell writes, for Fairbairn, the contents of internal objects are fully imitative of actual external objects, “fragmented and recombined to be sure, but always deriving from the child’s experience of her actual parents” (p. 393). Mitchell goes on to write that the categories into which internal object relations are organized, are uniform.

“Bad” objects for Fairbairn are emotionally unavailable for the satisfaction of the child’s dependency needs. “Bad” objects are split into exciting vs rejecting components. Nevertheless, the content of these categories, the constituents of internal object relations in Fairbairn’s system are the personal features of the parents: the particular kind of promise and hope which the mother seemed to offer, the specific form of rejection displayed by the father, the parents’ idiosyncratic ideas and values, etc. (p. 393).

55 The final area in which Mitchell reviews Klein and Fairbairn’s theories of the internal object is in the way they construct their understanding of the cause of mental suffering. For Klein, the cause of suffering is inherent in the human subject. Mitchell writes, ...the root of evil lies in the heart of man himself, in the instincts, particularly the death instinct and its derivative, aggression…the earliest anxiety for the child is persecutory; he experiences the threat of his own demise as the victim of his own projected aggression (p. 394).

For Fairbairn, Mitchell writes, in contrast, the root of human suffering is found in maternal deprivation. For Fairbairn, the central anxiety involves, ...the protection of the tie to the object in the face of deprivation, and all psychopathology (mental suffering) Is understood as deriving from the ego’s selffragmentation in the service of protecting that tie and controlling its ungratifying aspects (p. 394).

Mitchell writes that the difference in Klein’s and Fairbairn’s views of the ultimate source of psychic suffering may be derived from the way in which they define and theoretically utilize the term “bad object.” For Klein, Mitchell describes, the “badness” of an object, internal or external, is characterized by malevolence, the etiology of which is the child’s own inherent capacity for destructiveness, projected onto others. For Fairbairn, by contrast, the “badness” of an object is describing a lack of satisfaction, a deprivation. In Fairbairn’s thinking, the “bad object,” as Mitchell writes, is “one which frustrates the object seeking of the libido by its absence and unresponsiveness.” Simply put, Mitchell describes, “For Klein, “bad objects” are reflections, creations derived from

56 the child’s own inherent and spontaneous destructiveness. For Fairbairn, “bad objects are aspects of the parents (siblings?) which make them unavailable to him, and frustrate his inherent longing for contact and relation” (p. 394).

Phantasy.

As previously noted, Perlow (1995) delineates three underlying meanings to which he believes concepts of mental objects in the psychoanalytic literature refer: “representations (or schemas), phantasies, developmental capacities and deficits” (p. 2).

He describes the second of which, the concept of phantasy, as elemental in psychoanalytic theory. Simply put, while acknowledging differing theoretical contexts within psychoanalytic theory, “internal objects, introjects, and psychic presences have been used to refer to specific phantasies regarding an object (whether conscious or unconscious)” (p. 3). In seeking to clarify the differences between the closely linked concepts of phantasy and representations, Perlow (1995) describes two distinctions. The first, is that phantasy refers to a subjectively experienced phenomenon, more or lesser conscious. He writes that phantasy is a motivated behavior, fulfilling a function(s), the most basic of which is generally considered to be wish fulfillment. He notes that as psychoanalytic theory posits unconscious experience, it is conceptually important to understand that “even unconscious phantasy is (by and large) considered by psychoanalytic theory to refer to a subjectively experienced phenomenon (p. 3).

Representation, differently, refers to an anticipation “based on past experiencenot to an experience itself. Thus, following the distinction between theoretical constructs

57 and subjectively experienced phenomena, representations refer to theoretical constructs (p. 3).

The second distinction between phantasy and representations is related to the function(s) of phantasy in psychic life. Perlow (1995) writes, as noted, that phantasy has generally been considered to be related to wish fulfillment, within in the context of the theory of sexual drives, or referring to other psychoanalytic theories of motivation, including Fairbairn’s object directed motivation, and has been understood as part of attempts by “the mental apparatus to attain a wished for state. Phantasies of objects thus fulfill a role in the process of wish fulfillment and may be considered to be motivated behavior” (p. 3). In contrast, Perlow (1995) writes, representations of objects are “not considered to be behavior, and not considered to be motivated” (p. 3). He writes that although psychoanalytic theory does postulate that representations are “influenced by drives, wishes and phantasies, (which is to say) their shape, or content, is affected— representations are not considered to be constructed in order to provide wish fulfillment” (p. 3).

It is important to note that a focus on phantasy as wish fulfillment does not represent the significant contribution of Melanie Klein’s work on phantasy and internal objects. The Kleinian school of thought has, arguably, explicated the deepest and most significant concept of phantasy on the psychoanalytic theoretical spectrum. The Kleinian understanding of the role of phantasy extends far beyond wish fulfillment; and for this project, phantasy as psychic residue pertaining to sibling life is a useful construct.

Kleinian theorist, Susan Isaacs, in her (1948) seminal article, “The Nature and Function of Phantasy,” begins with the statement that the Kleinian understanding of

58 phantasy is both deeper and broader than what had been previously, historically suggested. She writes that phantasies are the primary content of unconscious mental processes. Specifically, unconscious phantasies are primarily about bodies, and represent instinctual aims towards objects. She writes, “These phantasies are, first, the psychic representatives of libidinal and destructive instincts; and then in early development they may also become elaborated into defences, as well as wish-fulfilments and anxietycontents” (p. 96).

The basis of phantasy life, Isaacs writes, includes Freud’s “postulated wish fulfillment, primary introjection and projection” (p. 96). Descriptively, she writes that though phantasies become elaborated and capable of expression through external experience, they do not depend on external experience for their existence. Isaacs describes that the earliest phantasies are experienced via sensations, and then later they take the form of “plastic images and dramatic representations.” She also notes that phantasies are not dependent on words, “though they may under certain conditions be capable of expression in words” (p. 96).

Further, Isaacs elaborates that unconscious phantasies form the “operative link” between instincts and mechanisms. Upon detailed observation, she writes, every possibility of ego mechanism clearly can be understood to have arisen from specific sorts of phantasy, the etiology of which is fundamentally found in instinctual impulses. Isaacs clarifies the Kleinian position on mechanism, writing that mechanism is an abstract and general term describing certain mental processes which are experienced as unconscious phantasies by the subject. Finally, Isaacs posits that in both “normal and neurotic people,” unconscious phantasies exert a continuous influence throughout life. The differences, she

59 suggests, derive from the particular character of the dominant phantasies, as well as the anxieties and/or desires associated with them, and their interaction with external reality and each other.

In his (2011) article, “Reading Susan Isaacs: Toward a Radically Revised Theory of Thinking,” Ogden writes about the enduring significance of Susan Isaacs’ (1948) article, including its current relevance. Ogden (2011) historically situates Isaacs within psychoanalytic theory in describing that Isaacs’ conception of phantasy served, and still serves, as a “transition from the ‘Freud-Klein’ era of psychoanalysis, in which emphasis is placed on the meaning of thoughts (what we think) to the ‘Winnicott-Bion’ era, in which emphasis is placed on the way we think” (p. 940). Ogden notes that Isaacs had “one foot in each of these eras” (p. 939). He writes that he believes that Isaacs most important theoretical contribution is the idea that “phantasy is the process that creates meaning, and that phantasy is the form in which all meanings- including feelings, defense “mechanisms,” impulses, bodily experiences, and so on—exist in unconscious mental life” (p. 925).

Ogden offers several significant extensions of Isaacs’ ideas, each of which may be helpful in relation to thinking about and recognizing psychic remnants of siblinghood.

He begins with the clarification that he believes that Isaac does not fully recognize that her paper is not actually about the nature and function of phantasy, rather, it is a paper about “phantasysing, that is, it is a paper primarily about thinking as opposed to a paper about thoughts” (926). Ogden’s own extensions of Isaacs’ ideas include, (1) the idea that phantasysing generates not only unconscious psychic content, but also constitutes the entirety of unconscious thinking; (2) the notion that

60 transference is a form of phantasysing that serves as a way of thinking for the first time...emotional events that occurred in the past but were too disturbing to be experienced at the time they occurred; and (3) the idea that a principal aim and function of phantasy is that of fulfilling the human need to understand the truth of one’s experience (p. 940).

Psychological Deep Structures Having described some key aspects of significant psychoanalytic theorists’ theories of mind, specifically related to the areas of internal objects, internal object relations, and phantasy, it is useful to introduce Ogden’s construct of psychological deep structure and Bion’s idea of preconception, with particular emphasis on the possibilities for their possible interplay with, and relevance to, the psychic remains of siblinghood.

For this project, it is useful to consider that the breast (the mother) is not the only psychological deep structure, or preconception, with which human infants may be endowed. Consideration of a psychic expectation, a preconception, of siblinghood is useful to consider for this project.

Ogden, in his (1984) paper, “Instinct, Phantasy and Psychological Deep StructureA Reinterpretation of Aspects of the Work of Melanie Klein,” writes, Phantasy for Klein (1952b) is the psychic representation of instinct. Instinct itself is a biological entity, and so phantasy is the psychic representation of one’s biology…. Phantasy content is always ultimately traceable to thoughts and feelings about the workings and contents of one’s own body in relation to the body of the other (p. 501).

61 Ogden describes that Klein’s conception of instinct is evolved from Freud’s (1905) definition of instinct as, “the demand made (by the body) upon the mind for work” (p. 168). For Klein, Ogden writes, “the body’s “demand” has information encoded in it that the mind (specifically the id) as receiver transforms into psychic phenomena with specific contents” (p. 501).

Further, Ogden summarizes that a significant component of that which is contained in one’s “inherited constitution” is psychologically made manifest through the function of the instincts. In response to the untenable theory that infants both inherit thoughts, and think these thoughts, Ogden notes that Klein’s concept in this regard is that of “phylogenetic inheritance” (1952a, p. 117). Ogden describes that in this utilization of the concept of instinct, Kleinian theorists have expanded the concept of aim beyond Freud’s (1905, 1915) original function, in which the single aim of instinct was the discharge of tension, to further state that the “aim of the instinct in any given instance is characterized by a specific type of object relatedness that includes specific affective and ideational qualities that do not depend upon actual experience with objects” (p. 502).

Ogden posits that the significant question resulting from the above theoretical position will be, “If the infant is not born with thoughts, how does he come by this ‘knowledge’ of objects if not by experience?” (p. 502). He notes that Klein’s answer to that question was not elaborated further than to cite the concept of “phylogenetic inheritance “(Klein 1952a), but for Ogden, an answer to that question is formulated through an analogy with Chomsky’s (1957,1968) concept of linguistic deep structure: infants are not born knowing any particular language, but within an ordinary environment, and with ordinary constitutional capacities, each infant learns a language.

62 The primary assumption within Chomsky’s concept of deep structure is that humans do not randomly organize experience. Ogden writes, “Nothing is perceived absolutely freshly, i.e. free of preconception, pre-existing schemata, pre- existing systems for organizing that which is perceived. Meaning cannot be generated absolutely de novo” (p. 503).

Ogden cites examples of language, writing: It is simply not possible, according to Chomsky, for a human being to deduce and operationalize the grammatical structure of language without a pre-existing system with which to select from and organize the mass of sounds to which one is exposed (p. 503).

Chomsky refers to his description of the code, the system, with which an infant is born that is built into the mode of functioning of her “perceptual, cognitive, and motor apparatuses that will determine how she will organize sensory data and render than meaningful in a highly specific way” (p. 502), as the “deep structure” of language.

Ogden sums up his psychological conceptualization of deep structure describing that from the perspective of the concept of inherited codes, or templates, by which actual experience is organized, The Kleinian concept of “inborn knowledge” inherent in bodily impulses (Isaacs, 1952, p. 94) can be understood not as inherited thoughts, but as a biological code that is an integral part of instinct. The infant is not born with a knowledge of, or phantasy about, tearing at the breast; rather, the infant might be thought of as born with a powerful predisposition to organize and to make sense of experience along specific lines…the conceptualization of instincts as psychological deep

63 structures…seems to me to be a necessary addition to psychoanalytic instinct theory (Grotstein, 1984)” (p. 504).

Preconception.

In his earlier (1962a), (1962b) works, Bion’s concept of preconception may be concisely understood as an innate antecedent to all forms of thought. When a preconception is "realized," which occurs when it intersects with sensory data close to it, then becomes a conception, and further, a concept. Bion (1962a) writes, “Conception is that which results when a pre-conception mates with the appropriate sense impressions. I have used a phrase in which the implied model is obvious. The abstraction from the relationship of preconception” (p. 91). He goes on to say, To summarize. The relationship between mother and infant described by Melanie Klein as projective identification is internalized to form an apparatus for regulation of a preconception with the sense data of the appropriate realization.

This apparatus is represented by a model: the mating of pre-conception with sense-impressions to produce a conception” (Ibid, p. 91).

It is important to note that this idea becomes more complex and broadly applicable in his later (1963) work.

For Bion, the term preconception suggests a sense of expectancy. He describes that preconception functions like the categories in Emmanuel Kant's epistemological theory, specifically, as an innate predisposition to receive certain information as the form of thought. Bion (1962b) writes,

64 Thoughts' may be classified, according to the nature of their developmental history, as preconceptions, conceptions or thoughts, and finally concepts; 'Thoughts' may be classified, according to the nature of their developmental history, as preconceptions, conceptions or thoughts, and finally concepts; concepts are named and therefore fixed conceptions or thoughts. The conception is initiated by the conjunction of a preconception with a realization. The preconception may be regarded as the analogue in psychoanalysis of Kant's concept of “empty thoughts.” Psychoanalytic-ally the theory that the infant has an inborn disposition corresponding to an expectation of a breast may be used to supply a model. When the preconception is brought into contact with a realization that approximates to it, the mental outcome is a conception. Put in another way, the preconception (the inborn expectation of a breast, the a priori knowledge of a breast, the 'empty thought') when the infant is brought in contact with the breast itself, mates with awareness of the realization and is synchronous with the development of a conception. This model will serve for the theory that every junction of a preconception with its realization produces a conception.

Conceptions therefore will be expected to be constantly conjoined with an emotional experience of satisfaction (p. 179).

As mentioned, in his (1963) work, Elements of Psycho-Analysis, Bion expanded his use of the term “preconception” and eliminates references to its innate and phylogenetic aspects. He writes, The term I require must express in the domain of psycho-analysis what is expressed in mathematics when it is said that a formula, already discovered, has

65 been, and may at some future date be, approximated to by a realization. This meaning is inherent in the term “pre-conception” as I wish to use it. It is the meaning I wish to express in terms such as “generalization” and “abstraction…The significance of the formulation I am putting forward lies in its use to establish the theory that any term such as “dog,” “unconscious,” “dream,” “table,” comes into existence when a set of phenomena are recognized as having a coherence of which the meaning is unknown. An object is not perceived and given the name of “dog” because from the object perceived a quality of “dogginess” is abstracted. The term “dog” (“unconscious,” “dream,” “table,” etc.) is used when and because a set of phenomena is recognized as being related yet unknown. It is used to prevent the scattering of the phenomena. Having found the name, and thereby bound the phenomena, the remainder of history, if so wished, can be devoted to determining what it means—what a dog is; the name is an invention to make it possible to think and talk about something before it is known what that something is (pp. 86-87).

Describing his grid, Bion explained that each element along the vertical axis functions as a preconception, in concert with the terms that follow on the same axis (except for the saturated beta elements). In addition, it is significant to note that he describes that the grid, in its entirety, also functions as a preconception. He writes, To sum up: the pre-conception awaits its realization to produce a conception: the term “dog” waits for a real dog to provide it with meaning. The algebraic calculus awaits a realization to approximate to it. In this way mathematicians who say mathematics have no meaning are justified. The mathematical formulae are

66 analogous to pre-conceptions, as I use the term, and await a realization that approximates to them before they can be said to have meaning. The grid, as I have adumbrated it here, itself shares the qualities I attribute to the pre-conception” (p.

87).

With the goal of creating an increasingly abstract and expanded formulation, Bion proposes representing preconception by means of a function (preconception) and an unknown variable (realization), and when a realization becomes known (curiosity, agitation, etc.), it then becomes a constant. Bion (1963) writes, The theory of pre-conception I am putting forward requires a readjustment in our views about concretization, particularization and β-elements. The term “preconception” is ambiguous because it denotes a tool, the function for which it exists and the use to which it may be put; the two last may of course be the same” (p. 88).

Freud on the “inheritance of knowledge.”

Ogden (1984) writes that he considers Klein’s concept of phylogenetically inherited “knowledge,” that which Bion terms “preconception,” to have proceeded from the second (in chronological order) of Freud’s two most significant and fundamental contributions to psychology. The first of these contributions, writes Ogden, is his concept of “the unconscious mind, the notion that one has thoughts, feelings, motivations, etc. of which one is unaware, but which nonetheless have a powerful role in determining the nature of one’s observable thoughts, feelings and behavior. The second of Freud’s two monumental contributions was his theory of sexual meanings” (p. 506).

67 Ogden goes on to write that Freud boldly asserted that not only is sexual desire an extremely powerful human motivation from birth, (not, notably, beginning in adolescence) but also, in a far more radical proposal, Freud proposes that all human behavior, including all cultural achievements and psychopathology, can be understood through sexual meaning. Ogden writes, From this perspective, the sexual instinct is not simply a striving, an impulse, a desire, but the vehicle (not a vehicle) by which human beings create meaning. In other words, Freud did not simply propose that the sexual instinct be thought of as generating sexual wishes and impulses. Of much wider significance is the idea that human beings interpret all perceptions in terms of sexual meanings, thereby creating experience. One makes sense of one’s internal and external perceptions through the lens of a system of sexual meanings” (p. 507).

Within this paradigm of Freud’s construct, a subject makes sense of her internal and external perceptions though the lens of the system of sexual meanings. Ogden describes the metaphor, “the sexual instinct is the Rosetta stone which allows the human being to translate raw sensory data into meaning-laden experience” (507).

Ogden writes that Freud’s theory of psychological development is built upon a notion of an innate expectancy of specific constellations of meanings in which expectancy does not depend on actual experience. A clear and evocative illustration of which is Freud’s (1918) statement, “Whenever experiences fail to fit in with hereditary schema, they become remodeled in the imagination” (p. 119). While for Freud, “phylogenetic inheritance” is the basis for the capacity of instinct to give rise to predetermined constellations of libidinal meanings, (the Oedipal construct etc.) for this

68 project, it is interesting to consider the possibilities for how his concept of libidinal desire/instinct driving and organizing meaning making may be relevant to the psychic utilization of siblinghood.

Specifically, the concept of expectancy (including Freud and Bion’s related ideas) richly informs one of this project’s foundational concepts: siblinghood as a “universal” experience, regardless of concrete sibling status. Further, it is useful to note this project’s assumption that libidinal meaning and tensions may be as likely fundamental in the psychic utilization of siblinghood, as in parental dynamics. The presence of siblinghood’s libidinal residue in adult psychological life, is of interest for this project.

The mental object as developmental capacity or deficit.

The third meaning Perlow (1995) associates with the concepts of mental objects in the psychoanalytic literature, is that of a mental object as a developmental capacity or deficit. Perlow considers this category of concepts to include “the fusion of self and object representations (E. Jacobsen and O. Kernberg) and object constancy” (p. 4). In this category of meaning, these concepts represent more than an amalgam of memories serving as an anticipatory set for the perception and phantasysing of interpersonal interactions (which is how, in this book, Perlow defines representation)” (p. 4). Rather, Perlow notes that these concepts, “imply a view of representations as basic structures of the personality…which are developmental achievements, and which may be disturbed, resulting in their constituting developmental deficits” (p. 4). For this study, psychoanalytic theorists, D.W. Winnicott’s and Heinz Kohut’s concepts of the transitional object and the selfobject may be understood to fall within a broadly defined

69 category of mental objects and are useful to review; specifically, to allow for consideration for how they may interplay with psychic remains of siblinghood.

Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object may be understood to refer to both an external object, as well as to an intrapsychic capacity of the infant. Regarding the latter, Winnicott (1953) writes, “It is not the object, of course, that is transitional. The object represents the infant’s transition from of state of being merged with the mother to as state of relation to the mother as something outside and separate” (pp. 14-15). Both the internal and external manifestations of this concept are useful to consider in imagining the possibilities regarding the psychic vestiges of siblinghood. Might it be possible that the psychic processes Winnicott describes occurring between an infant and her mother also occur mediated, in part or in full, in ways directly or more tangentially related, through siblinghood?

Perlow (1995) frames thinking about the intrapsychic aspect of Winnicott’s transitional object as a focus on what Winnicott (1953) terms the, “intermediate area of experience”- that which is between the “subjective object” and the “object objectively perceived.” In tracing the history Winnicott’s conceptual ideas, through which he came to describe the concept of the transitional object, he begins with a profound interest in Melanie Klein’s theoretical ideas. In his (1935) early psychoanalytic paper, “On the Manic Defence,” he describes the “gradual deepening of my appreciation of inner reality.

In that paper, he describes his use of the terms “inner reality and “outer reality,” which portends his increasing interest (Winnicott 1945, 1948) in also understanding and describing the infant’s capacity to objectively sense external reality. Perlow writes, that in watching the infant’s actual interaction with her environment from the perspective of the

70 dichotomy of inner reality/external reality, Winnicott (1945) distinguished between “the subjective object” and the “objectively perceived object.” Perlow writes, The first (the subjective object) referred to an attitude towards the object in which the individual was predominantly under the impression of his own inner reality, in spite of the fact that he was interacting with another person (p. 93).

Perlow goes on to describe Winnicott’s “subjective object” as closely related to Klein’s concept of the internal object, and as such was a “projective entity” (Winnicott 1969, p. 89), specifically, a product of the individual’s projections, rather than a realistic perception and experience of another person. Perlow writes, “what Winnicott was striving to explore was the transition from a relationship with a subjective object, to a relationship in which the individual recognizes and elated to the object as an ‘other than me’ entity” (p. 94).

Perlow writes that the “intermediate area”, as described by Winnicott, is that which is between subjective and objective realities, and that what is involved in this area an experience of “illusion,” which is not yet a symbol. According to Winnicott, transitional phenomena constitute the “root of symbolism” without formally reaching the definition of symbolism (1953, p. 234). Symbolism suggests the capacity to distinguish “between fact and fantasy, between inner objects and external objects, between primary creativity and perception (ibid., p. 233). Transitional phenomena, therefore, constitute the beginning of this capacity’s development.

According to Perlow, the thrust of Winnicott’s significant theoretical contribution, regarding his concepts of the transitional object and the intermediate area, are well presented in his (1953) paper on transitional objects and phenomena. After outlining the

71 fundamental idea of the “first possession,” Winnicott takes the position that it is insufficient to describe mental life in terms of either “inner reality” or interpersonal relationships, thus, the need for the construct of “an intermediate area of experiencing to which inner reality and external life both contribute”(1953, pp. 2-3). It was the development of this “intermediate area” that Winnicott sought to explore and explicate.

Significantly, Perlow writes, Winnicott considered this development to be related to the development of the infant’s capacity to recognize the “not-me.”

Psychoanalytic theoretician Heinz Kohut introduces his concept of the “selfobject” in his (1971) work, The Analysis of the Self. Kohut (1971) writes, “One of the difficulties encountered as one approaches the theoretical problems of narcissism…is the frequently made assumption that the existence of object relations excludes narcissism” (p. xiv). Kohut clearly asserts that that assumption is incorrect. He writes, On the contrary, as will be emphasized in the following pages, some of the most intense narcissistic experiences relate to objects; objects, that is which are either used in the service of the self and of the maintenance of its instinctual investment, or objects which are themselves experienced as part of the self. I shall refer to the latter as self-objects (p. xiv).

Siegel (1996) writes that the key to understanding Kohut’s contribution on narcissism, ...inheres in the idea that the objects that perform psychological functions for the child are experienced in terms of the functions they perform and not in terms of their particular personal qualities. They are experienced by the child as part of the self. When they fulfill their functions, they are taken for granted, as a limb or

72 other body part. Only when an object fails in its functions does it draw notice.

Kohut names the objects experienced as part of the self, ‘self-objects (p. 71).

Kohut’s development of this concept of the self-object was closely informed by his clinical experience, in which he described observing a phenomenon in working with “narcissistic patients” in treatment, who related to him fundamentally differently than described by traditional psychoanalysis with “neurotic” patients. It is important to note that Kohut, in his clinical observations as well as in his developmental theory, defined narcissism specifically. Siegel (1996) writes that Kohut adopts Hartmann’s definition of narcissism, namely that narcissism is a “cathexis of the self” (Kohut, 1971, p. iii). Like Hartmann, he suggests that the self is separate from the ego and should not be conceived of as an agency of the mind like the ego, id or superego. Instead, the self is a structure within the mind, similar to an object representation, containing differing and even contradictory qualities (p. 65). Siegel further writes, that for a person with a narcissistic disorder, “anxiety related to the self’s awareness of its vulnerability and propensity to fragmentation. The central pathology resides in the developmental arrest of the narcissistic configurations which deprives the self of reliable, cohesive sources of narcissism and creates an inability to maintain and regulate self-esteem at normal levels (p. 65).

Perlow (1998) writes that rather than the revival of object related wishes developing in the transference, Kohut experienced his patients developing one of two types (idealizing and mirroring) of what he terms “narcissistic transference” to him.

Perlow notes that for Kohut, these transferences he identified significantly differed from “neurotic transferences” in that he was experienced by these patients as an aspect,

73 (auxiliary) an extension, of the patient’s self, rather than as an object towards whom wishes were felt. Kohut named this narcissistic experience of the object “selfobject.”

Perlow writes, “the object is not experienced as a separate, autonomous individual, but rather as an anonymous function, fulfilling certain narcissistic needs (namely mirroring and idealization)” (p. 98).

Kohut (1971) acknowledged that there was similarity between his selfobject concept and Anna Freud’s (1952) concept of the “need satisfying” object, but, he writes, his construct differs from that of Anna Freud’s in his focus on the function of the selfobject, not only to fulfill a subject’s (narcissistic) needs, but also to allow the subject to acquire those “narcissism providing functions” as structures of his own self (via the psychic mechanisms of optimal frustration and “transmuting internalization,” which will be discussed later in this chapter). Kohut’s view of psychic suffering was related to a subject’s deficiencies in his self-structure. Amelioration of the suffering is made manifest through another subject’s selfobject function providing the needed structure, which, under optimal circumstances, will allow the suffering subject to acquire what she needs to improve the deficiencies in her self-structure, thus relieving suffering.

Perlow notes that It is important to note that Kohut’s use of the concept and language of “structure” differs from the way in which the word and concept is generally used in the psychoanalytic literature- which includes that structure refers to “some aspect of the mental apparatus.” According to Perlow, Kohut uses the term much more specifically. He writes that in his (Kohut’s) writings, structure refers to “self-structure,” which is to describe a subject’s capacity to maintain a satisfactory (and, significantly, manageable, subjective experience of self-esteem in relation to his ambitions and ideals.

74 Fundamentally, the selfobject’s function is to help the subject maintain his self-esteem relative to how much she cannot do that by herself, and/or relative to the degree that her self is lacking in structure. Siegel (1996) describes that, for Kohut, psychological structures are “internalizations of the soothing, tension regulating and adaptive functions that have been previously performed by the self-objects” (p. 72) And, that these psychological structures develop as a “result of the gradual withdrawal of the narcissism invested in the old idealized objects and they continue to perform their psychological functions even in the absence of the self-object” (p. 72) As previously mentioned, in his (1971) work, Kohut considered the above described function of the selfobject to be a transitory function; as the self increases in structure, it will no longer require selfobjects to provide for narcissistic needs. In this way, Perlow notes that the “selfobject is part of a developmental line leading to the “”true object””: the young child first needs his objects to fulfill certain narcissistic functions he himself cannot fulfill before he is able to relate to them as separate individuals” (p. 98).

Perlow continues, describing that this thinking provided a “conception of development of the self and of the corollary relationship between the developmental state of self-structure and the developmental stage of the relationship with the object (selfobject or true object”) (p. 98).

Regarding the concept of true objects, Siegel (1996) writes, “In contrast to the self-object, a true object is psychologically separate and distinct from the self” (p. 72).

Kohut (1971) writes, a true object can be “loved and hated by a psyche that has separated itself from the archaic objects, has acquired autonomous structures, has accepted the

75 independent motivations and responses of others, and has grasped the notion of mutuality” (p. 51).

Lastly, a brief review of Kohut’s developmental line of narcissism may be additionally useful for the focus of this study, as siblinghood is available for psychic utilization from earliest life. It is significant to consider that siblings, peers, as well as “transitional objects,” both human and non-human, may be infused with sibling related meaning and engaged as selfobjects, beginning in earliest life. In the (1971) introduction to The Analysis of the Self, Kohut’s describes his ideas about the development of narcissism and the related, unconscious configurations of the grandiose self and the idealized parental imago.

Siegel (1996) defines an unconscious configuration as, “a cluster of needs, wishes, feelings, fantasies and memories within the Unconscious” (p. 66). He writes that the childhood oedipal idea is one such configuration which represents a, ...collection of wishes, feelings, fears and fantasies that is contained in the Unconscious and motivates internal life and expression in the external world…and, Kohut asserts that the grandiose self and the idealized parental imago are similarly configurations within the Unconscious” (p. 66).

Siegel goes on to write that for Kohut, these configurations constitute “the core of the narcissistic sector of the personality. They are central structures within the psyche” (p. 66).

For this study, regarding Kohut’s thinking, it may be useful to consider that perhaps not all central organizing structures are vertically (parentally) organized. It may be useful to imagine whether there may also be evidence of horizontally organized

76 (sibling related) central structures within the psyche, and/or whether the potential influence of siblinghood may be identified within the following configurations.

Siegel writes that Kohut (1971) refers to the grandiose self and the idealized parental imago as the “archaic narcissistic configurations, as they arise out of an early unconscious effort to preserve the original perfection” (p. 67). Siegel also notes that the terms “structure” and “configuration” are equivalent for Kohut; they are interchangeable and synonymous. Siegel notes that it is essential to grasp the nature and qualities of the narcissistic configurations as they are central to Kohut’s understanding of psychic functioning. Siegel describes that the configuration of the grandiose self, ...arises from the fantasy of the perfect self…the grandiose fantasy is the ideational content of the grandiose self-containing elements of omnipotence and omniscience…. Anything can be accomplished…. And the exhibitionistic wish to be seen, adored, and admired for unlimited abilities and for nothing other than mere existence is a feeling quality of the grandiose self…. Conceptually, (the grandiose self) resides within the Unconscious and influences the regulation of behavior, self-esteem, and eventually, ambition” (pp. 66-67).

Siegel then writes that the other narcissistic configuration, the idealized parental imago, contains the fantasy of, ...a perfect other with whom union is sought. Union with this omniscient being brings contentment, strength and wholeness. The story of the idealized parental imago is the story of a wish to merge with the perfect other who possesses wisdom, kindness, vast knowledge, unending strength and a capacity to soothe, settle and help maintain emotional balance. Union brings wholeness; separation in

77 any form brings fracture. The idealized parental imago is a collection of unconscious wishes, fears, and memories that affects the regulation of tensions and ultimately becomes part of one’s cherished ideals (p. 67).

Finally, this review of mental objects and mental object relations is not complete, specifically for this project, without mentioning Christopher Bollas’ (1982) work, On the Relation to the Self As an Object. Bollas’s clear and thoughtful discussion of the self as an transference object is interesting and useful. He writes, If patients bear through ego structure memories of being the mother's and father's object, and, if in the course of a person's object relations he enacts or represents various positions in the historical theatre of lived experiences between aspects of mother, father and his baby-infant self (enacting bits of each of these person's roles), then each person is perpetually engaged in a complex relationship to himself as an object. This relationship is my topic” (p. 347).

In fact, this relationship in many ways is also the topic of this project. This project takes as its focus the ways in which the psychic influence of siblinghood is played out throughout life. In addition to Bollas’ point regarding the psychic influences involved in having been the mother’s and the father’s object, for this project, the psychic influences on the self from having been the object of those, real and imagined, on the horizontal axis: the actual sibling’s object, the imagined sibling’s object, the cousin’s object, the early peer’s object, etc., are deeply relevant.

Further, Bollas writes, In a perfectly ordinary way we are constantly engaged in acts of selfmanagement, from our choice of vocation to our choice of clothing, from

78 our perception and facilitation of our needs to our management of our own personal realities to partially gratify those needs, from our recognition of, and planning for, holidays to our differing abilities to cognize and confront economic and familial realities.

The way in which we position ourselves in space and in time may well reflect how we were originally situated spatially and temporally by our parents (siblings?). A patient may, for example, indicate through awkward body gait and social ill ease a primary discomfort at having to occupy space in the first place. I can think of one patient whose manner of walking and talking was so arrhythmic and hesitant that it became a crucial element of the analysis, and it is helpful to understand the evolution of this characterological development to see how the patient's way of handling the self as an object remarkably reflects the lack of ordinary spatial temporal co-ordinates in the parent's (siblings?) handling of the patient when an infant. It is my view that when I was with this patient I was witnessing the patient's transference of a maternal (sibling?) care system to the self as an object� (p. 349).

Mechanisms of Activation This section of this literature review addresses some of the significant ways psychoanalytic theory accounts for how mental life becomes operational and perceptible.

Specifically, it is through mechanisms of activation that mental objects and their relations become made manifest. The psychoanalytic concepts of transference, countertransference, dreams, language and affect will be reviewed from a variety of

79 relevant theoretical perspectives, with specific consideration for their potential relevance to siblinghood.

Transference and countertransference.

Naturally, I am in possession of my own subjectivity. I will reconstruct what I hear from the other and my hearing will differ from that of any other listener. My history as a subject makes me full of my own mental contents. But each patient organizes my contents differently. Even as an unconscious subject I am still shaped by another’s effect upon me. My self is given new form by the other… I establish an internal object that bears the proper name of another person, and when I think of that person, this object is released to its own experiencing.

Although preconscious and conscious objectifications of the other contribute to this formation of an internal object, it is an internal structure, constructed unconsciously” (Bollas, 1994, p. 25).

One way in which the previously discussed lesser conscious processes of early mental life: internalization, identifications and mental objects, for this project, specifically related to siblinghood, are understood by psychoanalytic theorists to be played out, is through the psychoanalytic concept of transference. One may imagine that remnants of sibling psychic life, in the form of sibling related transference, may be identified in any aspect of adult psychological life. It is significant to note, as Winnicott discusses in his concept of the transitional object, that non-human objects may also be meaningful transference objects, and for this project, the exploration and recognition of which may enrich an understanding of sibling related psychic life.

80 Within differing psychoanalytic theoretical positions, transference is variably defined from a single body to multi body construct. For Freud and Klein, transference is conceived as a one body phenomenon in which the contents of a subject’s mental life may be found through an understanding of the contents of a subject’s projections onto another subject. In this way, the unidirectional transference provides direct access to the contents of the projecting subject’s unconscious. As previously discussed, internalized material takes residence in the psyche, the result of which includes the formation of mental objects. Transference, like identification, is a way in which these internalized contents of the psyche can become animated and actively sustained over time.

Transference was first mentioned in the psychoanalytic literature by Sigmund Freud (1893) in his Studies on Hysteria. In his (1912) paper, “The Dynamics of Transference,” he more fully describes the etiology of this psychic phenomenon. He writes, It must be understood that each individual, through the combined operation of his innate disposition and the influences brought to bear on him during his early years, has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic lifethat is, in the preconditions to falling in love which he lays down, in the instincts he satisfies and the aims he sets for himself in the course of it. This produces what might be described as a stereotype plate (or several such), which is constantly repeated-constantly reprinted afresh-in the course of the person’s life, so far as external circumstances and the nature of the love-objects accessible to him permit, and which is certainly not insusceptible to change in the face of recent experiences…. If someone’s need for love is not entirely satisfied by reality, he is bound to approach every new person he meets with libidinal anticipatory ideas;

81 and it is highly probable that both portions of his libido, the portion that is capable of becoming conscious as well as the unconscious one, have a share in forming that attitude. Thus, it is a perfectly normal and intelligible thing that the libidinal cathexis of someone who is partly unsatisfied, a cathexis which is held ready in anticipation, should be (outwardly) directed…this cathexis will have recourse to prototypes, will attach itself to one of the stereotype plates which are present in the subject (p. 100).

As this study is interested in how, where and why siblinghood’s derivatives are found in adult psychic life, the psychoanalytic mechanism of transference may be an interesting and useful method to aid in the identification of possible threads of siblinghood’s psychic presence where they are made manifest. It is significant to note that transferential evidence of peer related psychic residue may be perceptible within countless constructions and configurations. Freud (1912) writes that transference is not necessarily played out within linear, easily recognizable, and/or concretely similar contexts. He describes, (using Carl Jung’s term) that if the cathexis is related to the Father-imago, “it (the transference) may come also come about on the lines of the mother-imago or brother-imago…the transference is not tied to (a) particular prototype” (p. 100). In this way, the philosophical orientation and methodology of this study provides for an opportunity to identity the elements of possible sibling related transference within the subjective experience and meaning making of each participant; the recognition and identification of the phenomenon is created from the “inside out,” rather than through an “outside in” process involving the universal application of an externally defined, predetermined set of criteria to each subject.

82 The mechanism of countertransference was first mentioned by Freud, in his (1910) paper, “The Future Prospects of Psychoanalysis.” He described countertransference as the emotional reaction to a patient’s material- the influence of the patient’s feelings on the analyst’s unconscious feelings, and as something which intrinsically could derail the progress of treatment. Paula Heimann (1950), however, was the first to offer an expanded discussion of countertransference. In her paper, “On Counter-Transference,” she writes, I would suggest that the analyst along with this freely working attention needs freely roused emotional sensibilities so as to follow the patient's emotional movements and unconscious phantasies. Our basic assumption is that the analyst's unconscious understands that of his patient. This rapport on the deep level comes to the surface in the form of feelings which the analyst notices in response to his patient, in his 'counter-transference.' This is the most dynamic way in which his patient's voice reaches him. In the comparison of feelings roused in himself with his patient's associations and behaviour, the analyst possesses a most valuable means of checking whether he has understood or failed to understand his patient. Since, however, violent emotions of any kind, of love or hate, helpfulness or anger, impel towards action rather than towards contemplation and blur a person's capacity to observe and weigh the evidence correctly, it follows that, if the analyst's emotional response is intense, it will defeat its object. Therefore, the analyst's emotional sensitivity needs to be extensive rather than intensive, differentiating and mobile (p. 82).

83 In the report of the 1949 Congress, Anna Freud summarizes Heimann’s contribution to the concept of countertransference as follows: Our basic assumption is that the analyst’s Ucs understands that of his patient. This rapport on the deep level comes to the surface in the analyst’s countertransference. The term counter-transference here is used to cover all the feelings which the analyst has towards his patient. The thesis of this short note is that the analyst’s counter-transference represents an instrument of research into the patient’s Ucs… Freud’s demand that the analyst must “recognize and master his countertransference” does not lead to the conclusion that the analyst should become unfeeling and detached, but that he must use his emotional response as a key for the patient’s Ucs” (p. 199).

Heinz Kohut (1971) also describes a one body theory of transference. He explicates three specific forms of transference: mirroring, idealizing, and twinship, each of which are need based constructs. For him, these transferences signal differing forms of unmet needs in the self. For Kohut, the transferences operate as selfobject functions. An understanding of the subject’s unconscious mental life may be gathered through an identification of the specific transference(s) in play.

Some later object relational theorists and many relational theorists may be understood to utilize a two-body construct of transference, in which the concept of countertransference is included. Specifically, the therapist’s thoughts/ feelings/fantasies may be considered and incorporated in formulating an understanding the patient’s lesser conscious mental life. M. Balint (1950) is credited with having first described the psychoanalytic situation as a “two body” situation, and with first using the phrase “two

84 person” psychology when describing object relational ideas. Ogden (1990) writes, “From the perspective of the view of internal object relations, transference and countertransference can now be understood as the interpersonal externalization (“actualization,” Ogden, 1980, 1982b) of an internal object relationship” (p. 151). Ogden specifies that transference can take one of two forms, ...depending on whether it is the role of object of that of the self in the internal object relationship that s assigned to another person in the externalization process.

When it is the role of the internal object that is projected, the (subject) experiences another person as he has unconsciously experienced that internal object (an unconscious split-off part of the ego identified with the object). In such a case, countertransference involves the (other’s) unconscious identification with that aspect of the (subject’s) ego identified with the object (Racker’s (1957) complementary identification)” (p. 151).

Ogden further writes that: Projective identification involves in addition an interpersonal pressure on the recipient to engage in such an identification. The recipient is coerced into seeing himself only as the object represented in the internal object relationship. More accurately, there is an attempt to make the recipient’s experience congruent with the way in which the internal object (aspect of the ego) experiences itself and perceives the self-component of the internal relationship. The subject unconsciously phantasizes that he ejects part of himself and enters the object in a controlling way (p. 151).

85 The relational school of psychoanalytic theory is largely considered to have begun with Mitchell and Greenberg’s (1983) highly influential text, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. In that work, Greenberg and Mitchell used the phrase, “relational structural model” to distinguish their ideas that relationships, conscious and lesser conscious, rather than drives, are at the center of developmental, motivational and clinical theory. Contemporary relational theorists generally define transference as one aspect of a multifaceted transference-countertransference experiential matrix, in which transferencecountertransference is constituted as a sphere of mutual influence. From this perspective, transference is formed by the enduring conflicts, fantasies and internalizations, and, also is fundamentally informed by the contemporary interpersonal relationship with the therapist. Likewise, countertransference, within the broadly relational theoretical perspective, may include all elements of the therapist of which the patient may be consciously and lesser consciously aware. The transference-countertransference engagement becomes the vehicle through which the patient and therapist enact elements of conflict and various affective states.

The three-body model of transference is often reflective of the understanding and contribution of social constructivist theorists, and other post-modern theorists, in which transference is understood to include the contents of the subject’s subjectivity, the contents of other’s subjectivity, and elements of contents of the subject’s broadly defined cultural milieu. This three-body model represents a significant shift in psychoanalytic theoretical conceptualization, more closely reflecting some of the values of the postmodern era.

86 Psychoanalytic theorists Philip Cushman and Irwin Hoffman have each made significant contributions to this body of work, emphasizing some relevant historical, clinical and theoretical points that, in part, reflect their understandings of the roles, responsibilities, and consequences of psychoanalytic ideas in current western culture.

Philip Cushman, in his (1994) paper, “Sullivan’s Spiders” describes his ideas regarding the need for a fundamental shift from a two person to a three-person psychology within the psychoanalytic paradigm. He writes, Obviously, I have an opinion…we should extend our conceptualization of the social into the realm of culture and politics. I suggest that we call this comprehensive hermeneutic step a three-person psychology, in keeping with the current one-person/two-person designation. The "three-ness" I refer to is the inclusion of the ever present, interpenetrating social realm. By the three-person characterization I intend to convey that the individual and the cultural are inextricably intertwined, that moral understandings are a foundational aspect of a culture, and that our discipline needs to be concerned with how various theories affect political structures and activities. A three-person psychology is a direct reflection of philosophical hermeneutics. It encourages us to think of psychotherapy as a set of social practices shaped by its historical-cultural habitat and unable to be bracketed away from moral discourse. It reminds us that humans exist only in a culture, and that cultures simultaneously potentiate opportunities and limit possibilities…. In this conceptualization of psychotherapy, the unconscious is not an interior "thing," but part of the patient's social landscape that contains potential feelings, thoughts, and experiences not able to "show up"

87 because they lie on the other side of the patient's horizon of understandings (p.

832) In situating his social-constructivist paradigm within the theoretical spectrum, Hoffman (1991a) clarifies that what he terms the social paradigm is not the same as the relational theoretical model, though there are some overlapping concepts and ideas. He writes that for the social paradigm to be differentiated from relational theory generally: A different step is required, one that has to do specifically with the kind of knowledge that the participants are thought to have of themselves and of each other. The paradigm changes, in my view, only when the idea of the analyst's personal involvement is wedded to a constructivist or perspectivist epistemological position. Only in effecting that integration is the idea of the analyst's participation in the process taken fully into account. By this I mean very specifically that the personal participation of the analyst in the process is considered to have a continuous effect on what he or she understands about himself or herself and about the patient in the interaction. The general assumption in this model is that the analyst's understanding is always a function of his or her perspective at the moment. Moreover, because the participation of the analyst implicates all levels of the analyst's personality, it must include unconscious as well as conscious factors. Therefore, what the analyst seems to understand about his or her own experience and behavior as well as the patient's is always suspect, always susceptible to the vicissitudes of the analyst's own resistance, and always prone to being superseded by another point of view that may emerge. A version of these principles applies to the patient, of course, just as much as one applies to the

88 analyst. In the constructivist model, a proportion of the patient's perceptions of the analyst do not suddenly become simply objective or realistic in a reversal of the classical view that they merely reflect fantasies divorced from reality (p. 77).

Further, Hoffman (1992) describes, “In the constructivist view, what had been known before on the basis of theory, research, or cumulative clinical experience is not discarded; rather, the authority of that knowledge is subtly diminished in proportion to a subtle increase in respect for the analyst's personal, subjective experience as a basis for what the analyst does or says” (p. 302). And, in sum, he clearly states the central tenet of the social constructivist position. He writes: Finally, as I have said elsewhere (Hoffman, 1991a), though a central purpose of analysis in the social-constructivist paradigm can be described as the deconstruction of the analyst's authority as it is represented in the transference (Protter, 1985), the goal is also the construction of an alternative social reality in which the patient's sense of self and others is altered” (p. 302).

Hoffman’s conceptualizations of transference and countertransference are greatly imbued with the above described ideals and tenets that inform his social constructivist theoretical perspective. In his seminal (1983) paper, “The Patient as Interpreter of the Analyst’s Experience,” Hoffman lays out the significant of the “social” and describes that transference involves more than just the contents of the patient’s early experience. He writes: What the patient's transference accounts for is not a distortion of reality but a selective attention to and sensitivity to certain facets of the analyst's highly ambiguous response to the patient in the analysis. What one patient notices about

89 the analyst another ignores. What matters to one may not matter to another, or may matter in a different way. One could make a case for using the term "distortion" for just this kind of selective attention and sensitivity, but that is not usually the way the term is used and I do think it would be misleading. After all, it is not as though one could describe the "real analyst" or the true nature of the analyst's experience independent of any selective attention and sensitivity” (p.

409).

He further writes regarding countertransference, Because the analyst is human, he is likely to have in his repertoire a blueprint for approximately the emotional response that the patient's transference dictates and that response is likely to be elicited, whether consciously or unconsciously (Searles, 1978–1979, pp. 172–173). Ideally this response serves as a key— perhaps the best key the analyst has—to the nature of the interpersonal scene that the patient is driven by transference to create. The patient as interpreter of the analyst's experience suspects that he has created something, the complement of the transference, in the analyst; that is, he suspects it at some level. What he does not know and what remains to be decided, is what role the countertransference experience of the analyst will have in determining the total nature of the analyst's response to the patient. In other words he does not know the extent to which the countertransference will combine with the transference to determine the destiny of the relationship. The extent to which the analyst's "objectivity, " the tendency which is inclined towards understanding more than enacting, the extent to which this tendency will prevail and successfully resist the pull of the transference and

90 the countertransference is unknown at any given moment not only to the patient but also to the analyst (p. 413).

In sum, Hoffman (1994) suggests that the psychoanalytic process may be well best characterized as a series of enactments that the patient and therapist will experience and examine together.

Dreams.

The world of dreams is our real world whilst we are sleeping, because our attention then lapses from the sensible world. Conversely when we wake, the attention usually lapses from the dream-world and that becomes unreal. But if a dream haunts us and compels our attention during the day, it is very apt to remain figuring in our consciousness as a sort of sub-universe alongside of the waking world (W. James, 1890, p. 294).

As previously noted, it is broadly considered general practice wisdom, across the psychoanalytic spectrum, that dreams, language and affect are among the significant ways in which aspects of lesser conscious mental life including siblinghood, broadly defined, may become visible (Tolleson, J., personal communication).

In Freud’s (1899) work, The Interpretation of Dreams, he sets the reader’s expectations for his ideas regarding the mechanism and significance of dreams: In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there exists a psychological technique by which dreams may be interpreted and that upon the application of this method every dream will show itself to be a senseful psychological structure which may be introduced into an assignable place in the psychic activity of the

91 waking state. I shall furthermore endeavor to explain the processes which give rise to the strangeness and obscurity of the dream, and to discover through them the psychic forces, which operate whether in combination or opposition, to produce the dream (p. 9).

Freud believed that dreams were like puzzles, though they may appear nonsensical on the surface, through the process of interpretation they can form a “poetical phrase of the greatest beauty and significance” (p. 296). He describes that dreams are formed through the opposing mental processes of wish fulfillment and censorship, which distorts the contents of the wish. He further describes that dreams have a manifest content, which may be remembered, and a latent content, in which the underlying meaning in the dream content is represented. The unconscious, during sleep, condenses, displaces and forms representations of the dream content, the latent meaning of which is often unrecognizable to the dreamer in an awakened state. (p. 205). He further notes that every dream has a connection to the “remains of the day” from the previous day, though it may be a very minor connection, as dream material may be selected from literally any aspect of experience (p. 192).

Specifically, Freud describes four possible sources for dream contents: the direct representation of psychically significant experiences, a combination of some number of significant recent experiences folded into a single dream, one or more significant, recent experiences which are represented in the dream content by the presence of a contemporary, though indifferent experience, and, a psychically significant experience, such as a memory, thought, or feeling that is represented in the dream material through a mention of a recent, but indifferent, impression.

92 Christopher Bollas, (1982) offers another way in which to think usefully about the contents of dreams in his discussion of the dream as another context for the “relation to the self as an object.” He writes: In the dream one portion of the self is represented through the illusion of the experiencing subject in the dream that he is the entire self, while the other portion or portions of the self are represented through the dream events and other objects in the dream script. My question is 'how is the experiencing subject in the dream handled as an object by the dream script?...In asking this question I am aware of departing from the classical notion of the dream content as only a manifest content which hides the latent true meaning, but the dream experience does constitute an object relation in its own right and as such can be examined in terms of the dreamer-subject's experience of the dream event… Whatever the dreamer's experience of the dream script, it is relevant to our psychoanalysis of the person's relation to himself as an object, to include the dream space as a particular kind of unconscious holding environment in which the dreamer is to be the object of a presentation of desire, guilt, historical notation, by an unconsciously organized and interpretive portion of the self. Thus, in thinking with the patient about his dreaming self's experience of the dream, it is important to understand his affects within the dream and the recollected thoughts he had while experiencing the dream event” (p. 350) Bollas further writes: In my view, each individual transfers elements of that maternal care system that handled them as an object when in infancy and childhood by relocating this

93 parental care system into the person's own way of managing themself as an object” (p. 358).

For this project, allowing for the possibility that a subject may also transfer elements of actual and imagined sibling experience related to their experience as an object in infancy and childhood into their idiom, and way of managing themselves as an object, Bollas offers an interesting way in which asking about and thinking about dreams can offer a way listen for sibling related material in psychic life.

Language.

“The unconscious speaks more than one dialect” (Freud, 1913p. 177).

“As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are” (Emerson, R.W., 1865 p. 79).

One may admit that a good third of our psychic life consists in these rapid premonitory perspective views of schemes of thought not yet articulate…. It is, in short, the reinstatement of the vague to its proper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the attention” (James, W., 1890. Volume I, pp. 253– 254).

Language has had a privileged role in psychoanalytic theory since its inception.

The primary way in which language has historically been discussed and incorporated in psychoanalytic theory has been through words, specifically, through the concept of free association. While spoken language remains a primary means of communication in psychoanalytic models, more recently there has been interesting and significant discussion in the literature of psychic phenomena that are lesser articulated, lesser

94 formulated, and their relationships to representation. What sorts of languages may be involved in the communication of lesser formulated experiences? Bollas (1994) writes: The process of free association not only establishes a mood suited to unconscious communication; its silences become birthplaces of important emotional realities for both participants. The terms we use for emotions—anxiety, depression, love, or hate—are desperately inadequate, but it is fitting that they should be so clumsy, because when we share an emotional reality, it is as if unconscious communication takes places by means of our separate senses, communication devoted to knowings derived from feelings (p. 28-29).

For this project, it is interesting to consider the psychic remains of sibling experience which may be identified through the constructs of language, via its relationship to both more and lesser formulated constructions of internal and interpersonal experience.

In his Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud referred to free association as, this fundamental technical rule of analysis.... We instruct the patient to put himself into a state of quiet, unreflecting self-observation, and to report to us whatever internal observations he is able to make—taking care not to exclude any of them, whether on the ground that it is too disagreeable or too indiscreet to say, or that it is too unimportant or irrelevant, or that it is nonsensical and need not be said (p. 328).

Freud (1913) further evocatively describes his instruction to his patients about the importance of free association:

95 Act as though, for instance, you were a traveler sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which you see outside… . Finally, never forget that you have promised to be absolutely honest, and never leave anything out because, for some reason or other, it is unpleasant to tell it. (p. 135).

Broadly and basically, the goal of free association in psychoanalytic theory is to allow for a process of discovery/co-discovery; the aim of which is to facilitate greater understanding and integration of a subject’s thoughts and feelings, which, in turn, may help further increase a subject’s capacity for creativity, agency and freedom.

Christopher Bollas (1995) writes, “the logic of association is a form of unconscious thinking (p. 21). The method of free association works by intuitive leaps and linkages, rather than through a linear, or formulated, agenda. Free association is a technique in which neither the therapist, nor the patient, can predict precisely where the conversation will lead, but trust that it will illuminate material that is meaningful to the patient.

The general psychoanalytic ideal that our use of language is meaningful, and is a reflection of mental life, philosophically supports the primacy of free association as a technique to access lesser conscious psychic material. It is interesting to additionally consider the ways in which language may interplay with lesser formulated, lesser articulated psychic experience. Contemporary psychoanalytic theorist, Donnel Stern, (1983) describes the role of curiosity and his understanding of the ideal of free association within the constructivist paradigm, specifically related to knowing and unformulated experience. Stern begins with the significance of curiosity, including the claim that to be so about oneself is universally fraught with anxiety. He writes:

96 In the constructivist view, since each person is the author of his or her own experience, the only thing to be learned about oneself that can really be counted on to be the truth is that one is afraid to be curious…To be this curious requires the tolerance of enormous uncertainty almost constantly. It also requires the strength to anticipate being able to tolerate any and all thoughts and feelings one might have. It means allowing oneself, even encouraging oneself to the extent that it is possible, to complete all interpretations and constructions one finds undeveloped in oneself. Curiosity preserves the uncertainty in unformulated experience. Curiosity is the attitude by which unformulated experience is maintained as creative disorder. In these terms, (the psychoanalytic method) is the progressive awakening of curiosity, a movement from familiar chaos to creative disorder.

I have said that curiosity means allowing oneself to make constructions.

"Allowing" may seem strange wording—or it may sound like some kind of conscious granting of permission to oneself to "go ahead and work on" thinking. To "work on" thinking is precisely the meaning not intended (p. 93).

Further, Stern develops his idea of the ways in which “allowing” for curiosity may be synonymous to an authentically free associative process. He writes: Curiosity is an active attitude of openness (Schachtel, 1959), not a focused search, at least not to begin with. It means that rather than employing a focused beam of attention, a searchlight to look for things in experience, which in one way or another usually seems to result in conventionalizing, one allows the things that are there to impress themselves on one's consciousness. This involves taking one's hand off the tiller and letting what Schachtel (1973) called

97 “global attention and perception" drift as it will. Then, when an interesting construction begins to form itself out of the preattentive material, one may stop and perform a more focused search on and around this construction to fill in the detail and give it the convincing quality Freud (1937) knew it had to have to be useful. Of course, it is no accident that this description of "allowing" is essentially a description of free association; but it is the ideal of free association” (pp. 93-94).

Stern also acknowledges the some of the limits of the construct of language within the social-constructivist paradigm. He writes, Lack of formulation is lack of symbolization. Not to have a thought means not to translate unformulated experience into language. In the case of defense, it amounts to a refusal to make this leap into meaning, while in the case of the cultural blinders that rob us, as we grow up, of the vividness and intensity that experience seems to have for children, we are actually unable to make meanings (Schachtel, 1947). According to Schachtel's tragic view, because direct apperception and memory of true and raw experience would "explode the restrictive social order," society forces individual experience, which is all we really have, into banal, conventional schemata. Bergson (1903), (1907) and James (1890) conclude that language, although it formulates the formless and is therefore constitutive of experience, also seduces us into accepting a mythology of the world around us that is based—circularly—on the properties of language itself. In these ways, language and culture set the limits beyond which even creative disorder cannot spread (p. 91).

98

Affect.

Language without affect is a dead language: and affect without language is uncommunicable. Language is situated between the cry and the silence. Silence often makes heard the cry of psychic pain and behind the cry the call of silence is like comfort (Green A., 177, p.148).

“It is easier to talk about what has been said about affect, and the way in which affect has been conceived, than about affect itself. Affect constitutes a challenge to thought” (Green, A., 1977, p.129)

Affects are a meaningful and significant way in which aspects of psychic life, including remains of siblinghood, may be reflected. The contexualization and understanding of conscious and lesser conscious affect states have been historically significant topics in the psychoanalytic literature. Jerome Wakefield (1992) and Andre Green (1997) consider relevant aspects of Freud’s and other seminal theoriticians’ understanding and treatment of the concept of affect.

Jerome Wakefield (1992) begins his paper, “Freud and the Intentionality of Affect,” “What kind of thing is an affect (or feeling or emotion), like sadness, anxiety, or elation, and what makes it mental?” (p. 1). Wakefield posits that this question is critical for Freud, who is tasked with fitting affects into his theoretical framework in which “the mind is conceived as a system of interacting mental representations (or, equivalently, intentional states)” (p. 1)

99 He further describes that affects are, ...notoriously difficult to square with a representational approach to the mind because, although affects clearly are mental, some affects, like free-floating anxiety, do not seem to be about any external object in the way that is characteristic of other mental states like beliefs, desires, fantasies, or fears. Being about something is generally agreed to be necessary for meaning, intentionality, and mental representationality, the cardinal characteristics of the mental according to the representational view. (p. 2).

Further, Wakefield (1992) contends that Freud, ...implicitly adopted Brentano's thesis that the essence of the mental is intentionality (i.e., mental representation), while rejecting Brentano's Cartesian assumption that intentionality must be conscious. But, how can a feeling like freefloating anxiety, which does not seem to represent or be about anything, be fitted into Freud's representational framework? Several possible answers are examined, including: (a) affects are ideas, (b) affects are always attached to ideas, (c) consciousness is perception of internal mental states, and. (d) affects are perceptions of internal bodily processes” (p. 1) Wakefield (1992) argues that “only the “bodily perception” account is systematically developed by Freud, is consistent with Freud's other doctrines, and is intrinsically plausible even in the context of contemporary debate. Freud's intentionalistic account of affect is shown to be part of an overall explanation of Freud's paradoxical rejection of unconscious affects” (p. 2). Wakefield writes that the point of view

100 that affect is a perceptual representation of the body corresponds with Freud's position of denial regarding unconscious feelings. He writes that for Freud, affects are, ...like perceptions of the external world, which are representations of physical things such as chairs and books, and they are like bodily sensations (e.g., nausea), which are perceptual representations of internal physiological disturbances (e.g., reverse peristalsis). Neither of these types of perceptual processes represent things which in themselves are mental, so when these things (e.g., chairs, reverse peristalsis) are not being perceived, they are just physical things and do not constitute unconscious mental states. Similarly, affects are representations of patterns of bodily arousal and discharge which are no more mental in themselves than chairs or reverse peristalsis. So, when they are not conscious, these bodily processes are simply physiological and are not unconscious affects, which must be mental. In contrast, conscious ideas are perceptions of ideational representations stored in the nervous system and, according to Freud, such physical processes are also intrinsically mental because of their representational structure, quite aside from our conscious experience of them.

Thus, when an idea is not in consciousness, it is still mental and exists as an unconscious idea. Conscious affects are like sensations and perceptions and unlike conscious ideas in these respects (p. 19).

Wakefield (1992), continues, ...in contrast, conscious ideas are perceptions of ideational representations stored in the nervous system and, according to Freud, such physical processes are also intrinsically mental because of their representational structure, quite aside from

101 our conscious experience of them. Thus, when an idea is not in consciousness, it is still mental and exists as an unconscious idea. Conscious affects are like sensations and perceptions and unlike conscious ideas in these respects (p. 19).

Wakefield notes that a gap remains in this explanation of Freud's rejection of unconscious affects. Wakefield writes that the answer to the question of whether an affect is a representation of the body, and why can't that representation be unconscious, is implicit for Freud in that an affect is not just any sort of representation, but specifically a direct, ideationally unmediated perception of the body. For Freud, Wakefield writes, “as a matter of psychological law, all perceptions must be conscious. Thus, consciousness is part of the essence of affect ultimately because consciousness is part of the essence of perception (p. 19).

Andre Green, in his (1977) paper, “Conceptions of Affect,” takes the reader in detail through his historical understanding of the evolution of some of Freud’s salient ideas related to the concept of affect, as well as chronologically discussing some other seminal psychoanalytic theorists’ positions, including his own, on the topic.

Green begins, “Freud struggled with the problem of affect all his life, especially from the 'Studies on Hysteria' (Breuer &Freud, 1893–1895) to 'Inhibitions, Symptom and Anxiety' (Freud, 1926)” (p. 129). Specifically, regarding Freud “on what happens on the pathway which affect seeks towards consciousness” (p. 136), Green states: If the way forward is barred, they [sensations and feelings] do not come into being as sensations, although the 'something' that corresponds to them in the course of excitation is the same as if they did. then come to speak, in a condensed and not entirely correct manner, of 'unconscious feelings,' keeping up an analogy

102 with unconscious ideas which is not altogether justifiable. Actually the difference is that, whereas with the Ucs. ideas connecting links must be created before they can be brought into the Cs., with feelings which are themselves transmitted directly, this does not occur. In other words: the distinction between Cs. and Pcs. has no meaning where feelings are concerned; the Pcs. here drops out—and feelings are either conscious or unconscious. Even when they are attached to word presentations, their becoming conscious is not due to that circumstance, but they become so directly (Freud, 1923 pp. 22–23, 136-7).

Reflecting on the above, Green writes: This passage indicates that Freud's reservations are terminological, and that there are several modes of existence in the Unconscious, which enables us to speak of an unconscious modality for affect. In the end the essential difference between affect and representation is the impossibility of affects being in direct conjunction with the verbal mnemic traces. Thus, we come back to the observation which I made at the beginning about the limitations of language in giving an account of affect. Verbalization induces the affect and most often by indirect paths. Affect is an original subjective modality. For all that, its expressive dimension does not exclude it from semantic material. This supposes the transmission of a communication from affect to affect, or a consensus on the spoken messages which refer to it, whilst the information retains an allusive status (p. 137).

Further, Green describes that the significance of “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety” (Freud, 1926) in relation to the concept of affect arises from the fact that Freud

103 shifted focus from the Oedipus complex, and its castration anxiety, to separation anxiety.

He writes: A parallel movement takes us from the role of the father—does Freud not call the Oedipus complex the “Vaterkomplex”—to the role of the mother who is at the centre of the child's anxieties which follow the catastrophe of the threat of her loss or the despair about her prolonged absence, which is manifested in traumatic anxiety (p. 138).

Finally, in summarizing Freud’s position on affect, Green writes: The initial division between representation and affect bears witness to Freud's care in distinguishing two subsystems in the Unconscious, different both in their nature and in their vicissitudes. If the representation has pride of place in the beginning, it is perhaps because of the possibilities of illustration and above all demonstration which it offers. Furthermore, it is true that representations, being more closely allied to language than affect, which eludes it much more, appear to play a greater role in talking cure. That would explain why Freud discovered the transference relatively late, and early on considered it an obstacle. The representation appears to constitute the psychic material which is most favourable to psychotherapy… Nevertheless it remains that affect keeps its place as the primary system in Freudian theory, regulated by the pleasure-unpleasure principle, whose possibilities of transformation and evolution offer less room for manoeuvre than the representations, whose evolution leads to the function of language and its relationship to thought. But, on the other hand, because the aim of psychoanalysis is to gain access to the most fundamental systems of psychic

104 life, those which regulate the basic functioning of the psychic apparatus, the place taken by affect in the evolution of the theory is completely justified. As Freud gives us to understand in 'Negation' (1925), there remain to be established the foundations of affective logic so as not to cut off the logic of the unconscious representations from that of affective life (pp. 139-140).

Green (1977) notes that as Freud organized affects as discharge processes, he (Green) thinks that there has often been a, ...tendency to understand them as physiological phenomena accompanied by their corresponding psychical expression as a whole. In fact, a simplification has taken place, replacing a more subtle conception present in Freud's work, even though his explanatory hypotheses remain doubtful.” (p. 149).

Green suggests that Freud’s most precise definition of affect is found in his Introductory Lectures (Freud, 1917c): And what is affect in the dynamic sense? It is in any case something highly composite. An affect includes in the first place particular motor innervations or discharges and secondly certain feelings; the latter are of two kinds—perceptions of the motor actions that have occurred and the direct feelings of pleasure and unpleasure which, as we say, give the affect its keynote (p. 395).

Further, Green cites the following as Freud's own impression about his definition: But I do not think that with this enumeration we have arrived at the essence of an affect. We seem to see deeper in the case of some affects and to recognize that the core which holds the combination we have described together is the repetition of some particular significant experience. This experience could only be a very early

105 impression of a very general nature, placed in the prehistory not of the individual but of the species (Freud, 1917, pp. 395–396) (p. 150).

Green (1977) next turns his attention to some seminal British object relations theorists’ understandings of the affect. He writes: It is with Brierley (1937) that affect will find its best advocate. She was one of the first to understand that one speaks of object cathexes rather than of affective charge of ideas and to underline the inadequacy of the quantitative standpoint (p.

144).

Green posits that Brierley’s (1937) article, ...reflects remarkably the tendency of the English school to tie primary affective development to object relations. The cathexis precedes differentiation and cognitive discrimination. We see that, for writers of the English school, it is not a question of pushing affect back towards biology but, rather, of setting it in a framework of a primitive sensibility, the vestiges of which must be sought by the analyst in the analytic situation through the transference and countertransference (p. 144).

Green notes that Paula Heimann (1950) clearly demonstrated the role and capacity of countertransference as an affective instrument, which implies that the analyst does not retreat in the face of his own involvement in the relationship and that he undertakes to investigate his own affects as empathic echoes of those of the analysand, and that he lives them in a sort of “identification with the self of the analysand or identification with the effect that the self wishes to have on the object” (p. 144). Green writes that in this sense, Brierley’s article really opens a new era in the understanding of

106 affect, as “according to her, the construction of primary affects is linked to their carriers” (p. 144).

Green (1977) writes that Brierley’s description of affect is reminiscent of Winnicott’s concept of “holding,” specifically with its recognition of the primitive psychic mechanisms of projection and introjection, and the ego’s relations with good and bad objects. Brierley (1937) is clear about the existence of unconscious affects, what she terms, “pre-affects,” and that affective language, or communication, is earlier than is speech; an observation previously made by Freud with the idea of affective language.

Green goes on to note that Rycroft (1968) had identified that one of the peculiarities of affects is that they are felt by others, and that they induce identical of opposing reactions in others. Green writes that he is unreservedly supportive of Brierley’s formula for the necessary analytic qualities as a combination of both “intelligent insight and affective comprehension” (p. 144).

Green (1977) notes that, interestingly, Melanie Klein wrote little about affect, but significantly, she states that the imagery that she employs to describe the functioning of the psychic apparatus related to what she calls, ‘memories in feelings’ (Klein, 1957).

Green continues, describing that “one might think that Melanie Klein has substituted for the classical Freudian opposition of representation and affect, the elementary unity of fantasied affect underlying what the patient says” (p. 145). In Green’s opinion, Klein’s work is unreservedly important and significant in terms of the contributions of her own thinking, but even more so, he writes, because of the impetus her work gave to others.

Green (1977) writes, “Bion, at the heart of the Kleinian group, placed affects in a state of connexion with thought” (p. 145). Bion (1963) describes that in the patients

107 mouth, ‘I feel that’ substitutes for ‘I think that.’ Green notes that Bion demonstrates in depth, “how massive amounts of affect, expelled by projective identification, return to the psychic apparatus which is incapable of mastering these excessive qualities of accretions, which forbid thinking of the no-breast and alter the development of thought” (p. 145).

Green (1977) notes that Fairbairn (1952) distances himself from the Kleinian system, by seeming to challenge the unconscious fantasizing that Klein uses to situate the infant psyche. Regarding Fairbairn, Green (1977) writes, “So the paradox is that, in putting more accent on schizoid factors in the personality, that is to say on the defences against expression of affect, he penetrates more deeply into the affective universe by making a radical break with Freud’s biologically inclined thinking” (p. 145).

Green (1977) writes that the question of Fairbairn’s orthodoxy or heterodoxy is for him secondary to the “progress which he enables psychoanalysts to accomplish, who, like Winnicott, saw their work more as an extension of that of Freud” (p. 145).

Green (1977) notes that Winnicott (1945) writes only about primary affective development, without having technically elaborated a conception of affect. He suggests that Winnicott’s (1949) seminal article, “Hate in the Countertransference” was in large part informed by the significance and importance that he (Winnicott) gives to affects in both members of the analytic couple. According to Green, Winnicott’s (1949) work leads to the idea that as the analyst’s affects are significant: The conception of development—in the first place, affective development, cannot exclude the mother’s affects and her capacity to tolerate, sustain and relay the affective messages to the baby, in a form which can be integrated by his self.

Henceforth any conception of affect leaves its individual isolation and enters into

108 the setting of affective communications whose specificity remains to be defined (p. 145).

Green further describes that with Winnicott, it is not only the way of conceptualizing affect that changes, but here is additionally a, New inspirational thought which replaces the specialized terminology of the category of affects, by reference to the living experience of the analytic climate at those moments when regression draws the two partners into a world where it is no longer pertinent to talk of affect as an isolated fact (p. 145).

In France, Green (1977) writes, the problem of affect has been centered around the work of Lacan. He notes that the significant interest in Lacan’s (1966) study is in large part due to its stimulation of theoretical conversation about affect. Regarding the specific task Green (1977) undertakes, elucidating Lacan’s position on affect, he begins with Lacan’s (1966) fundamental thesis, “The Unconscious is structured like a language” (p. 799). Lacan clearly and explicitly maintains that it is “fruitless to try to give conceptual status to affect as an expression of undifferentiated psychic functioning” (p.

799).

Green (1977) gives further detail regarding the basis of Lacan’s (1966) premise: The originality of Lacan's position in modern structuralizing comes from his conception of the signifier (le signifiant). This term, which F. de Saussure uses to designate one of the two parts which together compose the sign (the other being what is signified, le signifié) refers to the unity of phonic matter and becomes, in the Lacanian system, the atomic element of the modality of meaning itself in the Unconscious, whose functioning enables us to hypothesize retroactively about the

109 subject. Subject and structure are thus in a dialectic relationship. There is no sense in placing the subject outside the functioning of the structure. According to him, (Lacan) it is important to distinguish of his formulae which has attained fame is: 'the signifier (signifiant) is that which represents a subject for another signifier.'

Schematically, there are two 'atomic unities' (unites atomiques) of meaning between which an agent intervenes. The agent is considered in the perspective of the Unconscious but supposes a relationship as in every intelligible connexion and is represented by the very fact that there is a relationship. Finally, Lacan takes up again, in his system, the fundamental theoretical fact of psychoanalysis which Freud calls binding (when he talks of energy) or association (when he talks of analytic material) whilst seeking to give it a conceptual base (p. 146).

Green (1977) makes the significant observation that although Lacan’s description appears to be logical and accurate, he finds it faulty insofar as Lacan seems to require the structure of language to make his whole theoretical system work. Green writes that if he is, in fact, fundamentally that dependent on structure of language, ...it is certainly because, for modern linguistics, the classification of signifiers, in the Saussurian sense, is nothing other than the structuring of the system. The question is to know whether the dependence on words of the essential elements in analytic communication is sufficient to justify the creation of a psychoanalytic model whose paradigm is language, even if Lacan's model departs from the type of model which the paradigm relates to in linguistics. For example, one cannot rule out that the future of linguistic research—I am thinking of Chomsky's (1968) concept of the underlying structure—may come to consider the connexion of the

110 matrices of language in their relationship to matrices foreign to the language, which might require a revision of the theory of information starting from the concept of a plurality of codes. A psychoanalyst might at this point interpose, alongside the problem of the interaction and the intermingling of the diverse codes amongst each other, the essential hypothesis of conflict (p. 147).

Green (1977) writes that his own (1962, 1966, 1970, 1973) theoretical thinking on the subject of affect is unique, in that he attempts a critique of the Lacanian system based on its hypotheses, some of which he also accepts. He notes that: This system must be approached as a sign of the necessity to re-evaluate certain of its principal positions. It stresses that taking language as a frame of reference for the Unconscious obliges us to take account of the situation in which words are faced with communicating about an experience which by definition is impossible to translate into words (p. 147).

Green (1977) writes that reference to language implies a homogenous body of phonemes to sentences and a unified structure which is that of language itself� (146).

However, he continues, the Unconscious is “constituted of heterogeneous elements: representations of things and affects constitute its core. But this core relates to the body, to action and to language. Hence the existence of chains of representations of things and words, affects, body-states and actions (ibid).

Green (1977) posits that presence of affective forms of communication in analytic material need not lead to an opposition of language communication and non-verbal communication, functionally cutting them off from each other. On the contrary, he notes, their respective inputs should instigate a search for their common origins, from which

111 diverse modes of intelligibility assume different modalities. Green (1977) further underscores the importance that allowing for, and studying different types of these prior mentioned concatenations, as well as any conflictual interactions which may result, and which “is itself subordinate to the fundamental conflicts of the psychic apparatus, which our conceptual tools translate unskillfully into theory, obliging us to make more or less appropriate theoretical choices” (p. 147).

Green (1977) writes: Take as examples the ego and adaptation in Hartmann, unconscious fantasy and object relations in M. Klein, the being and the experience in Winnicott. Reference to language, if it has the merit of putting the accent on the structure—which is indeed of decisive importance insofar as it relates to the structure of unconscious intelligibility—avoids the essential questions posed by structuration: What can be structured, by what, by whom? to arrive at what type(s) (in the singular or the plural) of structuring? Is it necessary to finish up with a more general structure, a place to accommodate the diverse structurings—or should one, on the other hand, accept the juxtaposition of structures which do not communicate with each other except by intermittent links? What is the meaning of pragmatic, if not theoretical, reference to the notion of integration in psychoanalysis? Is it only a question of a meeting between the subject and his structure, or is some new functioning installed? (p. 148).

Green (1977) continues: All these questions lead back to the process of meaning in relation to the Other.

But, then, the process of meaning is linked to the existence of the 'chains' of

112 affect, a reformulation of Freud's concept of 'binding' whether this applies to energy or to representations. However, this chain is not as in linear language: it is at the same time polygraphic (by virtue of the heterogeneity of the material in the communication) and polyphonic, putting diverse types of code into communication with each other: affective, representative and linguistic. This structure implies that affect is understood, like language, as a product of psychic work. Indeed, the economic point of view cannot, in these circumstances, be understood only as the expression of quantity but, rather, as the principle of transformation of quantities and of quantities and qualities between each other.

Language without affect is a dead language: and affect without language is uncommunicable. Language is situated between the cry and the silence. Silence often makes heard the cry of psychic pain and behind the cry the call of silence is like comfort” (p. 148).

Green (1977) summarizes his discussion and critique of Lacan’s work on affect, writing that Lacan's concept of the symbolic as the key to the unconscious system would be much more acceptable if it were not related to the paradigm of language, but rather, to one that makes language possible; a concept which seems to have been best understood, according to Green, by Winnicott (1971).

Green (1977) writes that it is precisely because this concept is, ...indispensable to any authentic renewal of theory that criticism of the exclusion of affect becomes a serious one… If it is easy to agree with Lacan (1973) when he seems to imply that the problem of affect is linked to a body 'whose natural habitat is language' (p. 149).

113 He notes that: The question remains untouched insofar as there exists no consensus on the relationship between psychic reality and the body—de M'Uzan (1970) presented a psychoanalytical conception of this relationship in a dynamic perspective, surely guided by his competence in psychosomatics, when he differentiated between affect as a psychic phenomenon and psychosomatic economy (cf. also McDougall, 1974) (p. 149).

Woven into his critique of Lacan’s theoretical position, Green (1977) also further elaborates his own thinking. He writes that he finds two distinct types of affect. The first type is “affect which is integrated as solid material into the other significant material in the unconscious (and preconscious) chain…affect is subordinated to the organization of the chain and its meaning lies in the sequence which it belongs to. Here affect takes on the function of signifier (signifiant) like the representation or any other material coming into unconscious formations.” (p. 149).

Further, Green (1977) describes the second type of affect: By its intensity and its meaning (signification) affect overflows from the unconscious chain, like a river which leaves its bed and disorganizes communications, destroying the sense-making structures…The disorganization of the chain is responsible for the traumatic affect which may paralyse or have a tendency towards compulsive action…thus, affect remains in the framework of a relationship susceptible to transformation by the work of elaboration in analytic association (p. 149).

114 As reviewed, there are many ways in which to understand how affect may represent and communicate psychic material. For this project, the differing possible theoretical constructs which may allow for the recognition and understanding of affect and affective communication may be useful in sensing and discovering relevant psychic remnants of siblinghood.

115

Chapter III

Methodology Introduction Tolleson’s (1996) psychoanalytic case study methodology was chosen for this hermeneutically situated research project, and psychoanalytic theory was employed as the conceptual lens. Specifically, this study sought to investigate derivatives of siblinghood in the psychic lives of four adults. Originally, the goal was to create individual case studies for five participants. For varying logistical reasons later in the research process, four individual case studies were determined to be the optimal number. The supraordinate construct for this project involved the psychic remnants of siblinghood in adulthood. I defined “siblinghood” as the state of being a sibling, concretely, and in fantasy, peers sharing parents. It was my contention that in current western culture, siblinghood is a significant, universal intrapsychic phenomenon, the lesser conscious effects of which may be at play in adults’ psychological lives.

The clinical and theoretical potential for utility in considering siblinghood’s implicit representations in adulthood is available across psychoanalytic perspectives.

Thus, a broad psychoanalytic theoretical approach to analyzing the data was well suited to this project, the most significant reason for which involved a demonstration of the value that it may be possible to find meaning in a wide range of psychoanalytically informed ideas. This concept is well described in Vaughan’s (1992) statement, “the

116 paradox of theory is that at the same time it tells us where to look, it can keep us from seeing” (p. 195).

Rationale for qualitative research design, including a restatement of epistemology.

A qualitative research method was well suited to this study for many reasons. Denzin and Lincoln (2011) write, Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world.

Qualitative research consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible…qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (p. 3).

Creswell (2007, 2009) notes that qualitative research allows for the unfolding of complex and intricate understandings, and for the exploration of meanings, both of which directly reflect the goals and values of this project. Bloomberg and Volpe, (2008), describe qualitative research as allowing for multiplicity, and facilitating complexity, rather than seeking to name a simple, or singular, causal reason for a phenomenon.

Through this research project, I sought to understand the subjective meanings of the remnants of siblinghood in the psychic lives of my participants. As such, the structure and parameters of qualitative research best supported this project’s goals. Cresswell (2013) describes, “Qualitative researchers use an emerging qualitative approach to inquiry, the collection of data in a natural setting sensitive to the people and places under

117 study, and data analysis that is both inductive and deductive and establishes patterns or themes (p. 44).

The epistemological foundation for this psychoanalytic case study project involved a hermeneutic paradigm of inquiry. Gadamer (1992) writes, “Hermeneutic work is based on a polarity of familiarity and strangeness…The true locus of hermeneutics is this in between (Zwischen)” (p. 295). Poetically, perhaps, this hermeneutic epistemology was well suited to the investigation of internalized psychic representations of siblinghood, in which sameness and otherness, closeness and distance, self and other, are highly relevant concepts.

Hermeneutic research is a methodology of interpretation, focused on the interpretation of meanings. It allows for the building of theory and the location of meaning through a listening stance. My participation in the interpretation of meaning for this psychoanalytic case study project, was as co-interpreter with each participant. Together, the researcher and the participant make sense of the participant’s experience. Meaning is not discovered by the researcher, rather it is derived through a process of mutual investment and collaboration between the researcher and the participant. Further, regarding my role as an interpretive agent for this psychoanalytic case study project, my interpretations were informed by my subjectivity, others may interpret the data differently. Gadamer affirms that understanding is inseparable from dialogue and is marked by a constant and productive “chorismatic” tension between these two realms (Barthold 2010, p. 27).

118 Rationale for specific methodology.

While there were many ways of approaching this topic, a narrative approach exploring subjective experience was chosen for this research study. The primary reason for having utilized this psychoanalytic case study methodology included the opportunity to add to the literature on this topic through allowing for the building of theory from a psychoanalytically situated, subjective interpretation of the data. This methodological approach allowed for an opportunity to enhance understanding and enrich current theory through deep exploration of real, lived experience, thus adding to the existing knowledge of our understanding of psychological life.

Tolleson’s (1996) psychoanalytic case study methodology was specifically chosen for this investigation to facilitate an in-depth analysis of both the single case study as well as the study of multiple cases. Case study research involves the study of a case (or cases) within a real-life, contemporary context or setting. (Yin 2014). Psychoanalytic theorist and clinician, Irwin Hoffman, in his 2009 work, “Doublethinking Our Way to ‘Scientific’ Legitimacy: The Desiccation of Human Experience” advocates for the importance and legitimacy of the psychoanalytic case study research method. He writes: The “consequential uniqueness” of each interaction and the indeterminacy associated with the free will of the participants make the individual case study especially suited for the advancement of ‘knowledge’—that is, the progressive enrichment of sensibility—in our field (JAPA, p. 1043).

Alan Kazdin (1998) in his seminal text, Research Design in Clinical Psychology, writes that the psychoanalytic case study method “permits the study of rare phenomena that would be ‘impossible’ to capture in large group studies” (p. 1050). (In Hoffman,

119 2009). I contend that Kazdin’s statement regarding the study of “rare phenomena” is similarly applicable to ordinary phenomena. For this study, I held the assumption that as sibling experience is widely available and generally significant in western culture, it may, in fact, be considered ordinary, while each person’s experience is also idiosyncratic.

Further, Yin (2018) writes, “A case study is an empirical method that investigates a contemporary phenomenon (the “case”) in depth and within its real-world context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context may not be clearly evident” (p. 15).

In summary, this project was particularly well suited to the utilization of an indepth narrative approach, such as Tolleson’s (1996) psychoanalytic case study method, as it allowed for the exploration of subjective experience and meanings related to the psychic utilization of this personal (idiosyncratic) and universal (ordinary) construct of siblinghood.

Case selection and screening process.

This project employed generally recommended case study guidelines for case study research. The sample size was four participants, as Cresswell (2007) suggests that case study methodology optimally involves four or five participants. This sample size was intended to allow for an emphasis on depth over breadth, as well as deeper analysis and formulations (Tolleson, 1996). Potential participants were identified through speaking with professional colleagues and personal friends. A purposeful sampling method was implemented with the goal of selecting participants who were likely to generate deeply rich information about the phenomenon being studied (Bloomberg and

120 Volpe 2008, Cresswell 2013). Regarding purposive sampling methodology for phenomenological studies, Cresswell (2013) notes that it is essential that all participants have experience of the phenomenon being studied. Specifically, he writes that the researcher should select individuals for study “because they can purposefully inform an understanding of the research problem and central phenomenon in the study” (p. 156). As this research projects posits that the potential for psychic siblinghood is a universal phenomenon, sibling status was not considered a factor in determining eligibility.

This research project was interested the internalized representations of siblinghood in adult psychic life. As such, participants in this study were between the ages of 21-90 years of age. Additional criteria for participant consideration included sufficient interest and willingness to participate in four to five interviews on the broad topic of siblinghood, each an hour to an hour and a half in length, and a capacity for thoughtful, reflective thinking. Research participants were not required to meet any further specific, discrete criteria beyond age, interest, and a sufficient capacity and interest to thoughtfully reflect on the topic. It is important to note, however, that as this project was concerned with an investigation of the unconscious derivatives of “ordinary” siblinghood in adults, discrete sibling trauma(s) were not the focus of this project.

Participants were asked if they had significant histories of sibling trauma in the initial phone interview, and an assessment was made regarding suitability for the scope of this project. (Appendix A, Brief Telephone Pre-Screening Script).

Additionally, as the focus of this project was on internalized representations of siblinghood, internalized psychic remains of related to biological siblings as well as those representing psychic utilization of peers as derivations of an elemental sibling construct,

121 were of interest. As such, participants who did not have biological siblings, as well as those who did, were considered appropriate subjects for this study.

Research Design As previously stated, this was an exploratory study which employed Tolleson’s (1996) psychoanalytic case study methodology, and a broad psychoanalytic interpretive lens. A psychoanalytic case study was created for each of the participants based on the transcribed narratives, including information from my own field notes.

Specifically, I completed an in-depth analysis of each of the transcriptions for each participant, using the interpretive lens of psychoanalytic theory. The goal of the within-case analyses was to facilitate the creation of formulations and meaning categories for each case study. Following the completion of the within case analysis for each individual case study, an in-depth cross case analysis was performed based on the formulations and meaning categories created from the within-case analyses. The primary purpose of the cross-case analysis was to build theory and to add additional data to the existing literature on the presence of siblinghood in the psychic lives of adults.

Data Collection Following the steps for purposeful sampling, (Bloomberg and Volpe 2008, Cresswell 2013), I composed a recruitment email (Appendix A) which was sent to professional colleagues and friends. A brief screening interview (Appendix B) was conducted with potential participants who expressed interest, and who were determined, through initial phone or email contact, to possibly be a good fit for this project.

122 Participants, ages 21-90, were selected and four to five, interviews, each an hour to an hour and a half, were conducted. All interviews were completed within a two-month time frame. All interviews conducted for the case studies created for this research project were conducted in person, in a private location.

Interviews were audio recorded. Each recorded interview was password protected and professionally transcribed. The recordings and transcriptions will be kept for five years in a folder on a password protected computer, for which only the researcher has the password. Paper copies of transcriptions that were generated will be kept in a locked cabinet for which the researcher will be the only person to have a key. In accordance with IRB policy, after five years all related computer files will be deleted, and any paper copies will be shredded.

The first interview began with a verbatim reading of the informed consent script (Appendix C), after which, potential participants’ understanding was ensured by my having asked them to describe back to me, in their own words, how they understood the informed consent- particularly the purpose of the study, and attendant costs, risks and benefits. Next, any questions were addressed, followed by the process of reviewing and signing the provided informed consent form (Appendix E).

After obtaining informed consent, relevant demographic information was gathered, particularly focused on the topic of siblinghood. I specifically asked each participant to describe the structure of his/her family in early life. I asked about how many parents he/she has, how many siblings, and sibling gender and order.

For the remainder of the first interview, and in all subsequent interviews, the format was be loosely structured, beginning with my asking a question(s) related to the

123 topic of siblinghood, allowing room for the participant to then consciously and lesser consciously choose the material related to the topic that they wish to relate. It was my priority to focus my attention on the meanings of the sibling related material that emerged from the interviews.

The opening questions I posed included my asking each participant to please describe what comes to mind (memories, thoughts, feelings, etc.) regarding some, or all, of the following: -family members, including nuclear and extended family members, (siblings, cousins, older generation) -any significant changes that occurred in family configuration) - childhood and adolescent family life -school (including classmate experience) -friends, peers in childhood and adolescence.

-hobbies and interests in childhood and adolescence.

-important non-human experiences in, and since, childhood and adolescence (pets, stuffed animals, etc.)

-crushes, early partnerships -adult partnerships - current family configuration and life -adult friendships -work choices (including colleague experience) -adult interests and hobbies.

-children (fantasies, actual experience)

124 As previously mentioned, data and interpretations were understood to be the result of a more and lesser conscious collaboration between each participant and the researcher.

The majority of the data were gathered from the narrative material contained within the interviews. Regarding the use of narrative data in case study research, Runyon (1984) writes, “In attending the particularities of thought, conversation, actions, subjective meanings, and social contexts, narrative qualifies as an idiographic method par excellence” (p. 182).

Additionally, I kept field notes of my perceptions, as my awareness of my own impact on the data gathering process, as well as on the data themselves, was a critical component of research conducted within a hermeneutic epistemology. Gadamer (1975) suggests that rich understanding and meaning making is possible while including awareness of one’s own biases and subjectivity. He writes, “The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings (p. 282).

Plan for Data Analysis Data analysis was conducted using Tolleson’s (1996) case study methodology, which involved that each case was subject to rigorous within-case and cross-case analyses. Transcripts for each interview, as well as all field notes, were reviewed multiple times during the data analysis process. The case studies were created with the goal of representing each participant’s verbal and nonverbal communications as authentically as possible, within the realities of my own subjectivity as a co-constructor in the process. With Runyon’s (1984) creation of a case study as a working construct, the

125 material gleaned from each participant will first be “examined as an entity in and of itself: idiomatic, distinctive, and informative in its own right” (Tolleson 1996, p. 93).

Based on each participant’s verbal and nonverbal communications, I analyzed the data for, “various categories of meaning…these meaning categories (will be) comprised of both the subjects stated, or manifest, psychological experiences as well the researcher’s inferences of latent meaning as derived from her overall experience of the subject, and her own clinical and theoretical knowledge” (Tolleson 1996, p. 93).

Following the creation of each case study and the completion of the within-case data analyses, a comprehensive cross-case data analysis was performed to facilitate the building of theory. Tolleson (1996) outlines the process: Following the detailed analyses of individual subject data, the researcher (examines) the meaning categories generated by those analyses in totality, i.e., across subjects, in order to discern features of experience which (are) more or less general to the collective sample (p. 93).

Ethical Considerations Given that my own subjectivity inevitably colored my within-case and cross-case analyses, it is my primary ethical concern that the raw data, and the meanings formulations derived from the data, remained as closely informed by, and representative of, the narrative case material as is possible.

Further, I consider it my ethical responsibility to allow for as wide a lens of theoretical interpretation of the data as I was able. Specifically, it was my goal to have as many ways of making psychoanalytic meaning of the participant’s narratives as is

126 possible. Therefore, I did not limit my understanding of the data to any specific psychoanalytic theoretical model(s).

Issues of Trustworthiness Credibility.

Primarily, credibility in this psychoanalytic case study research project included determining that the meaning categories (Tolleson 1996) that emerged from the data had value and were credible. To assist in the assessment and the valuation of the meaning categories, I engaged in member checking during the interviews. Member checking involved my sharing significant understandings of each participant’s relevant narrative material as the interviews were conducted, with the goal of ensuring greater data reliability.

Additionally, as necessary, I shared the meaning categories with a trusted consultant, to receive another perspective regarding my understanding of the meaning categories.

Dependability.

Hermeneutic dependability is, in part, determined by the thickness and the richness of the descriptions of the data, and through data analyses that are reasonable and believable. As well, hermeneutic dependability is informed by the degree to which each participant’s subjectivity was authentically represented through the strategic and artistic use of language. The way in which language can be successfully enlisted to paint an

127 aesthetically pleasing, and data driven, picture for the reader of each participant’s subjective experience, also contributed to this hermeneutic project’s dependability.

Gadamer (1975) describes a limitation of language, in that the entirety of subjectivity (Being) is not reducible to language. He writes, “Being that can be understood, is language” (p. 474). Gadamer’s description of language echoes the hermeneutic paradigm as it is mesmerized by beauty and altered by truth. In this way, language is a tool that may reveal both beauty and truth. Beauty, defined as that which we desire, and truth, defined as that which speaks to, and therefore changes us.

128

Chapter IV

Findings Introduction For each case study in this chapter, I will briefly note relevant descriptive data including, if warranted, a brief section on sibling life, followed by the within-case analysis. Specifically, for each case study’s within-case analysis, I will introduce and then describe the relevant interpretive “categories of meaning” (Tolleson 1996), including any relevant sub- categories, culled from the transcribed narrative data.

In addition to describing the relevant “categories of meaning” for each participant, I asked each of the participants about their associations and fantasies related to an alter ego(s) and to choose a pseudonym for themselves, by which they would be referred in this research study. I asked them to tell me a bit about what came to mind regarding an alter ego(s) and why they chose their particular pseudonyms, as I imagined that those associations may be interestingly understood to have meanings related to a form of sibling—an alter ego(s) and a pseudonym may be imagined as a deeply related psychic other. Each participant’s choice of alter ego and pseudonym, as well a brief description of my impressions from the interviews, is described at the end of each case study.

For the within-case analysis, I will use “thick, rich quotes” (Bloomberg & Volpe 2007, Cresswell 2008) to represent as closely as possible the relationship between the participants’ subjective experience and my subjective interpretations. Data will include

129 participants’ utilization of language, as well as my relevant subjective sense of each of them and of myself, represented in my describing my sense of their reactions to me, and to the research process, as well as my understanding of my own responses and reactions.

Researcher subjectivity is part of the foundation of hermeneutic epistemology, within which this project is epistemologically located. Gadamer (1975) writes: A person trying to understand a text is prepared for it to tell him something. That is why a hermeneutically trained consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity. But this kind of sensitivity involves neither “neutrality” with respect to the content nor the extinction of one’s self, but the foregrounding and appropriation of one’s own fore-meanings and prejudices (p. 281).

Importantly, my described ideas and interpretations, which were subjectively formed and informed with a broadly psychoanalytic theoretical lens, represent just some possible ways in which to interpret the data. Within this study’s hermeneutic epistemology, innumerable other theoretical configurations of the same data may have been possible within my own subjectivity, as well as innumerable other possibilities which may exist within other subjectivities.

Research Sample Of the four total research participants, two completed five interviews, each about an hour and a half, and two completed four interviews of roughly the same length. All interviews were done in person. Each of the participants and I lived locally to each other at the time of the interviews, and I met with each of them at their choice of my home or theirs. The order in which this chapter’s case studies are written is reflective of the order

130 in which each participant was interviewed. I interviewed one participant at a time, I completed all the interviews with each participant before beginning with the next participant. The interviews were generally done once a week, with a couple of instances of a slightly longer interval to accommodate summer vacation schedules.

Following the parameters of purposive sampling, all participants agreed to be referred to me for further discussion regarding their potential participation in this study after having had brief initial contact with me, or in some cases by someone known to me to whom I had sent my recruitment flyer (Appendix A) and described my research interest. Each potential participant was initially contacted with the possibility in mind that they may have an interest in, and may be well suited to, participation in this research project. Previously described recruitment protocols were followed with each potential participant, (as outlined in Appendices B-C), and all participants signed the informed consent (Appendix E) prior to beginning the first interview. All participants completed the requisite number of interviews; no participants withdrew from the study.

All participants identified as either male or female, and ranged in age from 24-34.

Each has at least one biological sibling, and at the time these interviews were conducted, all participants were members of intact nuclear families. The participants’ families each included two parents, and each set of parents included a differently gendered, biologically related mother and father. No participants have adopted siblings, nor step- or halfsiblings, and no participants are without a sibling. The participants are from varied geographical, cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Notably, two of the four grew up in different European countries, and moved to the west coast of the United States as young adults to earn their graduate degrees at a specific American research university.

131 All of the participants are highly formally educated, and each have participated in conducting academic research, generally in technical, scientific disciplines. Case study methodology, however, as well as psychoanalytic theory, were not constructions with which any of the participants were previously very familiar. Given this, it was important to me to clearly explain to each participant that while their data would be subject to interpretation within a broadly psychoanalytic theoretical paradigm, my utilization of theoretical concepts and terms would be meant to be illuminating and descriptive, and expressly not diagnostic.

While each participant did not read and review their own case study, it was my value and my intention to compose each case in the way that I felt respectfully best represented and described the psychoanalytically informed ideas within each data derived interpretive category of meaning. Additionally, I intentionally, frequently engaged in “member checking” throughout each interview (Creswell 2007; Lincoln & Guba, 1985), a process in which I restated, or summarized, what the participant had said, including my understanding of the meaning of what they said, with the goal that the participants’ feedback would help determine and refine this study’s accuracy and credibility. As the participants agreed, disagreed, and/or amended my reflections on their data, I hoped to be better able to more fully and accurately understand and represent their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

132 Case Study 1: Andrew Descriptive data.

Andrew is 27 years old, and at the time of our interviews had just completed a master’s degree in a technical field at a major American research university. He was spending the summer finishing up a remaining project for his university related work internship, and he was looking forward to moving back to live and work in his home state, with which he strongly identifies and for which he has much affection, within a couple of months after our interviews were completed. Andrew was thoughtfully interested in participating in this study. He has one sibling, a sister, two years his younger. During our brief phone call to assess his interest and suitability for his participation, he seemed open to, and curious about, the topic. At the end of our conversation, he expressed to me that he was interested in moving forward, but, he said, “First, I have to ask my sister how she feels about it.” We agreed he would let me know if his sister was in agreement with his participating, and a couple of days later Andrew emailed me that his sister “is fine with my doing this, so we can go ahead.”

Introduction to the meaning categories.

Andrew’s psychic life seems meaningfully populated with gender related ideas, fantasies and conflicts. Related specifically to topic of psychic siblinghood, his seems largely a world of boys/men and girls/women, each with separate and distinct roles, and about which he has significantly differing fantasies. In varying ways, he describes an internal world in which similarities and differences seem broadly organized by gender affiliation, and further, he often organizes and associates the concepts and experiences of

133 pleasure, the potential to imagine psychic sufficiency, and intimacy with sameness, engendered in boys/men, all of which seems in sharp contrast to the meanings he makes of his experiences and perceptions of difference, particularly in reference to girls and women. The first meaning category, the centrality of gender, emerged from the data as an overarching theme in Andrew’s case study. The primacy of Andrew’s psychic use of this construct will be demonstrated and interpreted through relevant examples from the raw data.

The second meaning category for this case study is the psychic utilizations of groups. Through this meaning category, interpretations of examples from the data of how Andrew psychically employs groups to attempt to manage psychic needs, such as “being liked” and “being understood” will be presented.

The content of the third meaning category, guilt, duty and confession, will illustrate the relevant ways in which these concepts, interpreted through a psychoanalytic lens, are informed by, and imbued with meaning from, Andrew’s psychic use of siblinghood.

Categories of meaning.

1. The centrality of gender 2. Psychic utilizations of groups of peers.

3. Guilt, duty and confession.

134 Meaning category 1: The centrality of gender.

Male friendships: “Like a brother” fantasies of intimacy and belonging via sameness, “effortless communication” and “non-confrontation.”

Researcher: I’m curious about who or what comes to mind when you hear the phrase, “someone who is like a sibling? Like a brother” or “like a sister”?

Andrew: [he gives several specific male names] My close guy friends have always felt like the deepest, strongest relationships where I felt most like myself and they knew the most about me, it was those relationships.

Researcher: You felt the most like yourself, and they knew the most about you.

Andrew: Yeah. I have to kind of fantasize or create what that relationship is, “like a brother” or “like a sister,” because it isn’t natural with my sister and I.

And

so, I start creating like, “All right, then what this relationship be that we’re idolizing or putting up on a really high pedestal? A really excellent form of a relationship with another person.” So, sometimes since we have that phrase (in our culture) that’s what makes me think I have a subpar, or I’m not meeting some of the bar quality with my sister’s relationship. Because there is that term, I guess, that floats around…I guess I’m thinking of having the highest quality relationship with a person, what a brother is, you kind of attach to that. But, the qualities, it’s like one is having been vulnerable with them, disclosed things that I won’t tell

135 other people, or my faults, my insecurities, my mistakes. Another quality would be just absolutely effortless communication…having like an effortless communication where your dialogue, either you don’t feel any awkward pauses or you don’t feel like someone is talking quick over the other person. There is just this natural, organic, you are beautifully throwing the ball back and forth. Just effortless communication…other qualities are that they [the guys who are like a brother] are welcoming and inclusive of other people. They are not mean. They don’t tease me that much. I can say things or be a little weird or silly, or a little too nerdy, but they won’t bat an eye. So, I feel I can theorize or say anything and not worry about any confrontation. These people are very non-confrontational.

Since his early life, Andrew has been drawn to male peers with whom the qualities of sameness, “effortless communication,” and “non-confrontation” are (ideally) mutually experienced and prominent. Andrew privileges and utilizes the ways in which he experiences, and is experienced by, these idealized others to help shore up and augment vulnerabilities he feels and imagines in his sense of his own capacities and agency. In his description of his cousins who felt “like real family” as well as in his discussion of the ways in which he does not feel about his sister as he imagines are associated with his ideas about a Platonic form for ideal siblinghood, Andrew traces his paradigm for intimacy as characterized by fantasies of sameness. “Effortless communication” and “non-confrontation” are the major ideas he employs as psychic platforms on which he can internally stand, to attempt to manage a psychic equilibrium, made particularly difficult for him by his feelings of shame related to his engendered

136 masculinity—specifically, feelings of inadequacy and primitive anxieties about his capacity for destructive aggression.

Cousins: more fantasies of intimacy and belonging via sameness, “effortless communication” and “non-confrontation.”

When I asked Andrew about peers who were significant in his early life, he also mentioned some of his cousins that they feel particularly “like real family.” These first cousins of Andrew’s are adopted, and are of differing ethnic and national backgrounds, and notably, one of these three cousins is the only female peer he referenced feeling close to in his early life.

Andrew: I think I just really felt like they felt like family. I really did, despite her (first cousin) not being blood related, looking distinctly different, being (of a different ethnic background. I don’t know, for whatever reason, I still, just the way I perceived her did not feel like, oh, she’s family with an asterisk. She is someone who comes to mind when I think of someone who feels like family.

Researcher: Do you feel that “family feeling” with your sister?

Andrew: No. It feels almost more structural, or nameplate. I feel like this depth of family with them (cousins) that I don’t know if I totally feel with my sister. Just being able to effortlessly talk with my cousins, having the same sense of humor, joking about the same things.

137

Researcher: you would choose them as friends?

Andrew: Right! That’s the thing. My sister and I, if it wasn’t for us being siblings, we would not be friends. Total different friend group. Her energy would not be part of my friend group. We would not be friends if it wasn’t for this family classification.

Researcher: How early were you aware of feeling that way?

Andrew: Pretty early, by third grade. I was already like, here are my friends. This is who I love spending time with. I don’t feel like having to spend time with my little sister…I don’t know what age I started noticing, but I would see people that had chemistry with their sibling, and dang, we don’t have that. Sometimes I envied that. I don’t know how much of it was because I wasn’t putting the right attitude or effort into it, but man, I don’t have that with my sister…having a sibling that you’re best friends with sounds like the most fulfilling and profound life is to be able to have that. My sister never had that chemistry of where me and her could, after maybe second grade, there wasn’t this chemistry where we could just sit and hangout and fulfill ourselves. I think it was not the same direction. I think she really loved being around me and she wanted to be around me, but I didn’t reciprocate that because we had way different friend groups. I was captain

138 of the football team, and my close friends that I played sports with and hung out with were guys.”

Above, Andrew describes not feeling the “chemistry” with his sister, which I imagine refers to a sense of “sameness” and a capacity for him to feel as if they can engage in what he describes as the “effortless communication” that he feels with the three cousins he feels close to, and that he feels with a number of his male friends. In not experiencing these fantastic constructs in his sister, Andrew is drawn to libidinally invest in those with whom in the dynamics he is able to feel sufficient “sameness”, “effortless communication” and “nonconfrontation”, generally idealized male peers, as he seems to imagine these constructs as essential components in ideal siblinghood.

Aggressive anxieties: a gendered sibling dyad characterized as deficient.

Andrew: Another thing I should say is that I really like to learn from relationships. That’s very important to me. I want to learn from people. I really enjoy learning, so I am wondering now how many of my friendships and relationships that have paired away, how many of them were because maybe they weren’t teaching me more. And with my sister, I think she definitely could teach me some things, I don’t know, but for whatever reason, maybe how it was structured, I wasn’t asking her more questions. Or, maybe as an older brother, I didn’t want…I felt like I shouldn’t be learning from my younger sister. I should be the knowledgeable one. I guess I got almost a directional situation, I shouldn’t admit vulnerabilities or ignorance. I don’t know how much my sister is a

139 teacher…or maybe she didn’t feel comfortable. Either I was going to strike her thoughts down or I was too intimidating to present ideas to, or to try to teach me something, because I would be too defensive or egotistical or get too intense of a conversationalist. Because, whenever there is conversation, I get interested and I ask the next question, ask the next question, and it’s not like I’m trying to crush your logic, or…[long pause] dominate. Or try to find a fallacy. See, I wonder another thing. How much of siblinghood is about learning from someone? Certain things. I like learning in the concepts and philosophy realm maybe more so than the physical, technical realm. What is good art? Economics? Should we do this with taxes? Who deserves money? Who doesn’t? Philosophy: what’s the right thing to do? Different ethical systems. I like getting up there and talking, and I’m not sure how much my sister likes to go up there.

Above, Andrew describes feeling that his and his sister’s differences may be what prevent her from having something to offer him. Consciously, Andrew seems to struggle to feel a compelling interest in his sister. Lesser consciously, it seems their differences in gender, disposition, interests and capacities, specifically including his lack of an experience of “effortless communication” with her, his fantasies around the meanings of each of their roles (as older and younger, male and female) and the nature of their dyadic interaction (rather than their belonging to a sibling group of more than three) may contribute to his difficulty in finding pleasurable psychic utilization of her. He seems to have difficulty managing his depressive and aggressive anxieties related to fantasies and

140 conflicts surrounding their impact on each other. As such, he seems to characterize his sister, and perhaps by extension, dyadic relationships with female peers as deficient.

At the beginning of our first interview, I asked Andrew what came to mind about his sister.

Andrew: My sister and I, when I was little, it was funny. At her high school graduation, a small, little high school, they asked for people to come and introduce them for their graduation, and she asked me to introduce her. And, she’s my little sister, but I described her more as being a big sister because when we were really little, I would always be afraid of things. So, we had an unfinished basement and having to go down there and the light switch is at the bottom, and you had to turn it off and then go up the stairs, so then there’s that risk that a monster was going to get you if you were the one to turn off the lights. She was always the one who, I would run up the stairs while it was still light and then she would turn it off and then walk up. We had to go down and explore in the dark, she would lead and I would then come after. She was more brave.

Researcher: She was more brave.

Andrew: She’s way more brave and adventurous. She just goes for things, whereas I’m much more analytical, thinking about all the risks, worrying.

She doesn’t. She just goes for it. Sometimes overconfident in her abilities or areas….

141 In and with his sister, certainly in the time since the seminal memory related above in which he registered and admired her bravery and adventurous tolerance for risk, Andrew seems not to identify the same soothing and bolstering psychic functions that he often finds with male peers he admires and idealizes. Rather, he seems to have psychically utilized his sister’s differences— “brave,” “adventurous”– borrowing from her, taking in those qualities, and making them manifest in himself through sexualized relationships with girl peers and in exploring the use of drugs/alcohol.

Andrew: Yeah. In fifth grade I started dating [this girl in his class] and we had crushes on each other, and we were one of the first kids that age to start dating, and that was fun and exciting. Then middle school, I was definitely much more, compared to my immediate school friends since we had three elementary schools come to one middle school, of my elementary school friends, I was definitely the more adventurous and maybe promiscuous. I was excited. Yeah. I was into girls and that was fun. I was willing to be more adventurous, going against, because most of the friends were all pretty healthy it seems, like nuclear families, conservative. Not conservative, but Protestant. You shouldn’t be doing sex at this age or sexual stuff, and I don’t know, I thought it was exciting and I wanted to do that.

Researcher: Here you were being brave, very different from the basement.

142 Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Very different. Those years in middle school I was really brave. Sexually, and also I explored drinking and smoking around eighth grade and I was way before my immediate friend group, I was the first to be doing that.

In middle school I was doing that, and I was bouncing from fling to fling with different girls.

Perhaps in reaction to his sister’s demonstrated confidence and bravery, Andrew seems to have felt a sense of insufficient psychic sturdiness, a sense of psychic fragility which may have contributed to the description above of how he made manifest risk taking qualities (“brave” and “adventurous”) with girl peers in late elementary and middle school. By high school, however, it seems Andrew began to suffer psychic consequences related to his behavior, including lesser conscious conflicts around power, desire, badness and goodness, as well as guilt and anxiety related both to the meanings he makes of his subjective experience (being someone who is not careful enough with other people’s feelings, being a hurtful person) and to his bearing witness to real and imagined impacts of his power and aggression on girls. The risk and responsibility raised through his awareness that he could, through various means, notably including through his sexuality, be impactful to girls and women seems to have created conflicts that became psychically unmanageable by about the time he was beginning high school.

More about Andrew’s anxieties related his own capacities for power and aggression will be reviewed later in this case study, but it is relevant to note at this point that the antidote he seems to have created in the beginning of high school for the psychic discomfort related to his experience of his own aggression and sexuality in middle

143 school, seemed to have been to channel his libidinal energy and attention away from more concrete applications of aggression and sexuality with female peers (including the maintenance of an emotionally distant relationship with his sister) and direct it as fully as was possible toward manifest religiosity (described below in his participation in Young Life, an evangelical Christian youth organization,) and in the messianic form of idealized relationships with older high school boys.

Meaning category 2: Psychic utilizations of groups of peers.

The libidinal power of Christian brotherhood.

Andrew’s relationship to religion seems to have been impactful in his life in many ways. Notably, at one point during his college years, he became disillusioned with religion generally, and since then has identified as “not religious.” When describing his early family life and structure, going to church every Sunday was a defining feature of his family life.

Andrew: We always had to go to church on Sunday mornings, up to when I was 14 or 16, it was pretty strict, we always go to church on Sunday mornings…we are First Congregational Church, so it’s a Protestant sect. They [his parents] met at this church and so both are Protestants and we were raised there.

As mentioned above, in the beginning of high school, Andrew’s describes that his interest in girls and drinking shifted fairly suddenly and dramatically to his interest in participation in a group of Christian peers. Specifically, he directed his attention to the male peers in the group.

144 Andrew: In high school I started putting much more, I don’t want to say religious, but more practiced in being reserved. More disciplined. Religiously disciplined.

When I had varsity sports starting to kick in, they were really serious about alcohol and drugs, you get caught, you get in trouble. And, I’m like someone afraid to get caught. And also, I started being way more practicing in my religion.

I was like, varsity sports, Young Life, no more…., no more drinking and drugs, and I was like really fulfilled.

Researcher: Really fulfilled.

Andrew: Totally. Yeah. It was for whatever reason, that I got really attracted to a group called Young Life. It’s a Christian organization, and I found the community super exciting because it had these older high schoolers, cool guys, football guys, juniors and seniors. I’m a freshman and they’re being so nice to me and supportive. I just loved that. I started becoming really involved with that group.

That group really pushed that you shouldn’t be having sex, you shouldn’t be doing drugs…so almost at the end of freshman year it was like I turned a switch and I was no longer drinking or smoking, but part of that was varsity sports, and there was this, you sign an agreement not to do any drugs. I did not want to be someone who got caught, because then you’d get in trouble, and I didn’t do any flings with the girls all the way until the end of senior year of high school. I didn’t have any. I don’t think I did anything sexual at all during those years.

145 Researcher: You just turned it all off?

Andrew: Just turned it off. The Young Life group is very gender separated, girls and boys. You have your immediate boy group where you have regular Bible study and there’s a lot of holding yourself accountable, so you disclose. Just to be open, and say you are going to work on it, to try not to do it again, or what have you. Also, masturbation. They even developed a system of really trying to, all right, let’s really practice trying to not masturbate, because we masturbated, but not as frequently as we did before, and we even developed a system toward, all right, when you do it, text your friends saying, hey, I did it, and so when you wanted to avoid having to have that text, it reduced the amount of times you masturbated. I remember there was a long stint. I did months at one point without doing it.

Researcher: You were very motivated to live by the principles of the group.

Andrew: Yeah. Yup. We had this Bible study group, and we’re trying to be better Christians and there’s the leader of your Bible study, and I think there was part of me almost not wanting to let him down, and so because we were all being so open about what was going on in life. It’s pretty impressive what people were sharing as high school boys, football players. It was really healthy to have people disclosing these things. Insecurities about themselves, things they’re sad about, their imperfections, things you realize, oh, people have a lot of things going on in

146 their life that they don’t show on the out front, insecurities, I didn’t want to let that Bible study leader down.

Researcher: You were part of a brotherhood.

Andrew: Yeah, yup. I was. The thing with Young Life was really about a brotherhood. All these guys, and I felt like I had older brother, so it was so much fun having these guys a year or two above you, you are in the hallway, they say hi to you, and they are cool and older, and you just feel, you would walk two inches higher there in the hallway as soon as they would say that to you. I think I really loved having that community of these older guys to hang out with. Of course, I had brothers; because since elementary school I had friends who were my peers who lived right next door and we hung out all the time, and stuff. But it was something about having those older guys. They would drive you, to practice or to get fast food. Felt really cool to have an (older guy) as an older brother because he was tough and super athletic.

It was actually before that another reason why I think I stopped hooking up with girls as much is because I really don’t like hurting other people, I don’t like letting other people down. It was something about having these older guys, they could drive you, I didn’t have a car, but they had cars so they could drive you around and to and from practice or to go get fast food. I remember I had [two older guys]. Young Life was trying to develop you so you would mentor younger guys. I think (proper name) was doing that for me, and it felt so cool. It felt so

147 cool to have [proper name] as a brother, and older brother, because he was so tough and really super athletic.

Yeah. Yup. He would pick me up and then he would just drive. He really spent a lot of time with me. I was really happy. No sex, no girlfriend, almost minimal masturbation too, because I was at a point where I was practicing on that.

Making tons of friends.

Researcher: Felt happy. And like so much intimacy.

Andrew: Yeah. Yup. That’s right. All of the closeness with none of the complication.

Andrew’s comment, “All of the closeness with none of the complication” well describes and reflects the way in which he seems to try to psychically manage the unmanageable risks he may imagine are associated with combining emotional intimacy and sexuality. More about this Andrew’s conflicts in this area will be discussed throughout the case study.

Psychic stability through “being understood” and “being liked” in groups.

When Andrew left the religious group with whom he was involved in college, he was already part of several groups of male friends with whom he lived in the dorm and attended classes. These groups of male peers seemed to seamlessly, psychically fill in for

148 the Christian brotherhood he experienced in the religious groups in high school and college.

Andrew: In college [the religious group] was not my main friend group. My main friend group had become the guys from the dorm. We were a very tight group and they were not religious, and so I kept on hanging on to them in the same way. The thing was, the [religious group], I just feel like they weren’t pushing me or advancing me or providing intriguing thoughts. They were some fun people, and had some deep conversations, but most of them couldn’t do the philosophy and deep economics and politics stuff. And also, just again, I did not hang out with them, social wise. For whatever reason, there was never someone I clicked with effortlessly, like I did in high school or in college with the core group of guys.

Yeah. Nobody in [that religious group] that I clicked with effortlessly.

Going all the way back to elementary school, I was making sure people feel comfortable together, so usually I'm in a leading position, not only in terms of accomplishing tasks, but often leading socially and making sure people feel comfortable in the group.

Researcher: And, dyads? The whole thing just dies for you on the inside.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. With dyads it all dies. Yeah. Yeah. I’m a big group person.

I’d always rather be in a bigger group hanging out. I feel like it’s a threshold around four or five. I really love getting to that number and a little bit above for hanging out.

149 Researcher: What do you like about that?

Andrew: When I’m in a larger group I almost feel more myself. More myself than when I am with just one other person, or even two. Also, I just have more fun because it just seems like there’s constantly a conversation going on and people can start playing off what each other has said, and referencing another person, and tease about that person, and be playful on it and build and work together. I really value being understood. I really like being liked. And then I also really, I do need validation and being liked, and I’ve been reflecting on that. I’m like, you know, I need to have more internal generation of “You’re good, Andrew” instead of needing that external, “Oh, good job on this, Andrew” or, “You are a good person, Andrew.” I’m trying to not be as dependent as I have been on that in the past, I think, on external people saying that. I wonder if with groups there is a greater likelihood that I’ll get validated.

In both the religious group in high school, and the non-religious groups in college and beyond, Andrew seems to create a sense of psychic stability out of the fantasies he associates with being part of groups of like-minded male peers. He seems to experience himself as smart, and able to grow and develop by learning from, and by leading, other group members. The fragilities in his self-confidence and self-image may be shored up by the positive reinforcement of feeling liked by, and of finding agreement with, the group’s members. He seems to feel intense pleasure in sharing close physical and psychic space with members of the groups, which may allow for him to experience a degree of libidinal

150 excitement without the psychic risks and discomforts involved with manifest sexual behavior. Through his psychic utilization of these groups, largely composed of male peers, Andrew may steep in his fantasies of engendered sameness and effortless communication. His fears about the differences he experiences and imagines in girls and women, and his anxieties surrounding the destructive power of his own aggressive and sexual drives, may be meant to be managed by relative separation from women; and in their stead, the potential for libidinized pleasure in his playful and Socratic participation in groups of idealized male peers.

Women and groups: Polygamy and pornography as imagined solutions for emotional risk, and fantasies of “having no choice.”

Andrew’s utilization of groups of male peers seems to help mediate his more primitive depressive anxieties, to bolster his feelings of psychic fragility, and to provide a forum within which he can feel similar, special and understood has been very different from the ways in which he has psychically utilized relationships with girls and women.

Andrew seems to use groups of male peers in a variety of contexts, to create fantasies of sameness- namely effortless communication and mutual deep understanding, as well as a feeling of his own potency through idealizing mental qualities (discipline, leadership, intelligence, kindness) and masculinized beauty (athleticism, physical strength) that he identifies with in himself and/or in other group members.

His psychic utilization of girls and women seems to have been largely in three areas, which he organizes and experiences as fairly separate. He has platonic social friendships with like-minded female peers which may, or may not, primarily be

151 conducted in groups and about whom he seems to feel fairly unconflicted. He has serially had girlfriends, beginning in grade school, and these primary relationships have generally ended, by his description, because of “conflict,” and “lack of seeing eye to eye.” He describes a romanticized fantasy of what intimate relationships should be, and after a brief, initial period of time, his actual experience seems to fall quite short of his fantastic hopes and expectations. Further, Andrew describes below that when not in an intimate relationship, he fantastically engages with images of women through pornography.

Researcher: I am wondering about you and groups in relation to primary partnerships?

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Yup. That’s a really good question. I was actually just, a couple of weeks ago, thoughts were just popping in my head about, I wonder if I was actually thinking about, I don’t think I was. The thing about this being with just one person and how I usually always feel like, aw, but I want to be with a group. And, I was thinking through romance. I was like, oh man, what if I needed to be polyamorous or polygamous? And, it’s like, well, that would be kind of wild to think about. I don’t seriously consider it, even though that’s a plenty fine option to do in life. But, that thing did pop into my head, polygamy.

Researcher: More than two, a group. Polygamy or polyamory. For plurality. To avoid the singularity in a dyad.

152 Andrew: Yeah. Yup, I’m right with you. Right. I’m trying now to think now how many of my friendships, in fact, my other sibling relationships, are based off of group. I’m trying to think if I ever had any close friends where it is just me and this one other person. I think, yeah, it’s always been groups, not just a one on one.

I think I always think of groups over dyads.

Researcher: Interesting. You and your sister are a dyad.

Andrew: I never thought about that. Yeah. Yeah That’s interesting. I wonder how it would be different if I would’ve had more. If there had been four of us, like the cousins’ group. Yeah, I wonder. If there were four of us, what that would’ve been like…yeah, I wonder if there’s something about…since conversations are so important to me, just this back and forth thing, thinking about ideas. I say something, someone agrees or disagrees or builds on and gives back, so I don’t…I don’t know. There is just something about having that third person, at least, to either take a middle ground, or someone to take a…I’m in the middle ground, and there’s a person on the other side, or two people get to agree on something, or one person doesn’t. I don’t know how much it’s about the conversation of having this third point to…it develops a more interesting conversation because there is a third point coming into the conversation and it maybe becomes less…not combative, but maybe. I don’t know. When there are three people it’s easier to be on the same side with someone. There’s someone supporting…more likely to be someone supporting my view. I really feel like different selves with just one other person versus a group. I really feel like my full self when I am in a group of at least four.

153

Researcher: You feel like your full self when you are in a group of at least four.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah. I’m wondering now how much my relationships with peers, all kinds, romantic, friendships, family, that it has to be with a group, and a one on one relationship is like some other word, some other concept. Or, maybe siblinghood is defined as being one. A line segment between two people and that’s what siblinghood is, and I’ve never really had that with my sister or maybe even with some of my best guy friends. I feel like maybe if it’s just me and you, just me and you are together, I’ll be there for whatever you want, but I almost feel better when I’m in a web of people, of four or more. We’re here together, we’re going to support each other. We are all going to help and support each other. I almost don’t want it to be just me and one other person…I want to be in a group so it’s not just me if something goes wrong. We have more people to help each other.

Researcher: Risk and responsibility are dispersed in a group.

Andrew: Yep. Yeah. Something goes wrong, I really don’t like making mistakes.

I really don’t like failing.

Researcher: I wonder what comes to mind for you about sibling groups who have three or more members?

154

Andrew: It’s very interesting to think that the sibling relationships I idolize or I think so highly of, that what they have is that they have more than two.

Researcher: I’m wondering more about the ways in which you have constructed meaning about intimacy since you became non-religious.

Andrew: Yeah. Yup. Intimacy. Well, I rarely do one-night stands. Like I don’t search out for sex. I think one reason is just being a little shy, and two, I really, really don’t want to be too aggressive. Like, I do not want to be that guy. I stay very, very far to the conservative side to never be…

Researcher: You really don’t want to be too aggressive.

Andrew: I had friends in high school talked about so and so being really creepy, and you don’t like your friends to feel that way. I just really didn’t like the way that made women feel. I also think a huge component is rejection. I really fear rejection.

Researcher: You really fear rejection.

Andrew: That’s true. Try to stay at the just never get denied thing. I really don’t want to get rejected.

155

Researcher: What comes to mind about being rejected?

Andrew: I don’t know. It makes me feel not good. It makes me feel not good. One is I definitely do not want to make a woman feel uncomfortable and the second is I definitely don’t want to get rejected, so I’m very cautious. I’m not risky enough.

Like on social media dating apps, I really didn’t want to do it, and I only did one, and it’s the one where the woman has to choose you. Because I don’t want to be rejected and it puts the woman in power. It’s just that its technology and I really didn’t want to have to do that. I wanted to be able to say I never did that, or used that. There is like this pride thing. It feels a little desperate…and like the complete opposite of the most important in human aspects of life, which is romantic relationship, and now there is this digital thing in between you. I have this romantic view of the world and that doesn’t fit in with it. But, I tried because dating can be fun, and light and not so heavy, but so far it has not been successful.

I go through periods, like I’m in a relationship, then we break up, then nothing, and then like after a year or so I’m in the mood again….and sex just complicates relationships. Like, if I have sex with a friend, or a friend of a friend, I see them at a party next and like there is not something bubbly going on, I don’t know. For me, you are at a different place and you can never recover back to where we were at before. And, I love being at that place where there’s not a complication of romance for whatever reason. I love it. So, I don’t like complicating because it might hurt someone or just be like effortless conversation that just kind of bubbles

156 away. I don’t know. For me, after I have had sex with someone, something changes in our relationship, and the effortless chemistry with the person gets tangled.

Researcher: Sex changes relationships and steals the effortless chemistry.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. So, during those times when I’m not with people, I definitely masturbate to porn a lot.

Researcher: Does that feel like an experience with sex?

Andrew: No, usually not. My image of great sex is like someone who I really, really care about, in a bedroom. That just sounds great! But….I do feel guilt about the porn often. Part of it is the old idea about masturbation, and part of it is the morals of objectifying bodies and women, and I am pretty sure the sex industry has some bad like lack of real choice, but I don’t know because I don’t know all the information…and sometimes if I watch something real quick on porn it’s a bit more aggressive, and it’s just like, ugh, I don’t want to be seeing this, but I just want something quick. But, for me, sometimes it just seems a little too aggressive.

And then there are parts like using my time. It’s like is this a productive use of my time? And other parts are like the inauthentic. They have a real life, and this is like a really non real thing, seeing these other people have sex, and in this way.

The whole way it works, I know. Like the real thing is actually having sex with another person. So sometimes I think about this, and like does this get in the way

157 of me taking more initiative to start romantic relationships because I put it off like this? I diffuse the romance meter.

Researcher: Emotional and relational intimacy in one area and direct sexual behavior in another.

Andrew: Yup. You don’t have to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Researcher: You don’t have to hurt anyone’s feelings. You don’t have to be that guy.

Andrew: Don’t have to be that guy. Yeah. Yup. I really, really, really enjoy not having to be that guy. And, I definitely do get emotionally wrapped up with sex.

And it is not easy to be wrapped up in that.

Researcher: To be wrapped up in that. To be so affected?

Andrew: to be so affected. To be so wrapped up by it. It’s like it’s not a choice.

Researcher: It’s like it’s not a choice. That reminds me of siblinghood.

Andrew: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, I think a really big thing about that is you don’t have a choice.

158 Researcher: You don’t have a choice.

Andrew’s associations and fantasies about polyamory and polygamy seem less about a desire for multiple dyadic relationships, and more about the formation of groups.

A romanticized, sexualized group within which he may be the leader, and feel himself to be powerful, at the same time, potentially allowing for the dispersion of the risks of not being liked, of being rejected, and of being a “bad guy”, by being involved with a group, rather than in a dyad with a single person. Additionally, he seems to imagine that he would have felt much more fulfilled, “like himself,” and less guilty, if he belonged to a sibling group rather than a dyad.

Within the polygamously constructed fantasy (of female primary partners and/or of siblings) seems also the desire for increased freedom and agency. A more detailed example of a role for Andrew’s polygamous fantasy may include the psychic management of the experience in which he imagines he may not feel himself to be positively enough reflected with one woman, by looking to someone else. If, for example, one woman demonstrated insufficient interest in him, and/or with her he experienced moments of failing idealization, up to and including her rejection of him, he could exercise the choice to shift his attention to another- thus extricating himself from the mire of not being able to feel himself to be other than she perceives him to be, and rearranging himself to face the mirror of another woman who may feel about him the ways in which he wants to feel about himself. In this way, Andrew may imagine that would have “a choice,” a sanctified choice, written into the rules of the nature of the group, so he could not be labeled a “bad guy.”

159 Additionally, within the scope of polygamy or polyamory are the inherent concepts of transparency and group approval of the rules and norms. For Andrew’s fantasy this may mean that his rights to freedom and agency would be sanctioned by the group’s members, therefore avoiding any trace of his having hurt, betrayed or rejected anyone, so as to leave intact an idea about himself as a kind, good, non-aggressive person.

In many ways, Andrew seems to experience significant conflict between his wanting to sexually engage with women, concretely and in fantasy, which seems to involve his encountering his own aggressive and exploitative potential, and, as described above, in wanting to keep intact an idea about himself as non-exploitive and nonaggressive. Specifically related to his use of porn, Andrew finds a way to experience masturbatory sexual gratification through fantastic engagement with female bodies, that he may imagine is, in some ways, less emotionally risky than is direct interpersonal engagement, specifically regarding his fear of being rejected; however, he also seems to feel demonstrably conflicted in his relationship to porn. His conflict in watching and utilizing porn seems to be made manifest primarily through his feelings of guilt and anxiety related to his awareness of a sense of the destructive potential of his own, and others’, libidinized aggression, most specifically via elective participation in what he imagines may likely be exploitative situations for the women he is viewing. As such, Andrew’s psychic utilization of women, and his related experiences of anxiety and guilt regarding his own desire, dependency and aggression as mediated virtually through the of use of porn, seem as richly conflicted as are the meanings inherent in his psychic utilizations of corporeal experiences with women.

160 Perhaps the most significant constructs that emerged from my seeking to understand the meanings Andrew made of women who are peers for him involved his attempting to diffuse the emotional risk of desire for, and dependency on, an individual woman, with whom he may have a dyadic relationship, (his fantasies of polygamy are one way in which he imagines a potential solution) and his fantasies and conflicts in regarding who he is, (good guy, bad guy, guilty, anxious) when he imagines and attempts both emotional intimacy and sexual activity with the same woman. In this way, it may be possible to imagine that Andrew found it overwhelming to manage the differing and conflicting desires that may be at psychically at play for him related to his sister.

Further, in light of the centrality of this conflict that seems to be created for Andrew in the presence of his feelings of desire, helplessness, aggression, fears of rejection and abandonment related to his psychic utilization of women, virtually and interpersonally, as well as the psychic tension that seems to be created between his desire, and the guilt and anxiety that is raised in encountering his own aggression, it is interesting to consider his statement about siblinghood from the above section of narrative, “I think a really big thing about that is you don’t have a choice.”

Andrew may imagine that in polygamy/polyamory he may find a way to diffuse the tensions, (a way out of feeling trapped) in the anxieties, conflicts, and longings inherent and/or evoked in his imaginations and experience of dyadic intimate relationships with women peers, perhaps significantly shaped and colored by the attendant fantasies and conflicts inherent in for him in his sibling dyad, about which (whom) he feels psychically trapped, and without “choice.” Additionally, virtually engaging with women through pornography may be a way for Andrew to attempt to

161 manage his guilt, anxiety and desire related to his desire to indulge in sexualization and his aggression without suffering the consequences involved in imagining he is doing harm. Porn may provide a way for Andrew to have fantastic, masturbatory experiences involving images of women, without (he may imagine) as much guilt and anxiety, related both to the potential psychic and relational (risk of rejection and of being “that guy”) consequences he may imagine he could suffer in having his aggression infiltrate his intimate relationships with female peers concretely. Thus, Andrew may seek to psychically and physically separate his aggressive libidinized desires from his more “pure”, romanticized longings, an imagined division which may be related to a fantastic vestige of his dyadic experience of siblinghood. Andrew references that he can get emotionally caught up in sexual relationships with female peers, it’s as if, he says, he doesn’t have a choice. Interestingly, Andrew also seemed to uncomfortably imagine that the women he sees in online porn may be trapped, “without a choice” within what he imagines may be pornography’s exploitative construct.

Throughout this case study’s narrative, Andrew mentions “being without a choice” regarding siblinghood a number of times. In the above section of narrative, Andrew describes imagining that he, himself, as well as the women with whom he engages, concretely and virtually, are, in varying ways, without a choice. As such, Andrew’s psychological use of siblinghood seems to strongly include conflicts and anxieties raised around women, dyads, and feeling and imaginations of “having no choice.”

162

Meaning category 3: Guilt, duty and confession.

Siblinghood: It’s not a choice.

As previously described, Andrew seems to imagine himself psychically trapped within his sibling dyad. He has one point of reference for a sibling, and he largely seems not to experience himself as he wishes within that relationship. Further, he seems to feel guilty for how he imagines he has failed in his role as older brother. Andrew’s sister experienced a significant crisis as a younger person, and Andrew holds himself responsible for having not done more to try to protect her. In fact, he consciously did not know what had happened to his sister until they were in high school, but he still feels he didn’t do a good enough job with his responsibility as an older brother, and he feels badly about that. He seems anxious and uncomfortable with feeling guilty and may attempt to mediate his feelings by explicating a plan to do a “good enough” job as a father, himself.

Specifically, he details how his parents did not specifically instruct him regarding the expectations and behaviors required for being a good enough, protective enough, older brother. He seems to attempt to soothe himself with his promise that that he will be very clear with his children that there is something unique, even special, in siblinghood, and within that is the duty and responsibility to protect and defend each other from outside harm, even with the very real risk that you may not be liked by others, as a result.

Andrew: Like, I reflected with my friend (proper name), who was talking to my sister, like we are not that close. If we weren’t siblings, we wouldn’t be friends.

163 And then, you just have this obligation to help this person when they are in need, and it’s just this weird rule, or blood thing. Like a reptile. I don’t know how much of this is reptile versus how much of it is immense social and cultural pressure that says I need to help siblings. Yeah. I don’t know about siblinghood. One of the things I can think of is just like how there is one thing, if I could think of my relationship with my sister, I have regret that I was not more protective of her, and that is something I have to deal with. I feel like the essence of siblinghood, I don’t know, I feel like my parents didn’t, it seemed like they never provided a theory like, this is your sister, this is how you behave with them. Like, something special. I remember I was trying. I saw movies, I think. Like this trope, I don’t mean to be patriarchal or misogynistic, but like, you have got to protect this little girl, you have got to protect your little sister. But, I feel like I plan to have children. I feel like that is something I am going to tell my children. I feel like if I have kids, I will say, all right, we don’t like war, we don’t like fighting, we don’t like hurting other people, but there’s like this one little….I’m willing to take this one exception of like, if you do have a duty to protect your sibling, younger or older. Even if that means in protecting you have to hurt someone else. Or even if that means that other people won’t like you.

Researcher: Duty.

Andrew: Duty. And, there is like a loyalty order, and like maybe some people won’t like you, but that is ok, because not everyone has to like you, and your

164 closest and best friends will continue to like you because they will probably understand the situation and because other people don’t need to be your friends, and maybe your life is a little bit like less happy. But as almost like a duty of like you should accept this less happy version of life in order to fulfill this duty of like protecting your siblings and making sure that they don't get hurt. So that's like something I have to think about grapple with. Yeah. So yeah, that's a thing of siblinghood that feels really specific to biological or like nuclear family. Whereas I don't feel quite the same way about siblinghood with like brothers in Christ or football teammates, or peer friends. I don't feel the same way of like, you have to protect that person at all costs. I don't know. There's just not that same thing, but maybe how much of that is the concept of family and siblinghood versus my particular family's case, what happened to my sister. But yeah, that's probably one of the last thing I want to get off my chest about siblinghood. Yeah.

Researcher: Is there anything else you would like to say?

Andrew: The main thing was like getting that vulnerable piece out of like feeling like I should have protected my sister more. I'm so glad I was able to get that finally in. I really wanted to say that.

I suspect one of the main reasons Andrew was interested in participation in this study was, consciously or lesser so, a hope and a wish for help with his guilty feelings associated with his perception and fantasy that he failed in his role and obligation as an

165 older brother in not having protected his sister from harm. The guilt generated from this belief may be joined with his guilt affiliated with the difficult feelings he has related to his sister as his only sibling. Both in her singularity (dyad), and in her person, (her gender as well as her specific personality and constitution) Andrew seems disappointed, and about which he may lesser consciously formulate as a construction of deficit.

Importantly, he seems to experience his failure in his role as a protective enough older brother as a vulnerability in himself.

Andrew seems to attempt to manage these feelings and perceptions of deficiency predominantly through the ways in which he psychically organizes and utilizations gender and groups. Within these described constructs, though he finds some psychic relief, he nonetheless seems to continue to feel connected to primitive depressive anxieties, particularly related to fantasies about his aggressive drives and behaviors. He seems to be able to become quite preoccupied with worry about not being perceived by others as too aggressive. Particularly related to his fantasies and experience with female peers, he seems to struggle to integrate a sense of his potency with his need for external validation of as near a total lack of perceptible aggression as is possible.

Andrew’s historic model of Christian confession, specifically one to another, as a way to manage guilt and be redeemed for (sinful) behaviors seems to have been at play in the way in which he organized his wish to have both his guilt and his sense of vulnerability created by his perception of his failure as an adequate older brother through his interest in, and participation in, this research that utilizes a psychoanalytic case study methodology absolved. I imagined he may have consciously or lesser so, hoped that if he confessed to me his failings, and thus, was heard and understood, he may by extension be

166 able to forgive himself. Perhaps then, he may imagine, he would feel better, be made whole, in a fantasy of restoration to an intact and integrated internal state, without the psychic burden of perceptions of failures, vulnerabilities, and guilt.

Alter ego fantasies: brotherhood, managing a sense of psychic and sexual insufficiency.

I had not decided to ask participants about alter egos and to choose a pseudonym when I began interviews with Andrew. I texted him some months after the interviews were completed and explained that I was curious about his thoughts and imaginations regarding an alter ego(s). I said that I was curious about his fantasies of who else he may have been, what else he may have done. He responded cheerfully within a few hours, and the narrative below is taken directly from his emailed response.

Andrew: When I was little, I wanted to be an ESPN sports caster. Talk about sports all day. I have thought about wanting to do construction, do basic manual labor of building a building. I have thought about being an electrician. I have thought about that because I want to make/change things with my bare hands. I also want to gain perspective from that social group. I feel sometimes naĂŻve, inauthentic, sometimes being [his profession]. I have thought about being a community college professor or doing tutoring.

Andrew describes wanting to have been a sports caster when he was little. “Talk about sports all day.� My sense of his primary psychic utilization of sports has been a

167 way to engage a libidinal investment in brotherhood, and surround himself with “similar” boys and men with whom, through identification and idealization, he feels better able to manage primitive competitive anxieties, and shore up his sense of psychic and sexual insufficiency. I imagine that his associations to wanting to build something/make/change things with is bare hands is also reflective of a fantasy of an alter ego inhabiting which he feels a stronger sense of agency and psychic and masculine potency. I further imagine that a psychoanalytic interpretation of Andrew’s wanting to “gain perspective from (note that choice of preposition) involves his wanting to be able to identify with boys and men who have a generative capacity within themselves, in order that he may imagine he could feel more capable in himself. My sense in his saying that he sometimes feels “naïve/inauthentic” in his profession, which involves his using his mind, not his hands, further describes his longing to feel connected to a deep sense of psychic and sexual potency generativity.

Summation.

In sum, the three meaning categories that emerged from the data for this case study were: 

The centrality of gender



Psychic utilizations of groups of peers.



Guilt, duty and confession.

The centrality of gender emerged from the data as an overarching theme, through which varying ways in which Andrew’s sibling related psychic life is imbued with gender related ideas, fantasies and conflicts are demonstrated. The second meaning category that

168 emerged from the data illustrated Andrew’s sibling related psychic utilizations of groups of peers. And, the third meaning category described the significance in Andrew’s psychic utilization of guilt, duty and confession in the psychic management of sibling related fantasies.

Impressions from the interviews.

Andrew was an engaged, affable participant. Being in the room with him felt generally pleasant and comfortable. Though we had direct eye contact, I felt at times like he was seeking to visually connect with me even more intensively. In a couple of moments, I had brief associations to his visually rooting around, with the aim of “locking in.” He spoke in a careful manner, seeming to pay attention to choosing his words. I experienced him as a small, lithe person with a bright and cheerful manner. He struck me as having a notably wide-eyed and earnest outward presentation, and, interestingly, I also felt he inhabited a vague, and perhaps lesser conscious, mischievous sensibility. My more conscious awareness of this mischievous sensibility was heightened in part through spontaneous brief and occasional imaginations that I might blink and find him suddenly perched on the top of the couch.

Pseudonym.

I texted Andrew after I finished all of the interviews for this project to ask him to choose a pseudonym for himself, as I had not decided to use participant selected pseudonyms yet while he and I were meeting. It had been about two months since we last met. He answered my text inquiry immediately, and felt to me as he usually did, open and

169 thoughtful. We exchanged a few pleasantries about the rest of the summer, and then following, is his relevant response:

Andrew: Let’s use Andrew as my pseudonym. I have used it before on the internet in high school. I use Andrew because it was my parents’ next favorite boy name. So, I would have been Andrew if I was the second born son. Or, my sister would have been Andrew, if she was a boy.

Inherent in Andrew’s selection of a pseudonym may be a reference to his wish for having had an older brother who would have had the name he was given, and then he could have been Andrew. As well, if his sister had been a boy, she would have been Andrew, and he would have been able to be a brother to a brother, and the fantasy of effortless communication, leading, learning from, being liked and understood by a male peer may have been possible. Further, perhaps Andrew imagines that a brother may not have needed his protection, in which case he may imagine he could have been free of the guilt and anxiety related to his feeling that he failed to meet his brotherly obligation to his sister.

Case Study 2: Doug Descriptive data.

Doug is a 33 year old, college educated, small business owner who lives in a major metropolitan area on the west coast of the United States. Doug identifies as heterosexual and Caucasian. He grew up in large city in a different part of the country

170 than where he now lives, within an intact, highly educated, and driven family. Doug is the youngest of three siblings. He has two sisters, each older than he by two and a half years.

Introduction to the meaning categories.

Doug seems to have a “baby/boy genius” fantasy that operates as a centrally organizing psychic construction, and as such, visible and perceptible derivations of this fantasy about himself, formed and informed by his sibling related fantasies, seem identifiable in his fantasies and relationships with peers in many aspects of his life. Doug seems to recreate the fantastic aspects of the role of “baby/boy genius,” namely helplessness, grandiosity, feeling left out, and the psychic uses of gender, with his peers in groups, in one on one relationships, and at times, through meaningful partnership with inanimate objects. More about the ways in which Doug may seek to and manage and compensate for his senses of psychic fragilities and insufficiencies, relevant to the topic of this research project, will be discussed through the interpretation of the specific meaning categories that emerged from the data in this case study.

Categories of meaning.

Following are the three major meaning categories that emerged from a careful analysis of the data contained within the interviews with Doug.

1. Psychic utilizations of the “Baby/Boy Genius” construct: helplessness, grandiosity and feeling left out.

171 2.

Being a “boy:” engendered fantasies of inadequacy.

3.

Psychic utilizations of female peers: sisters as helpers and objects of desire.

Sibling psychic life.

Doug’s psychic life seems deeply colored by his siblinghood. Sibling related meanings seem to have significant impact in aspects of how he psychically organizes fantasy and reality, specifically in how he imagines and constructs psychic aspects of identity and capacity (his, his sisters’, and significant others), and in his psychic utilizations of gender and gendered relationships. In the beginning of the first interview, I asked Doug what he remembers about his early sibling life. His below response interestingly contains aspects that seem significantly related to the meaning categories presented in this case study, specifically to his fantasies around feeling “left out” in groups, as well as his psychic utilizations of being “the youngest” and “the boy.”

Doug: What do I remember? Some of it's hard because I... but, I definitely... more as an emotional memory than anything else, I definitely remember early on feeling somewhat left out. I was the youngest, but I was also the boy and I had these two older girls.

Doug described his early and current sibling life in ways that seem in some ways largely unchanged over time. His characterizations of each of his sisters, and of himself, seem dominated by how he psychically constructs each of their educational and

172 professional achievements, often within a paradigm of rank order. His detailed descriptions of his sisters, and himself, seem illustrative of the degree to which he thinks about, organizes, and privileges worth and “greatness” in conscribed and somewhat narrow ways, perhaps largely based on his imaginations of the rewards of validation and perceived prestige from without. Interestingly, he seemed to make scant references based on more subjectively derived meaning and experience.

Doug: I feel like my oldest sister was well, the oldest, which meant that she was a bit more of a leader. Definitely the most academic and got along with all her teachers…she has the strongest study habits and just has her shit together all the time. A lot of my social skills were very much from the perspective of being the youngest, where I was always still terrified of...There's like a certain comfort in controlling a room or dominating attention that I never had, that I think my older sister did…

Doug seems to idealize his oldest sister as the one in the sibling group who is the most successful, personally and professionally. He seems to ascribe her success significantly to her birth order and her innate capacity and disposition, in which he includes an interest in and high capacity for, relationship skills and for the field of work she chose. His narrative of this sister suggests he may utilize his fantasies of her competency and interpersonal capacity to provide himself with a usable soothing construct, untouched by time, which he can psychically fashion as unquestionably able and consistently available and willing to help him. In return, he offers her what he may

173 imagine are pleasurable and contributory aspects of his dominant psychic construct- the “baby/boy genius.”

Doug: My middle sister, was the middle child in the sense of always needing to act out a little bit to make some space for herself and have her own identity and get attention. Was the creative one, but I think never was quite as successful academically as my oldest sister, or as me, and so that was always this sticking point for her…As I said, [oldest sister] took a very traditional path and has been very successful. You might say she followed in our dad’s footsteps. So, me and [middle sister] were a little bit more meandering. I think in a lot of ways she is the one who has been afflicted by the pressure to succeed and ambition the most...I feel like she always felt like she had something to prove…being between the two of us [oldest sister and himself] who I think saw a bit more academic success.

Doug describes his middle sister historically, from his perspective. He feels like “she always felt like she had something to prove…being between the two of us, who I think saw a bit more academic success.” Inherent in this description seem to be Doug’s fantasies of himself as a baby/boy genius, his characterization of his oldest sister as incredibly academically successful, and his ideas about his middle sister’s envy of what Doug and oldest sister have, and which he fantasizes that she does not quite herself possess (despite his middle sister’s significant earned success) both in what he organizes as his superior native capacity, and how he formulates his oldest sister’s somewhat similar capacity and her unfailing ambition.

174 In this way, Doug seems to defensively utilizes a rank order in the psychic situating of himself between the two of them, his oldest sister is the greatest, he is the next greatest, and his middle sister is the least great. The specific criteria Doug employs in the rank order (how smart, how successful) for himself and his sisters, seem defined in a very specific ways, which, I imagine, are interestingly representative of content related to specific fantasies.

Meaning category 1: Psychic utilizations of the “Baby/Boy Genius” psychic construct: helplessness, grandiosity and feeling left out.

Doug’s fantasies of his helplessness and his grandiosity, as characterized in his “baby/boy genius” psychic construct, seem intimately woven through with remnants of sibling related fantasy. Specifically, as “the boy,” he is other, left out from his sisters’ engendered experience. Additionally, the “baby” and the “boy” seem to represent his need for help, and his own sense of emasculation and disempowerment. The “genius” part of the construct may allow for Doug to enlist a defensive grandiosity to help support an exchange of threatening aspects of reality for more manageable fantasy that can be employed in the service of shoring up a deeply felt sense of inadequacy, as well as intolerable primitive anxieties.

Helplessness.

Doug: Overall, I think the narrative that continues, and in some ways is really true, is that my oldest sister has her shit together, and I am doing really well, but in my own kind of zany, weird, baby genius way. She's a successful [professional]

175 just bought a house with her wife, and they have a kid and another one on the way, and are doing something that's quite traditional very, very well, and are very, very happy at it. But also, she's incredibly reliable and really has it all together, whereas I am... I'm the one who's... I'm still the younger brother who's getting overwhelmed sometimes, and who she looks out for a little bit. Though I think that... Then I think part of the relationship too, is I'm the cool one, and she's the square [professional], and she really appreciates some of the just randomness that I bring to life, if that makes sense. But, I would say that if I'm the weird one who hasn't had my shit together in life, she's the very normal one who's kind of like just gone through the traditional path of success.

One of the primary ways in which Doug seems to psychically utilize his sisters and, over time, also his peers, has been to wish for, and seek, help from them. He seems to organize the idea of help into seeking soothing and comfort in fantasies involving how what he feels to be his own psychic fragilities may be shored up through joining both with peers whom he imagines as idealized others, (different- like oldest sister) with capacities he imagines he doesn’t have, and he imagines will help him, as well was with (similar-like middle sister) peers whose anxieties and psychic frailties he imagines are similar to his own. In the latter case, he seems to psychically organize what he perceives to be their similarities, specifically around more primitive depressive anxieties, to bind and mitigate his fantasies of isolation and feelings of being left out.

176 Doug: She [middle sister] ended up going to business school, [at the same university at which he and his oldest sister attending college] and now has, with one of her fellow grads, basically founded a startup that is doing incredibly well…when I talk about being an entrepreneur, it is like a very different scale. I’ll just put it that way. Both of us ended up becoming entrepreneurs in a funny way, me starting a small business, her founding a large, multi-round VC funded online retail company with a few hundred employees. She’s been on that path for about five years, I’ve been on my path for almost six, and…well, because she found huge success in something that she started with somebody, and is doing a really good job growing this thing, and is just along on this really amazing ride.

Notably, Doug’s language at the end of his description of his middle sister’s professional trajectory seems telling, his language may suggest a conversion of her intentionality, hard work, and agency into broadly luck- “she found huge success in something she started with somebody ” and passivity- “is just along on this really amazing ride.” In so doing, Doug’s lesser conscious aim may be to sufficiently diminish his sister’s demonstrated agency and generativity to allow for a fantasy of them as more equal, a fantastic utilization of them as similar. Doug’s defensive manipulation of fantasy and reality, to create a fantasy in which he and this sister are more similar, in part, may allow for him attempts to protect himself from his envy of her internal freedom by psychically utilizing her sense of agency and her generativity as his own. Thus, the “boy genius” construct, with its primary components of defensive grandiosity and helplessness, may remain in place, unchallenged.

177 Of the three siblings, Doug descriptively seems to continue to be preoccupied with conflicts related to sufficiency in agency and generativity. In conscious and lesser conscious ways, he continues to inhabit his self-described, historic role of “baby/boy genius,” comfortably relating with his oldest sister as the pleasant baby brother who sometimes needs help, and seeming to defensively defend against more deeply acknowledging his middle sister’s growth and maturation, perhaps to avoid directly confronting the resulting envy and libidinized, competitive primitive anxieties.

Adderall as a partner in a perception of helplessness.

Doug had what he describes as a dependent relationship with the prescription medication, Adderall throughout the time he was in college. This “boy genius” construct and rank order thinking are firmly in place in terms of the meanings he ascribes to where he went to college. For Doug, the elite university he attended is simply the best. His experience during that time, however, was fraught with conflicts, the most relevant of which for this research project, were related to his concept of himself as a “boy genius.”

This fantasy was deeply challenged when he found himself among highly competent peers, who were not only intellectually gifted, as he constructs himself to be, but also, by his description, often more broadly developed with senses of agency and capacities for generativity. To have been successfully graduated from this college meant, in part, Doug’s having to manage his intense, primitive competitive anxieties and his feelings of helplessness. The “boy genius” construct provided an insufficient platform from which to tolerably manage these intersecting and mutually informing psychic stressors, so he

178 sought assistance for his feelings of helplessness in the form of a partnership with Adderall.

Doug: And there was this, for me, my only consistent strong and I'll say, addictive, relationship in all of the drugs that were going on, was with Adderall‌ I'm sure the first time I took Adderall was somebody giving me some. But taking Adderall, man, I'm able to bang out that paper, that's great. I had constant access to it and got to a point where I was using it every day. Consistently I would wake up, take a pill, go back to sleep for 30 minutes and then start my day. And so yeah, that relationship was, as compared to a lot of the other drug use, that was very much tied to my continuing pressures to myself to succeed academically. In part because that had become an important part of my identity in college and yet I was really struggling to apply myself academically. And in very similar vibes to violin where I was doing very well, and able to pick up on concepts in class. By junior year I was excelling academically, but then at the same time, couldn't for the life of me, read the book or write the paper. And so, relied on the Adderall to try to make that happen. I think all the way along, I knew that it wasn't, I knew I wasn't well adjusted. I knew that it wasn't good for me. I didn't feel like I was taking a morally right path. It always felt like this, there was something rebellious and cool about it, probably, but I always knew that something wasn't right. Yeah.

I definitely knew it wasn't right. Yeah. For me, I mean at the time, I think looking back I see it as there was a lot of things in that environment that just weren't working for me, I was putting this intense pressure on myself and filled in the gap

179 with Adderall. At the time I'm sure I saw it as I am inadequate and the only way I can compete in this world that I'm in, is by way of enhancing myself with Adderall and finding ways to deal with the side effects amidst shooting for something. But yeah, I was pretty lost.

Researcher: And now?

Doug: Now I would say that I had and continue to have issues focusing. As best as I can tell, those issues are not very cognitive, they're primarily emotional.

Doug’s utilization of Adderall in college seems, in part, an attempt to bind his sense of psychic insufficiency and manage the sibling related competitive anxieties that were evoked in being a member of a group of high capacity, high achieving college students. Doug’s feelings of helplessness and inadequacy were quite palpable to him while he was in college, due to the psychic pressures he faced, as well as with the tensions and conflicts related to his constant immersion in a group of competitive peers.

Thus, he, increasingly uncomfortably, turned to Adderall as an imagined antidote to his feelings of helplessness, insecurity and inadequacy.

Grandiosity and feeling “left out”: The violin.

Doug: Then I was definitely the, and it's weird... I feel weird to say it because it's... But I think it just kind of illustrates... I think I was like the boy genius, in the sense that I did very, very well in school, very early on, but as compared to my oldest sister, say, was a little bit less directed about it. I think there were times where they didn't know what to do with me in school…to be clear, genius within

180 the context of the family. I wasn't at some level where I needed dramatically special schooling or anything like that. But, I was kind of like the brains…as the brains, also the youngest, also the boy, I felt almost excluded by that a little bit.

But, then also got very serious about playing the violin.

Doug describes feeling isolated and uncomfortable with competition in an environment of peers with similar interests and aptitude both in playing the violin, and academically. His reaction to the competitive discomfort and feelings of isolation includes that he withdraws from engagement, and in so doing, he may allow himself to continue to manage his primitive anxieties and insecurities by inhabiting the “boy genius,” with his identity organized around grandiose fantasies- what might have been and what could have been, but, without the demands, and notably, also without the rewards, of actual generativity and agency. Doug’s un-played violin remains close to him, it hangs in his closet, with, I imagine, all the accompanying fantasies of greatness and accomplishment, as well as the fears of failure and emasculation it represents, intact.

Doug: I started playing the violin when I was five. My mom had been playing for a couple of years and I'd seen the violin a lot and really wanted to play it and begged and begged and begged and finally got to. Then played it from five until I was 18 and went off to college and stopped cold turkey…Now it (the violin) hangs up in my closet and I have a conflicted relationship with it. I think I explained last time a little bit, how it was definitely like a, it felt like a very overbearing part of my childhood. I probably was very conflicted about, there was

181 things about it I really loved but for the most part just took a stance of avoiding it and not wanting to do it all of the time and probably feeling really guilty about it…I had a passion for it. I mean I still have in my head and I'm assuming that my parents do too, that if I really applied myself to it that I would have been a professional violinist, or if I wanted to/worked at it...I was in the [major American city] Symphony Orchestra and winning concerto competitions and all that stuff. I was really…

Doug seems to have historically supported his fantasy of himself as the family’s ‘boy genius” with ideas of his having a superlative native capacity for intelligence. A key component of this understanding of himself, however, is that he becomes conflicted over allowing for his capacity to become manifest, as he understands it, largely because he believes his capacity has resulted in his feeling isolated and left out, an uncomfortable feeling for him in relation to others, and evidenced in his opening statement about what he remembers of his early sibling life. The conflicts created in his idea that he is isolated, “left out,” as a consequence of his idea of his superlative capacity may significantly contribute to Doug’s difficulties with agency, generativity, and in managing a sufficient and consistent enough relationship with reality. Rather, he seems to remain dynamically engaged with the fantasies that support the helplessness and grandiosity of the baby/boy genius construct. Through each of the described aspects of his sibship role, youngest, genius, and boy, as he describes in his opening statement about his siblinghood, he seems to imagine he is left out. The one context in which Doug interestingly did not describe feeling left out, was in the playing of video games in high school.

182 Video games: Pleasure and a capacity to play.

After initially describing his relationship to playing the violin, Doug described the hours he spent in junior high and high school playing video games after school. He spoke about his memories of this time very fondly and with notable detail. Because of both the feeling of fondness and the degree of detail, I was curious about the meanings Doug makes related to his playing video games, including the meanings he makes related to the realities and fantasies of his aptitude with them, primarily because in playing video games, Doug notably does not as much describe inhabiting the psychic role of “boy genius,” (“not normal”) rather, he inhabits himself as a “good enough” (“normal”) player, and is able to play with others, and enjoy some competition, both with himself and his friends.

It is interesting to note Doug’s description of a sufficient and pleasurable sense of competency and intentional effort, along with interest and an ability to tolerate and enjoy some degree of competition in relation to playing video games during this period of time.

With the exception of the below description, the presence of genuine pleasure, a sense of an ability to relax and to play, and his actually utilizing himself fully enough in any application other than the tasks assigned to the “boy genius” were scant in Doug’s narrative. The “boy genius” paradigm, Doug’s primary psychic construct, seems fraught with primitive anxieties and the below narration contained the most relevant moments in my interviews with Doug in which there seemed any palpable reprieve from the relentlessness of the manic defenses.

Researcher: what was your ability with video games like?

183

Doug: Yeah. That's a really good point. I wasn't the best, I wasn't the worst, I was probably pretty good, enough to really enjoy playing and be proud of myself.

Researcher: To feel able to play and compete, and not have to bump into the edges of the consequences for being the best, or the edges of the consequences of not being good enough.

Doug: Totally, yeah. Huh, totally, that’s right. Yeah‌I mean when I think about my, when I think about my relationships with people in the music world because you're going to orchestra or music school once a week or whatever, there was always this competition within it. I'm hanging out with other violinists and we have a certain hierarchy within the section, and that ends up being a huge part to how you relate to people is within this very competitive world. So, there was that side of it, and within that I was probably most frustrated because my inherent competitiveness/ambition made me want to be the best, but I didn't want to practice, but felt like I was ... well, anyways, I had my frustrations in that world and it always made for these lopsided relationships. And then when I think about my peers in high school or junior high or just my regular friends, the violin was always this weird other thing where they ... I think in a lot of my hobbies there were a lot of things where my skills or the amount of time and energy that I put into stuff, was very different from my friends. I just wanted to be normal and they saw it as this strange thing they didn't understand.

184

Researcher: You just wanted to be normal.

Doug: Yeah. Yeah.

Researcher: I wonder if your relationship to your mind was in ways like your relationship to the violin. You got by in your mind, in an almost osmotic way, and maybe also in what you imagined could be possible, but you didn’t really inhabit your own passions and capacities.

Doug: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Right. I mean I think I'm realizing as I talk about this that they, certainly a big reason why I didn't try at things was because excelling often isolated me. And so, I just wanted to be normal and so I didn't try, so I could be normal.

Researcher: So you could be normal.

Doug: Yeah.

Researcher: And you did really try at video games? You worked at full effort?

Doug: Yeah. Yeah, I did. And, I think that's probably what felt really good about it, is that. Yeah. Yeah. Really good. I remember my friend (proper name) who lived next door, he was one of my closer friendships growing up, video games

185 was always a big thing with us because he was often better than me, or vice versa, and that felt nice. I played with my friends for hours. It was fun. It was really fun.

Above, Doug may describe a general utilization of a grandiose fantasy in that he is “not normal” in relation to his psychic organization around his central organizing fantasy that he is a “baby/boy genius.” Specifically, he believes that being a “baby/boy genius” is not perceived to be normal. He seems to equate his fantasies of excelling- at the violin, and academically, as incompatible with his expressed wish to be perceived as normal by his peers. In relation to video games specifically, Doug describes a relaxing in his utilization of defensive grandiosity, and an inhabiting himself outside of the baby/boy genius fantasy, instead, experiencing himself as “normal.” In so doing, he seems to describe a sense of actual capacity, perspective regarding fantasy and reality, and a reprieve from feelings of helplessness and isolation from peers. As referenced prior, it is interesting, however, this was the context in which something like this was described.

Meaning category 2: Being a “boy”, engendered fantasies of inadequacy.

Competitive anxieties and feelings of inadequacy in groups of male peers.

In groups of boys and men Doug describes feeling deeply anxious, and often isolated and left out.

Doug: I always had this feeling of being a quiet part of the pack, which is I think a common feeling I've had in my life… being the youngest, and so on. Then as I was saying last time, I always had a discomfort in groups of boys. Some of it was just I was always the youngest, and so had this quiet, youngest in the family vibe

186 about me, but then on top of that, never quite understood all the pecking order stuff that happens in groups of boys, and so yeah, never felt quite comfortable‌yeah, also, I had a rough time in college. I, insofar as I have a struggled with my own issues around success and ambition in life, it was very difficult, as it is a school [college he attended] that is just full of people like me, incredibly competitive. Everyone was their school's valedictorian. Everyone has some amount of imposter syndrome. Within it there are people who, I'm surrounded every day by people who are far more talented than me‌ At that intensity, it was the first time I had had that experience, for sure. I mean granted through violin I wasn't the best at that, even if I'd practiced my heart out, I know that there were other people who were just really, really talented. Within that I found it really hard to form strong friendships. Within all of that pressure, it was just yeah, very, very hard to have a feeling of trust and community and so- I think within that, in some ways, struggling with that academically felt normal to me and I'd done that before, but having that be the part of social life too, was really hard.

The group [with whom he lived in college] was male, we were a messed up group. What to say about the male group in general‌we were pretty insular. We were, I would say it was a fiercely and aggressively intellectual group of kids. We would spend a lot of nights in a dorm room arguing for hours, debating for hours, I should say.

Researcher: Competitive.

187 Doug: Very, very competitive, to the point where I think a lot of, and I think within that was a lot of cruelty towards each other and towards outsiders. But with that whole time, I had very much hid in that group and it was a very, there were these strong relationships that felt all-encompassing sometimes. At a certain point later on when that thawed, it seemed like everyone else in the group who were probably slightly more confident, but also more definitely plugged into other social stuff going at school, everyone else suddenly had other things to do and I felt more isolated than ever, if that makes sense. I was insofar as I said, never really felt super comfortable with the alpha, beta male dynamics of competitive male groups. I was very much at the bottom of the ladder, whenever it came to any confidence or aggression or leadership of the group. That said, I was able to hold my own in a lot of discussion and was well liked by everybody. Was probably thought of as one of the sweeter members of the group. Looked after people a little bit, also was probably excluded from some things.

Researcher: Excluded.

The “boy” part of the “baby/boy genius construct” seems to be derived, in part, from fantasy related to his role as the youngest in the sibship group, as well as his related to his distinct gender, different from, and separate from, that of his sisters’, whom he imagines share a similarity in their engendered experience of femaleness, from which he is isolated. In groups of boys and men, Doug’s predominant experience seems to have been that he feels he doesn’t really understand the culture of the group, the maleness,

188 from the inside out. His description of himself in relationship to male peer groups is centered around an inherent hierarchy, that he describes not understanding, and with which he feels uncomfortable, outside, and most often at the bottom of the group’s imagined rank order. Doug seems to feel a deep sense of inadequacy in groups of boys/men who he describes as peers, in interest and in capacity. And, though seemed to engage in identification and idealization with at least one individual male peer, described further, below, to help manage his sense of psychic insufficiency, he does not describe generally utilizing admiration and idealization in group settings of boys/men to help his feelings of fragility. Rather, through his characteristic use of rank order thinking, in groups of capable male peers he feels largely unable to manage the primitive competitive anxieties that are evoked, and as a result, most often he becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the specter of his feelings of inadequacy and impotence.

Further, Doug describes three individual male peers with whom he has relationships that have been impactful. The meaning subcategory, “like a brother/sister” is represented in his description of the first two relationships, representing the contexts of friendship and work. In these “like a brother” relationships, Doug seems to locate himself at the top of the rank order with each of them, and psychically utilizes that fantasy to mediate his feelings of inadequacy and his primitive anxieties. In the third example, Doug seems to demonstrate utilizing engendered fantasy of sameness, and idealization about a very industrious and successful male peer to try to help increase his own sense of potency and agency.

189 “Like a brother” – competitive anxieties in friendship.

Doug: The strong sibling relationship in my life that we haven’t talked about is [my college roommate]. Oh man, what to say about him? Well, his life is defined by this feeling of needing to make it. The main thing is that we just have a level of closeness and loyalty, where he ... I'm unquestioning that he will be in my life forever, and oftentimes we're not even close, but there's just this underlying s sibling family level of, "Well, I'm stuck with him." I imagine he's trying to make it in his profession, and it's not going great. He's pretty unhappy a lot of the time. I definitely have to maintain a certain level of distance, and how much I can sort of participate in his struggles.

I would say we definitely have this, we have a certain competitive streak, the ongoing joke being that we're constantly fighting about who's smarter. We'll test each other with photos of the time it took us to complete a New York Times crossword, that kind of thing. I definitely have that ambition pressure, but it feels a little bit different. For me, I feel like it's this constant success drive, where nothing will be quite good enough, but where I've made my peace with it a little bit more. Whereas with him, it's like I think his mental image, or certainly how I think he sees himself and a lot of the world sees him, is that he's down and out.

He might as well be sleeping next to a dumpster, even though he's not, because he's fine. He's just down and out, and he's waiting to be discovered. There's all this potential. It's a little bit more tragic for sure, and I say that in a, tragic in it's sad, and also there's something kind of special about it. Oh yeah. I mean more

190 than anything; I think a big part of it was we both had a difficult college experience.

Within that, I didn't have many people I was close to. He was always there. It feels that feeling of trust and devotion is mutual. I think at this point, there's a lot of ways in which I get almost nothing back from Ben, but just knowing he's there is a comfort, if that makes sense. Yeah. I don't know. There's a certain level of closeness there, where I think he opens up to me in ways that he probably doesn't for anybody else. I've certainly done that with him many times.

Honestly, I've kind of felt stuck with him since freshman year. I would put him up on my couch for a year if I needed to. There's just a level there of loyalty, that I don't know where it comes from.

“Like a brother:� Helplessness at work.

Doug: I have a guy at work that has kind of a brotherly vibe, in

a certain kind

of way. Yeah. It's funny to put it this way, but where he's a sibling, he would be a younger sibling. It's weird to say, because he's older than me, and we have a different relationship than that. Within it all, he clearly‌.looks up to me, which has been important to the dynamic of them working with me in my business, because I ... It's just been a big part of our working dynamic. I give this guy a ton of autonomy to do his thing within the company, but he always looks up

to me

and is open to feedback from me. I'm technically his manager, but that's not a strongly enforced role, or one where I need to be like a certain amount of authority or holding much over him, in terms of ... I'm very conflicted with him,

191 because he cares very deeply about the company, and is incredibly loyal, and puts in tons of work. And, in a lesser way, I see another conflicted sibling relationship in (another man in his employ) as well. He is the one person currently involved in the operations, who I feel the deepest sense of trust and loyalty with, but I'm also very conflicted on his involvement in it all. We go through difficult periods. I don't know, it's hard to describe.

As stated previously, Doug’s psychic use of fantasy about male peers seems to have been to both facilitate his fantasies of helplessness and of being left out, as well, in some contexts, to mediate those same fantasies. Additionally, in the example below, he seems to have utilized aspects of engendered sameness and idealization, in concert with his defensive use of rank ordering, to attempt to help augment support for his feelings of inadequacy and emasculation.

Engendered identification and idealization: fantasies of agency and expansive generativity.

Doug: Definitely the person who influenced my interest in being an entrepreneur the most is a guy named (proper name). He's a very special guy. He's sort of a savant. He always has ten projects at once. He's started many things. At this point, he's now actually one of the investors in my business. Yeah, it's interesting. I think he was definitely the seed of my entrepreneurial spirit in some ways, or awoke something in me.

192 Doug’s admiration for, and idealization of, this male peer described above seems largely to be utilized in his engendered fantasies of greatness- the man he may become, and the empowered and virile ways he may feel, if he were also a very successful entrepreneur.

Doug: I feel like I am always kind of struggling with some mix of anxiety and depression, that kind of realizes itself in procrastination tendencies, and kind of getting distracted and moving to other hobbies. That's not the best way of describing it. Another way of putting it is I get bored sometimes, or I want to try new things. The one other thing I'll just throw in, before I forget, because I think you'll find it important or interesting, is that I feel, and I was just complaining about this to my girlfriend last night. I'm increasingly frustrated with having to be the boss/the adult in the room/the one in charge, which comes with a certain distance from the people I work with. There are a lot of times when I feel very lonely, and where I have tight knit team, a lot of whom are just really close now and hang out with each other socially. Part of me thinks that I distance myself from it, but I really think that there are just barriers there, where I can't do that. I have trouble sitting back and reflecting on what's going well and being just proud or grateful. I guess the point I was going to make is it's really hard to ... I have this tendency to want to just get quiet and lost in the crowd, or I have this feeling of loneliness or isolation, though that feeling that I have now is very different than the feeling of loneliness or isolation I felt in college.

193 Doug’s perception of himself as above his male peers, while still needing their help, in the prior examples of his friendship and his male peer at work, may suggest ways in which he may employ grandiosity and rank ordered thinking in an attempt increase feelings of empowerment and potency, and attempt to mitigate his feelings of emasculation, inadequacy, helplessness and feeling “left out.”

In the third prior example, with his idealized male peer, Doug’s description suggests the utilization of identification and with seem not to have been effective.

Fantasies of greatness, agency and generativity which may have been supported through his use of engendered identification and idealization with this male peer, seem not to have been made manifest in his subjective experience of starting and running his business.

As evidenced through careful attention to his language in the quote, “I’m increasingly frustrated with having to be the boss/the adult in the room/the one in charge…There are a lot of times when I feel very lonely, and where I have tight knit team, a lot of whom are just really close now and hang out with each other socially…”

Doug seems to continue to struggle with agency and generativity, as well as with feelings of isolation, some of which he now seems to associate with his role at the top of the rank order in his business, perhaps creating for himself further conflicts and anxieties about inhabiting a capacity for leadership, agency and generativity.

Meaning category 3: The psychic utilizations of female peers; sisters as helpers and objects of desire.

194 Regarding Doug’s psychic use of his sisters to manage his own anxieties, after his opening remarks in the first interview that he is the youngest sibling, and the boy, and that he feels left out, I asked him if anything else came to his mind. In his response, below, I find traces of his seeking to manage his primitive competitive anxieties, perhaps elements of castration anxiety, by sharing a room (perhaps a kind of Oedipal wish to share her womb?) with his middle sister.

Doug: There was a certain age, I think I couldn't put an age to it, somewhere between five and eight we'll say, where I had a very vivid dream of a wolf that was trying to eat me with red eyes. After having that dream... I kind of remember it as a recurring dream, I don't know. But either directly because of that dream or using that dream as an excuse, I refused to sleep in my own bedroom and ended up sharing a bedroom with my middle oldest sister for like... I feel like it was like a year. It was a long time. (During that time) I think that was my room. Her bedroom had a second bed in it anyways, I think for like sleepovers or something.

Then at some point I felt comfortable going across the hallway to my room again, I guess. That was pretty early on.

Seeking to manage his feelings of helplessness and impotence by merging with a female peer(s) whom he perceives to inhabit what he believes himself to be missing, seems in many ways to define how he creates his fantasies and interactions with his sisters, as well as with significant female peers.

Doug’s psychic organization around his seeming defensive refusal to inhabit a sense of agency and capacity for generativity sufficient enough to ably bear the psychic

195 weight of his own conflicts, drives, fears and wishes may be central to his defensive insistence of his own helplessness. And within a fantasy of helplessness, Doug may psychically remain an underdeveloped baby/boy, and as such, may feel chronically uncomfortable in groups of male peers. Additionally, through the supportive utilization of grandiose fantasy, he seems to construct an idea about himself as also the genius of the siblings, an idea which seems to include that he has an innate capacity for brilliant achievement, regardless if anything is made manifest. In this way, grandiosity may be employed to bolster his lesser conscious feelings of fragility and shame reflective of feeling emasculated, a baby/boy, not a man, (also perhaps there are traces of fantastic residue from unworked through anxieties related to having lost the Oedipal battle), and it may provide a sufficient sense of idealization of himself to allow him to feel as if he is similar to idealized others (middle sister), or tolerably/preferably different (oldest sister).

And thus, in seeking their help, he can construct himself as also offering them products of his genius, an attempt to manage his unmanageable underlying fantasies of psychic fragility.

Doug’s fantasies of who he is in relation to his sisters, (“the baby/boy genius�) and how he seems to construct meaning through their engendered differences, seem notably present in his fantasies and psychic utilization of female peers in meaningful friendships, intimate relationships, and at work.

Researcher: when were your sisters not the only the girls in your orbit?

196 Doug: That’s a good question. So, probably not really until high school. I had crushes and things, younger than that, but through all of high school, I suddenly had a lot of girls I was hanging out with platonically as well as my guy group.

There was something in those relationships that I intuitively understood, having had two sisters growing up, where... In some of the ways that I was always uncomfortable with the guys... It wasn't until high school that I found girls as a comfortable thing, if that makes sense. Honestly, all of those are strong relationships‌I remember I had a hat, a baseball cap, through a lot of high school that became a part of my identity, to a point where girls in school were stealing it and stuff like that. It still, I think eventually a dog ate it, but I still have it in a box somewhere here. Maybe in the closet. Just like not the bill anymore, just this piece of cloth with some tears in it. I like dating smart women, or women who in some way impress me, or who I find inspiring, or really enjoy talking to or working with, or impressed with what they do.

The libidinization of longing: fantasies of intimacy through imagined similarity.

Doug speaks about the lack of a certain feeling of general closeness to his middle sister, which is different than the closeness he does seem to feel with his oldest sister. He seems to generally attribute this lack of intimacy to his middle sister’s high level of professional success, as a person who started a business that has become extremely successful. She is an entrepreneur, he notes, like himself. Doug speaks about his middle sister as someone who has some similar anxieties to his own, and within his construction

197 of those similarities, he feels uniquely comfortable to admit some of his own anxieties, and those have been the moments in which he seems to have felt close to her.

Doug: I think after college, there was a period where I felt a certain closeness with her (middle sister), and I think a good bit of that was because both of us were going through really similar struggles in trying to figure out what to do with our lives and who we were. I think both of us had very similar mental health struggles, and I think some of that was because of... Well growing up in the same family and just kind of having some of the same psychology there. There was a period where we were both struggling with that, (anxiety and depression) and where being able to talk to her... One, she was the one person in my family who I felt comfortable talking about it in full detail with, and I think we both appreciated knowing that we kind of had some similar afflictions and could understand each other through that. Not judging. Nobody was judgmental. It was a welcomed experience. None of that closeness ever came with a period where we were seeing each other all the time. But just had a couple of, it felt like really meaningful moments of connection there, that made me not feel so alone.

Doug seems to imagine that his middle sister has psychic and emotional experiences similar to his own, and thus, that they had a particular understanding of each other that was special, seemingly outside the hold of competitive anxieties and his grandiose sense of isolation. He describes experiencing “meaningful moments of connection� with his middle sister in their similar struggles, which were managed free of

198 judgment. In this way, Doug seems to have utilized fantasies of similarity as an assist to perhaps an underlying sense of psychic fragility, and, importantly, perhaps as a way to construct a sense of intimacy. Generally, Doug described a lack of intimacy and closeness with his middle sister. The feelings and circumstances he describes above, seem like an exception to what he seems to imagine is the general feeling between them.

He describes organizing an understanding of what he seems to organize as his sister’s limited emotional range, as an adaptive response to managing anxiety and stress and a way to find traction in generativity, all of which Doug seems to admire, and with all of which he may try to align himself in the service of creating more similarity. In the attempt to create a greater feeling/send of similarity, perhaps Doug imagines a feeling of more intimacy may flourish, and/or perhaps he imagines increased similarity may allow him to merge with idealized capacities of hers, and thus experience those also as his own.

Doug: I think that a lot of times, and I feel like I see this a lot more in her than in me, a lot of times in running a business the pressure is so intense that you simply don't have the luxury of feeling emotions. I think there are times where in order to survive or succeed at what is a really intense task that she's working on right now, she just gets... Some skills that she's developed that I see and try to develop myself a little bit when I see it in her… I know her psychology underlying that [managing the scope of her emotions by funneling them all into what he terms “tech positivity”]. And she does too. But I see that sometimes you just have to walk that walk, and that it's actually helpful, and actually kind of leads to...

Sometimes that sort of thinking can just lead to a better relationship to what you're doing.

199 I had the impression of a profound and romanticized longing when Doug described his disappointment in the unmaintained intimacy with his middle sister. In his confusion, anxiety, disappointment, and, perhaps, rage, humiliation and relief, about their not having an active and ongoing closeness between them, he seems to imagine degrees of similarity with her, the meanings about which contain fantastic elements of relatedness, and connection, and seem employed to help manage the primitive anxieties that may be evoked in his libidinized desires for closeness with this sister.

Competitive anxieties, helplessness, and use of grandiose fantasy in place of generativity and agency, previously described in this case study seem at play in Doug’s dynamics with his middle sister, as well as all of the above described dynamics, seem to be also illuminated in the power of the libidinized pull and attendant fantasies and conflicts he describes having felt in his most impactful intimate relationship, described below.

Doug: I had a well, very significant relationship with a woman who was, I'm going to say, six or seven years my senior, after college, when I moved out here.

She was, I would say, a significant relationship for me‌yeah, very. Our roles, ultimately, it was definitely another case of me wanting more intimacy than I was getting. She had deep seeded issues with intimacy, but at the same time really needed intimacy, which meant that I found myself being run around in circles all the time, and not quite sure what version of her I was getting on any given day, but at the same time, we both really, really were attracted to each other, and admired each other, and worked together on things, and fought bitterly. Yeah, it

200 was a very ... There was not a lot of stability in that relationship, but at the same time, like- a lot of chemistry‌Yeah, it was a very all-encompassing relationship.

Well, and ... anyways, with her, we ... I think that one, kind of out of necessity, we are not very in touch at all. When we ... There's a feeling, like I really needed to separate in order to get out of that orbit, if that makes sense. And, I still find myself ...I think where she has influence on me still is ... Well, one, I think of her as a foil for some of my other relationships. Like she's very much on the thrill seeking‌or, at least at the time that we were dating, thrill seeking, not really having stuff together. Not really wanting regularity, or at least our relationship created a lot of chaos. I waffle between those spectrums. I really ... I'm an anxious person in terms that I really like stability in a lot of ways, but, I mean, I started a business, I ... well, a lot of my ambition in life tends to express itself in wanting new adventures, and so far as I haven't taken a very traditional life path, as we've talked about, comparing myself to my sisters and so on. There's some pride in that, and some of the validation that I ... I think in how I was raised, need to seek in terms of accomplishment, and being proud of what I do, expresses itself in wanting to do things differently, and take risks, and so ... But anyways, I think of that relationship as a little parable for what can happen if you go too far down that road, (of embracing risk) and how there's really amazing things there, but also that it's not really how I want to live life. Then at the same time, one thing that often sticks in my head, for whatever reason, I remember at some point she was like ...

She told me, "You just need to go to the desert, do a bunch of acid, and just realize on some deeper emotional level that everything is going to be fine." That

201 stuck with me. Not because ... I still think she was wrong in that argument, but it made me ... When I think about being an anxious person, and all the ways in which I get ... I play out scenarios and micro-manage things as part of running a business, I come back to things like that.

Researcher: She has been influential.

Doug: Yeah. She has. Helpful. Still something ... I mean, I wrestle with…so, I think she was helpful in that ... That's her. That’s her.

Interestingly, as he spoke about his significant male friend from college who feels like a brother to him, and the other significant male peer at work, about whom he also spoke as feeling like a brother (albeit younger), Doug did not demonstrably struggle with word choice, nor with his descriptions. Differently, when he above described the impactful intimate relationship he had, his speech was notably slower, and he often trailed off as he spoke. He began sentences that he didn’t finish, and he seemed to have some difficulty articulating his thoughts.

My impression was that that his emotional construction of this woman was fraught with both met and unmet fears and wishes. The chemistry between them, to which he referred, may suggest that she was engaged, in part, as a partner in a sense of potency for Doug. As well, she seems to have been organized by him as an object of frustrated desire. Specifically, he seems to construct and describe his inability to achieve his described fantasy of consistency and intimacy with her, due to her difficulties, not his.

202 Finally, it seems interesting and potentially relevant that the way in which he described certain vignettes that included his middle sister, particularly those that included wanting to be close to her, and fantasies that she could help him, seemed to have a similar dynamic narrative, as well as a similar feeling of longing, as did the description he gave of the woman with whom he was in primary partnership.

The “baby/boy genius” construct at work: fantasies of needing a “sister’s” help.

Below, Doug describes a meaningful female peer who feels “like a sister” to him.

She is someone he has known since high school, and he engaged her to help him “cofound” his business, as he realized he “needed help.” In the below description, Doug does not speak in a halting way, with a similar feeling of longing, as he does in the narratives of his middle sister and his former partner, but he interestingly begins this description saying that this is where it “gets a little fuzzy.”

Doug: Here's where it gets a little fuzzy. A close friend of mine, who I don't think I've talked about yet, let's see, we met in high school. She was part of that close high school peer group, and we stayed in touch through college. She moved out to this area, in part because of a couple of really good weekends that she had visiting me, and ultimately, when I started the business, I'd had an initial partner I was maybe going to do it with, that did not work out, which was fine. Flirted with a couple of other potential co-founders, decided that I was going to do it on my own. Started to do it on my own, and then realized I don't need a full-on cofounder here, but I do need help.

203 I recruited this friend, who was in a nice little gap in her career, who I knew to be competent and loyal, a high school person, to help me. But, I will say that is a difficult and conflicted relationship for many reasons. In order to kind of protect our relationship and to protect the business, I made clear from the get go that I wanted her help during the startup phase, but that once the thing was open, that we would go our separate ways. In part because I didn't want to operate the thing with her, and I think more than anything didn't particularly like the dynamic that would come with her managing others, and things like that. In that sense, I have this pseudo co-founder, who helped a lot with the fundraising, who was instrumental in a ton of the work of getting it open. Throughout that, no doubt, had major contributions to the form and the ideas of the thing that came to be.

But, my authority there was always very clear, and that she was kind of supporting my vision.

My co- founder is no longer actively involved in the operations. She comes by the business all the time and gets special treatment. She's part owner, because as part of that whole thing, she did get a piece of equity. She still lives here, in town, and we're still close. I'm always conflicted about it. I would say that, if anything, the first feeling that comes up is one of guilt, that somehow I've cut her out and I'm controlling, or that I didn't want to share in the glory or something. Really what ... It's really hard to sum it up. The dynamic that I really see constantly, and that makes for this really difficult relationship, is that she can be very possessive and controlling of me. I think that I'm assuming that there's underlying romantic feelings there. At this point, we've known each other long

204 enough that it's probably morphed into something else. She has a partner and so on. Her relationship with my girlfriend is really strained, because she was a very shitty person to her on many occasions, and doesn't like that I've sided with my partner, in some of these things. It's like a competition. She, being my high school friend who was involved. I think I'm uncomfortable with her level of possessiveness and loyalty towards me, because I don't feel that towards her.

Researcher: You were aware of this about her when you asked for her help, or not so much?

Doug: Yeah. I was. Talking about the deep problems, and we're on this side of my conflict. The other side of it is yeah, I know that she, except maybe when her own. I think there are times when her own selfishness gets in the way, but for the most part she very deeply wants the best for me, and is very loyal. I trust her.

Even though sometimes she can be very manipulative, or she's definitely got a sales personality, where she's always kind of hyping herself, within all that, I feel like there is never, in part because I know that about her, there was never a break in trust over the course of opening the business, which is to say a lot. I needed her help, and she helped me, but she's still around. She’s around.

Doug’s description of this female peer seems to contain some similar dynamics to those at play in his fantasies about his sisters. Meaningfully, he trusts her, (based in part on the length of time he’s known her) he needs her, and he describes her based on her utility to him, with himself as the central point of reference. Regarding this female peer, my impression of one aspect of the dynamic that seemed different was that Doug seemed

205 to perhaps fantastically inhabit an aspect of a “leading man” role with his female peer, that he imagines is not his to play with his actual sisters. With this female peer, he is both the “baby/boy genius” and, he imagines, for her he is also an object of her unrequited desire. Doug described a narrative of a sister/helper, secretly in love with him, who retains her title and remains “around,” even as he imagines he no longer needs her help.

The contents of the described dynamics with this female peer may reflect the intensity with which he is lesser consciously seeking a fantastic counterpoint to the unrelenting and unrequited helpless and longing dynamics with his sisters.

Alter egos: the imaginings of alternate lived subjectivities and fantasies of the “baby/boy genius” construct.

In our fifth, and final, interview, I asked Doug about what comes to mind regarding alter egos. Who else might he imagine he is, or could, or would, be?

Doug: The first thing that comes to mind is imagining myself as a craftsperson. I have the thread of playing the violin, cooking, brewing beer, that by way of my running the business I've been pulled away from. There's part of me that always fantasizes about just being kind of an isolated person whose joy comes from an appreciation of the act of making, in and of itself. The doing of the thing. Yeah. I think about Jiro Dreams of Sushi, these examples in our culture of somebody who is so committed to a craft that they just get to this next level of understanding of what they're doing, and of their materials. There are times when I really look up to a lot of those people, and I think there are times when I find myself quite capable of that level of deep, intense understanding. But I've always felt kind of limited ...

206 There's this feeling I'm a little bit outside of it. I don't get enough joy from the thing in and of itself for it to work. But nonetheless, my alter ego is on a farm somewhere growing vegetables, and understanding more about tomatoes than anybody, and really appreciating them growing on the vine, and then making my own pasta and tomato sauce, and that kind of life. I think that's a very active fantasy that kind of drives where I want to go in my career, in my life. I'm trying to think of other alter egos. These are more parts of myself that I feel are neglected than some totally other fantasy life. I think there's also part of me that imagines myself as like a carefree, risk taking wanderer. I kind of, through the drug use phases, through some of the culture in this area that I've been connected to, through going to Burning Man a couple times, through my old girlfriend telling me I just need to go take drugs in the desert and realize it's all going to be okay, I've always really looked up to a spirit I see in others of really ... including [the idealized, successful entrepreneur male peer], being carefree in a way that involves just a complete disregard for norms, for the structures of life that most people live by. I think that I have in myself this belief that there's some liberation in that, in that I feel like we're all quite imprisoned in a society that's not very good for human potential or something. There's some way of just checking out from that, that I and I think everyone is too afraid to do, or maybe it just isn't actually possible. There's some carefree wanderer Doug, who's not afraid of death, that feels really powerful and liberating. To go back one step, when I think about the craftsman fantasy, I know that, that's too isolating for me. I have certain social needs that just wouldn't be met there. When I think about, especially when I

207 think about the violin and practicing, there was something very lonely in that, which is why a lot of the crafts that I've gotten into are inherently social, like cooking for others, making beer, which leads to a party. Yeah. Something in that fantasy feels really lacking. This other one of carefree Doug is very, it's about a lot of things, but a big part of it is that self is one ... When I think about the ways that I'm isolated from other people, it seems entirely tied up in all of this worry, and that carefree self involves deeper connections to others. There's something isolating in it too, in that most others aren't open to that, Though, especially in this area, I've increasingly seen ways in which community has built up around more of that, I've met people that are somehow living sort of parallel to all of this, and that are participating in society in ways that makes it all work, but that are able to do so with a certain carefree attitude that means when you meet them at a party, they're just open to connect. That one is definitely the more social one. I feel like those are the two.

Doug’s first alter ego descriptions seem to involve fantasies of generativity and competence, with threads of grandiosity (expertise-being “the best,” rank order). His second category of alter ego imaginations seem thematically organized around mastery of primitive anxieties and feelings of helplessness, and each of the two categories of fantasy Doug describes seem to illustrate the primacy of the “boy genius” psychic construct.

Interestingly, Doug acknowledges that both sets of fantasies involve a degree of isolation that he seems to uneasily imagine that he may not, in fact, want, but which seems to be deeply interwoven into his lesser conscious “boy genius” narrative. The pillars of grandiosity, helplessness, and isolation, the fundamental infrastructure of the boy/genius

208 psychic paradigm, seem to be central players in the lesser conscious employment Doug’s attempts to shore up his primitive competitive anxieties and profound sense of psychic and sexual inadequacies.

Summation.

In sum, the three meaning categories that emerged from the data were: 1. Psychic utilizations of the “Baby/Boy Genius” construct: helplessness, grandiosity and feeling left out.

2. Being a “boy”: engendered fantasies of inadequacy.

3. Psychic utilizations of female peers: sisters as helpers and objects of desire.

As in the previous case study, gender was again an over-arching finding in this case study. Gender is so closely interwoven with Doug’s psychic representations of siblinghood, and in all three meaning categories, that there were no psychoanalytic interpretations that emerged from the data in which the two constructs were meaningfully distinct.

Impressions from the interviews.

Doug was the only participant who requested I meet him at his house for the interviews, rather than coming to mine. I felt happy to do so, as I imagined that conducting the interviews in his space would be informative. My first impression of Doug, as he met me at the door, was that there was a sweetness, as well as a feeling of heaviness and darkness about him. Doug was intelligent and articulate. We conducted all the interviews sitting across from each other at his dining room table. My felt sense of him was that he seemed somewhat depleted and depressed. He spoke thoughtfully, fairly

209 slowly and softly, and with long pauses in which he looked off to the side, or down to the table in front of him.

I enjoyed the interviews with Doug, I found myself looking forward to them.

And, at the same time, I was also aware of feeling put off by him in some way that I could not quite formulate. I felt both drawn toward and repulsed by the same vague feeling when I was in the room with him. Additionally, I had brief associations from time to time in his interviews to a number of literary characters whose narratives are primarily organized around their experiences of isolation and despair. I find that I think and wonder about Doug from time to time, he has remained in mind for me.

Pseudonym.

At the end of our last interview, I asked Doug to choose a pseudonym for himself, and to tell me about it.

Doug: That's really funny. I'm not sure. In some ways I don't connect with this super strongly anymore, but I do remember when I was younger that I really wanted to call myself, or maybe call a kid, Doug. I think it was because of some way in which I identified with Doug Funny, from the Nickelodeon show. I remember liking that. The name isn't super relevant to me now, but it is the first name that pops into my head, so there must be something to it. I think I'll go with Doug.

210 Case Study 3: Michael Descriptive data.

Michael is a 27 year old doctoral student in a competitive scientific discipline at a major research university on the west coast of the United States. He identifies as Caucasian and heterosexual. He is the fifth of six brothers who are spread across 13 years. Michael is ten years younger than his oldest brother, with three other brothers between them, and his younger brother is three years younger than he. The brothers were all born and raised within an intact nuclear family in a small village, in a western European country. Michael chose to move to the United States to pursue earning his Ph.D. immediately after having been graduated from college in his home country. At the time of our interviews, Michael indicated that he intended to remain in same urban area in which he is currently living and working for the imaginable future.

Introduction to the meaning categories.

Michael’s early life was predominantly populated with boys and men. His psychic life seems to have been profoundly colored by meanings and fantasies related to the form and function of his engendered siblinghood: a band of brothers. My impression was that in a fundamental way, his sense of identity seems to be as much about himself as a unique person as it is about being a brother, in a brotherhood.

Further supporting the centrality and overarching nature of the psychic meanings Michael makes of gender, and “the group,” my interpretations of the data for this case study suggest that engendered psychic remnants of aspects of Michael’s demonstrably

211 impactful mother are also prominent and organizing in relation to fantasies and conflicts regarding his desires for intimacy and sufficient emotional safety with female peers.

Specifically, what emerged from the data gleaned in the interviews with Michael, was the presence of an overarching meaning category involving the primacy of both gender and the centrality of “the group.” A careful interpretive analysis of the raw data repeatedly brought to mind for me an image of a double helix, which I understand as suggestive that my understanding of Michael includes that, for him, engendered fantasies, and fantasies referencing the primacy of “the group”, are both elemental, overlapping, and intertwined.

The significant psychic impact of both the primacy of gender and the centrality of “the group,” have included that meaningful and organizing remnants of his siblinghood, (e.g. centrally organizing fantasies and conflicts) have formed and informed the meaning categories described below. These meaning categories emerged from a comprehensive analysis of the data for this case study. Through the psychoanalytic interpretation, and discussion, of the examples of raw data presented throughout this case study, elements of these three meaning categories will be demonstrated through Michael’s conscious and lesser conscious thinking, fantasies and conflicts.

Categories of meaning.

1. The primacy of gender and the centrality of the group: “a band of brothers” 2. The psychic impact of “emotional manipulation” 3. The psychic significance of “emotional intelligence”

212 Meaning category 1: The primacy of gender and the centrality of “the group.”

Centrally organizing remnants of sibling psychic life: brotherhood.

I asked Michael about his brothers near the beginning of the first interview.

Michael: So, the eldest one went to college for furniture design for two years, and then he left and he worked at a local joinery, so for a carpenter for two years. And then he went and he worked with my uncle on the farm for three years. And then he left and he eventually settled on becoming a mechanic. So, he services large trucks now. The second one, he's a policeman. He went to college, I think he finished, he did some kind of thing related to the police work. The third one became a physical therapist. The fourth one became a carpenter because that's what my father was, a carpenter. He had a business. The fifth one, me. And, the sixth one is an engineer.

When asked about his brothers, Michael describes each individually, through their differing professional identities, then notes that they are all similar. As will be shown through relevant examples from the data, Michael makes extensive psychic use of the concept of “similarity” in brotherhood.

The importance of similarity.

213 Michael: We are all very similar, but I think when you're from a small town, there's only a finite number of paths or options or experiences. And I think that we basically all experienced almost the same thing. Not obviously to the same extent but in general. We all went to the same small school, we all played for the same sports teams, we all went to the same church, we went to the same high school. We were managed by the same people on the sports teams. Yeah, sports was a big part for both me and my older brothers and my younger brother, particularly when you go to play sports in a small town, immediately when you arrive, you're somebody's brother. So, it's like, your X's brother, let's play you here because that's where he played, and he's really good. The second brother was really good. So, he became the expectation for the rest of us. But, he was the best of them. In general, some of us were pretty good, some of us were good. But, there was no one bad.

Researcher: Immediately when you arrive, you’re somebody’s brother.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it. Exactly. And, I would say, the second one was very athletic, very social as well. But outside of that, I don't think there's any… apart from me being the academic, I don't think there's any strong roles.

Researcher: You are the academic.

214 Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure why. It was never forced upon me…There was never any strong encouragement or push to do-- there was always the push to do well, but there was never any acknowledgement that I may be going above or beyond what…

Researcher: above or beyond what…

Michael: Yeah….

My impression of Michael’s unfinished description of what, or whom, he may have had the sense he was “going above and beyond” was that it may have been reflective of his psychic discomfort in acknowledging primitive competitive anxieties, which he seems to prefer to manage through the psychic utilization of the concepts of unity and similarity in brotherhood.

I then asked Michael about anything that came to mind for him about the specific nature of the group of six brothers. I was curious about how he psychically represented them as a group.

Michael: Well, I think in general, it if were totally somebody who was, who knew my older brothers, there was always the expectation of them being an honest guy, being reliable, trustworthy.

Researcher: You were proud to be part of this clan.

215

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, I was proud to be. Yeah. Yeah. I think those are the four things. Yeah.

Researcher: Those are the four.

Michael: Yeah. Being honest, being reliable, being trustworthy.

For Michael, the integrity of the brotherhood seems significantly informed by the fantasy that they are all fundamentally similar. Further, the concept of the group’s similarity seems to have informed Michael’s basic self-concept. His personal values and ego ideals seem reflected in the description of the brothers’ common identity, the positive qualities by which he believes them to all be identified. My impressions included that Michael seemed more comfortable and at ease describing the brothers as similar- a unified group. He spoke with some enthusiasm when delineating his second oldest brother’s role as most capable athlete and most successful socially, and he became more measured when referring to his own role, “the academic.”

“Similarity” broadly defined, and within a more specific context of brotherhood, may provide Michael an increased sense of psychic stability through the constructs of unity and intimacy. Additionally, he describes utilizing conscious and lesser conscious experiences and meanings that he makes of the idea of similarity to mitigate his awareness of, and restrict the effects of, primitive competitive anxieties. He may create, through fantasies and experiences related to the concept of similarity among his brothers,

216 a deep feeling of belonging, and a clarity and strength of personal and common purposewhat is good for, desired by, the individual, also serves and reflects the group.

In the narrative above, I was left curious and wondering about what was the unnamed fourth quality? I imagined possibilities in the meanings of leaving one trait unnamed. Might Michael imagine the named trait may somehow have threatened the integrity of the group’s similarity?

“Team spirit.”

I asked Michael what came to mind about “competition.”

Michael: Yeah, I don't think competition was a strong theme for me. For our particular age group in the teams, we were never the best team or the strongest team. There were age groups above us who were a lot better who had won a lot more. So, for us people expected early on that we weren't going to win whatever, titles, championships, whatever you want to call them. So, for me personally, it became less about competing with my peers and more about being teammates, if that makes sense. Working together as opposed to working independently to advance some own agenda, or something like that. Yeah it was good. I think we were definitely more than the sum of our parts as a team. I had one sports coach in particular. So, these two men were my soccer coaches from under-8 all the way up to under-18, so the best part of 10 years, we had the same two coaches every year.

217 Researcher: They really got to know you.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. And there was one of them in particular who, I guess would have had more of an impact on me than most people. Not for any specific reason, more so just his patience and his willingness and his ability to make each individual seem like they were important, they were critical to the team. It was a team spirit and that was maybe a trait which I was drawn to.

Researcher: Team spirit.

I was curious about Michael’s associations to the word “competition.” In explaining the reasons involved in why he doesn’t think that is a “strong theme” for him, he describes several times that what he values about being in competitive groups is the experience of collaboration, working together. He describes that he feels the sum of the whole team is greater than the parts of the individual players. These beliefs and values are also ways in which it seems possible to understand the psychic centrality of his privileging of “the group”, brotherhood. Psychically, it seems Michael seeks to defend against, perhaps even extinguish, any potential tensions and conflicts inherent in his primitive competitive anxieties through a directing of libidinal focus toward “team spirit,” and the primacy of the brotherhood(s). Further, Michael seems to admire the coach who he feels inhabited similar values as he has. Similarity, in characteristics, values, gender, and goals, seems to be a key component of team spirit.

218 “Like a brother.”

I asked Michael what came to mind regarding the phrase “like a brother.”

Michael: In terms of using the phrase, "like a brother," I don't think I would've used it at home for two reasons. First reason is that these friendships aren't always natural or organic, it's kind of like, they're there and you're there, so you become friends. Secondly, because I had enough brothers. Now that I'm over here, and there's no family around, then there are friends who would be, I might say that phrase about. There's probably four friends-people in this category, and one person that was actually a friend from home, and he moved over here same time as me and we've been here for the same amount of time, so it's natural that he would fall into that category because he's someone who's come from a very similar background to me. We went to school together since we were barely 14, we lived together in college, we did the same major in college, we both came over here on exchange, then we both come over here with jobs, so we've always been together. We've experienced somewhat of the same things, and in terms of someone who's very reliable, or someone I could depend on. He's one of those people.

Researcher: Reliable. You could depend on him. And, similar.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. Most of these four friends, it just feels like an easy, genuine friendship. It seems like it doesn't matter how long I go without seeing these guys,

219 once I see them again, it's just easy and they're dependable, reliable, and they're just good guys.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Michael assigns the same qualities that he describes as common in his group of brothers to the friends that come to mind as “like a brother.”

Further, he interestingly mentions that there are a group of men who fit this category, but then describes only one. This pattern of referencing a group while describing in detail only a single person is repeated, as illustrated in the next section of narrative, in the way Michael describes who comes to mind when he thinks of the word, “brother.” Again, Michael may be lesser consciously drawn to privilege the idea of similarity in the group, even when his intention seems to be to illustrate something singular about a specific person.

In considering the ways in which Michael responded how he would describe the group of brothers, and the similarities in the ways he described the friends he would characterize as “like a brother, I asked Michael who comes to mind when he thinks of the word, “brother.”

Michael: I think the answer to that question has changed over time. When I was younger, obviously my oldest brother is…ten years older than me, so he left the house when he was 18, so when I was 8. And he never really returned. So in terms of growing up, my memories of him are a lot less than the rest. So in terms of being a brother, in those years, he was probably the least I would link to that. But then obviously as you grow older, that relationship changes, and your values

220 change, and what you expect from each other changes. And we've definitely grown a lot closer as time as went on. By default, I would say it was inevitable that we would grow closer because our starting point wasn't that close to begin with. Which was random, it was unexpected, but it wasn't any one thing or there was no single point in time, there wasn't any event or any particular reason why this just happened. I think we just—it just happened. He’s not someone I talk to on a weekly, or even monthly basis. It’s like a mutual understanding or connection or—I think, as well, it was like—he left when he was maybe 18 and then my second brother stayed around at home. And my third brother went to Australia and my fourth brother went to Scotland. So that left the second oldest, me, and the youngest at home. And between the ages of 14 to 17—my mom started drinking at that time. Yeah, became a serious problem. But, I think that with my second brother, him being in it, and him having hit his own problems as well, he was in the thick of it. The brother in Australia didn't really understand it, and we also didn't want to tell him because he was in Australia, so there was nothing he could do about it. The brother in Scotland is a….I think the eldest one, who was a few hours away, was the most understanding and most reasonable about the situation. So, I think as it was me on the inside of it, and him on the outside of it, he was the most reasonable on the outside and I was probably the most reasonable on the inside. As well as that, since he's had kids, he's taken to being a father a lot more than I thought he would. And he's a lot more involved than my father was with the six of us. So, he's been involved with his kids a lot more than our father was with us. I guess family means more important to him

221 and he wants all of us to be part of his kid's lives…Sorry, back to the original question of who comes to mind, I think they all come to mind at different times or with different angles to that question. There's no single one. Maybe in the past there was one single one, but I think at the moment there probably isn't one single one.

The structure of Michael’s response in the narrative about seems characteristic of the way in which I heard him attend to the integrity and importance of the brotherhood and to any reference to an individual, including to himself, throughout the interviews. In the above case, he seems to organize his response by essentially beginning and ending with a representation of the significance of the group, while allowing for the uniqueness of the individual in the middle of the narrative. Specifically, he began above with a statement that his answer has changed over time, which may allow for multiple members of the group of brothers to have served in that role for him. He does then goes on to describe one brother, and his reasons why he felt that way about that particular brother, at length.

At the end, he has an interesting reaction to seemingly suddenly realized he was had drifted into speaking at some length about one particular member of the group. At the time, it felt to me like he felt suddenly a bit guilty, and immediately seemed to have sought to “right the balance” by undoing some of the sense of uniqueness and specialness that he just laid out about his oldest brother. An image of Scheherazade came to my mind as I registered his undoing. I imagine the primacy of “team spirit” was threatened by an overemphasis on an individual.

222 What seemed significant in his description of the brother he chose to discuss included that Michael’s idea of “brother” seemed to involve a clear inhabiting of the brotherhood’s common values of honesty, reliability and trustworthiness, personal choices (e.g. the way he parented) that Michael could admire, and, very importantly, a demonstration of capacity to distinguish fantasy and reality.

His oldest brother, in the above vignette, was his partner in defending both themselves and the brotherhood from the threat their mother’s potentially intrusive and threatening behaviors. Michael describes that he and the oldest brother were a matched pair in their each being the “most understanding and reasonable ones” in their respective locations, inside and outside the home in which their parents were living. “Most understanding” may be reflective of Michael’s emphasis on an ability to differentiate fantasy and reality, to sense ulterior motives, lesser conscious motivations. And, “most reasonable” may be reflective of the primacy Michael places on “being rational and logical” as his main weapon, and source of fantastic hope, in combating the threat of his mother’s “emotional manipulation.” More about the above will be discussed in detail later in this case study.

The impact of brotherhood on aspects of identity.

Researcher: When you think of the significant friendships you've had, or peer relationships with other men, who comes to mind?

Michael: Yeah, when I was younger, probably the second oldest brother, the one that springs to mind, the one I mentioned last time who was more social.

223 Researcher: What was it about him?

Michael: I mean, he always made an effort to include me, to bring me out, like bring me for my first beer or to being me to the pub with some of his friends, and to include me. Yeah, there's not like one specific thing, just include me and talk to me, chat with me, listen to my thoughts. Yeah.

Researcher: He was interested in you.

Michael. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And, there were also some teachers who would push me harder than my normal pace and they seemed to... I'm not going to say push me extra harder than the rest of them, sometimes it felt like that to me.

Researcher: Yeah, same sort of thing, they saw you, maybe recognized something in you, and made an effort with you, they really made a specific effort to try to help you work more toward your particular potential.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, say, like that. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say it will be just maybe three to four teachers, who have done that. All of which have been male, but I'm not sure if that's... I don't think that's a male or female thing, I just think in the subjects in which I did well, physics and math, the teachers are more likely to be male rather than female. And, as well, that one sports coach I had for many y ears, that I mentioned.

224

Researcher: they were significant in your forming an identity as an academic.

And, your brother was a good older brother.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. They were, and he was. Yeah.

Michael interestingly names his second oldest brother when I ask him about significant friendships, male peers, in his life. This brother was also the one that Michael singled out when describing the brothers as having a particular role, he was the most adept athletically and socially. It is interesting to me that Michael associates to this brother in response to a question about male friendship, and his oldest brother is who came to mind when he was asked who came to mind in response to the word “brother.”

I imagine that perhaps his second oldest brother’s “coolness,” social ease, and athletic prowess may evoke primitive competitive anxieties in Michael, and part of how he attempts to keep those out of his awareness, (so that his envy and aggression does not threaten own moral code as a member of their band of brothers, nor could his individual desire to “best” this brother disrupt the “team spirit” of the group) is to relegate this individual brother to a “friendship” role, rather than to a role of individual brother.

Friends are outside the core group of related brothers. The risk of primitive competitive anxieties coming to the fore within the band of friendship brothers, is preferable to that happening within the band of familial brothers. Michael’s loyalty, in this way, is to his “blood brothers” first.

225 How Michael organizes his ideas about his identity, both who he knows himself to be, and who he would have liked to have been, seems significantly reflective of the colossal psychic impact gender has had on him, consciously and lesser so. Most broadly, the cultural environment of the country and village in which he was raised was dominated by the implicit and explicit presence of the Catholic church. Though Michael describes that he was never personally a believer, the engendered norms and expectations that were broadly available and acceptable within his immediate cultural and familial milieu were those that were reflective of what is sanctioned by the church. His conscious and lesser conscious fantasies about masculinity, and brotherhood, (the Biblical characters, brothers, Cain and Abel and the idea of primitive competitive anxieties came to my mind as I was listening to him discuss his choice of his second oldest brother as an impactful male friend/peer) what is expectable and acceptable, for instance, seem to most often reflect the fairly narrow and specific range of what he witnessed as demonstrably modeled.

Regarding Michael’s relationship to self-defined role as “the academic,” and my association to the Biblical brothers, Cain and Abel, (Cain murdered his brother Abel, after which G-d punished Cain by sentencing him to a life of wandering) I wonder if Michael’s impetus to leave his country of origin, and the weight of his unfinished sentiment that he doesn’t know why he is “the academic” and that nobody pushed him to “go above and beyond,” yet he did, is related to his sense of driven urgency to attend graduate school and live his life on the west coast of America, very geographically separate from the band of brothers. Perhaps this is another way in which Michael tries to manage any sense of individuality, and/or primitive competitive anxieties that may again

226 threaten his sense of himself as an excellent teammate, and thus, the integrity of the group.

Fantasies about being known: psychic utilizations of separation and privacy.

Michael’s, and his brothers’, lives in their small village involved that the same group of peers were in school together, played recreational sports together, and attended church, when required, together. Importantly, the centrality of the psychic impact of brotherhood on Michael includes the impact of his literal same gendered siblinghood, as well as the impact of the “brotherhoods” made up of the male peers in his village, the men who taught and coached him, and the psychic effects of the Catholic church’s male dominated theology and hierarchy. The insularity of Michael’s familial, academic and recreational peer groups provided that he was, in many ways, always known. Below, he describes his conscious interest in keeping his work and social life separate.

Michael: I tend to make an effort to try and keep my work and social separate. I try not to associate with people from work. I like the idea of being able to vent about work and not to be concerned about work colleagues being there or misunderstanding or getting back. I think it's healthy that I have a break from my work colleagues, I spend most of my week with them. I think work, I think most of my work colleagues at the lab tend to be on a temporary basis, like one to two years, so in terms of trying to form a stable friend group it's not the best resource for that. And my work colleagues, who are a little more stable, have families and they live further in the East Bay, or they have their own thing, going out at

227 weekends. And then it comes back that maybe I tend to drink a little too much when I go out and I don't want to come in the morning and have to see the same people, who saw me Saturday night, in a social setting. I like to have that separation.

Researcher: Your early life was dominated by being in the group, one group of people who were on your soccer team, at your school, at church, and you were in a group of brothers at home.

Michael: Sure, yeah. All the time, yeah, yeah. Everybody was right there all the time. I think about another reason for keeping work and social separate, is that I'm very conscious of the fact that work is a bigger part of my life or more important in my life than maybe it should be. And if I allow those two worlds to intersect, that work would just absorb social. And that every conversation I have in a social event with a work colleague evolves around work, and that's something which I don't want to be the case. So those are probably the three. For me, all of my social relationships are very personal, so I wouldn't have many superficial friendships or superficial social groups.

Researcher: They're all very personal.

Michael: Yeah. So, for instance if I go to a party and I don't know people, it's very uncomfortable for me‌ I don't think I put as much effort into interacting with

228 people who I don't expect to see again. Which is obviously a bad thing. But yeah, I think it's a bad thing, yeah. Because then I'm forcing myself to make the judgment…I have to call it, decide with little real information. Whereas a lot of people's connections or advancements can often come through these not so strong connections. You can pick up a phone call and say, oh I met somebody who works in that company, let me call them and see if they'll have a chat. Because I don't really have many of those. It's also a bad thing but it can also be impolite.

Because if somebody does want to engage with you at a party, that's going to be a reasonable thing for them to do. And if I'm not making the same effort to engage with them as I would with somebody else, it's impolite for myself.

Researcher: You're talking about men? The same concept applies to women also?

Michael: I think broadly the same concept applies. I think it's easier for me to make the connection with men because of obviously my background, and because of shared interests. But, yeah, it's obviously… broadly, I would say yes, but specifically and practically, probably not.

In the above narrative, Michael describes his reasons for wanting to keep his work and social life separate. Additionally, he further notes that all his social relationships are “very personal” and thus, he does not like to socialize with “new” people, people to whom he is unknown. In describing the manifest consequences he feels are related to his discomfort and resulting unwillingness to socially engage with strangers, he imagines that

229 he misses out on the possibility of making connections that may prove to be beneficial, and he seems bothered by the fact that he feels he is being impolite.

Michael’s discomfort with inhabiting the behavior “impolite” seems to reflect content from two of this case study’s meaning categories. The primacy of brotherhood“impolite” is not one of the characteristics by which his family of brothers is known, it is not part of the code of the brotherhood. And, it in making “forcing myself to make the judgment, I have to call it, decide with little real information” he may sense a temporary alignment, an identification, with his mother’ projective behavior, related to her own unwanted and unmanageable aspects and feelings, (Michael describes her “emotional manipulation) by which he has been meaningfully affected. And, in addition to his disease in potentially identifying with her anxiety and aggression he seems also to register an awareness of the reality of the potential loss of real benefit related to the unique offerings of the persons with whom he chooses not to speak. In this way, he broadly recognizes an awareness of potential injury to the broadly defined group- the people at the party he imagines he is not likely to see again, as well as to the individuals within the group about whom he forces himself to make quick decisions without what he feels is sufficient information.

Michael’s interest in establishing boundaries and differentiation between his work and social lives involves belonging to two groups of men, to the members of each of which he is known, and the likelihood of a long-term relationship is high. In this way, his fantasy replicates the fundamental construct of his early life, a group of men with similarities (work aptitude, social preferences) but, he adds the creation of multiple groups, not overlapping. In this way, Michael may be able to continue to manage his

230 psychic stability through continued loyalty to, and membership in, same gendered groups, (“brotherhoods�) and, perhaps he imagines he may have the separation he craves to allow for some privacy and individuality. The fantasy fundamentally includes a design for some separation without damaging the integrity of his individuality, or that of the group.

Common interests of the group and unique interests of the self.

When Michael spoke about some of his interests to me, he seemed comfortable and enthusiastic describing interests are aligned with the interests of the wider brotherhood of the (largely male peers) in his village and country, as well as some interests that are also specifically reflections of his older brothers’.

Michael: So, I am a fan of a soccer team, Manchester United, and there used to be a specific player that played for them from '93 to 2004 called Keane, Roy Keane.

I was a fan of him. And then we have our local football and hurling team, Wexford. Big fan of that. I was a fan of Bon Jovi for a while. And Bruce Springsteen. I would say that those two, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and Manchester United and Roy Keane were probably because my older brothers are fans of them.

When he finished, I asked him if he had any other interests that were important to him. His manner became more pensive, and he spoke more slowly. He seemed to me a bit less comfortable. He began,

231 Michael: There's a couple of pianists which I kind of taken to in the past four, five years.

Researcher: Oh‌ please tell me about the piano. The pianists?

Michael: I used to play piano for a couple years when I was younger. And then I kind of abandoned it because it was something that my parents pushed me towards rather than something which I wanted for myself. But then, after all these years, I'm starting to start going back. I just find piano music in general to be pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, that's kind of like one of the few things which maybe isn't a shared interest with my family. It's not even classical music, it's more like there's two in particular who are still playing, still do concerts. It's not really classical, it's more modern. I saw one of them. In Auckland, 2016.

Researcher: Interesting‌ I’m thinking about the piano. The music, the notes.

Separate from any language. And, your appreciation for, and capacity for, playing that instrument.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's probably this instrument on its own, I've been to see the orchestra as well here in the city. That's pretty good, but in terms of going to see, like a cello on its own, I would not have much interest in going to see anything else, I think it's just the piano. I don't know why. I guess it's because

232 there's so many more notes on a piano, and each note can play with a different word, so then the possibilities…

Researcher: The possibilities.

Michael: Yeah, yeah….

Michael leaves the sentence about his interest in the piano unfinished. I imagine, as I have with other thoughts that he left a bit unfinished, that tensions arise in him as he articulates something about himself as an individual. I imagine it is likely that a rise in tension may be related to Michael’s fantasy that his individuality poses a threat to the idea that similarity is fundamental to the integrity of the brotherhood. My associations to Michael’s ending the above narrative with his imagining of the “possibilities” included that unnamed possibilities may be tolerably imagined and/or considered, as they may pose a less direct threat to the loyalty to the brotherhood.

Meaning category 2: The psychic impact of “emotional manipulation.”

Michael: There was definitely something there, I think, between the ages of 12 and 16, it [being an older brother] wasn't really a role which I wanted. When you're looking back, there are always things which you think you could do better, or do differently. Do I feel like I did the best job (as an older brother) I could've?

No, but...I feel like the atmosphere in the house was very difficult at the time, in

233 general. It's very difficult to, through taking a step back from that, take stock and get some perspective.

In the above narration, Michael seems to uncharacteristically struggle for moment to gain his emotional footing. My impression at the time was that his anger at his mother, and his guilt over the way he feels about how he managed his role as an older brother, (a challenge to his personal integrity and the integrity of the brotherhood) may have risen to the surface before he quickly found a sense of stability through what I imagine is his characteristic defense against discomfort in the face of the vulnerability and helplessness of strong emotion, the employment of rational thinking.

Michael: Because definitely, I can imagine that for the first few years when everyone left the house, that my mom started having issues, started drinking. She would blame me and my younger brother, and she would tell our older brothers that it was our fault, and they weren't there, so they didn't understand. They believed her, so that caused some tension, friction between us. I think it probably affected him, my younger brother, maybe a little bit more because after year two, I could understand this is not true, what they're saying to me, what she's saying to me is not true. And if you could somewhat understand that they're saying that, they're not really saying it, because they don't understand. Or then to some extent, I was a little older then, and she was drinking, so she would say stuff to me, and I'd be like, "all right, this is like this..." But, I think he was much easier to emotionally manipulate, my younger brother.

234

For the purposes of this study, the legacy of Michael’s experiences of himself and his brothers as targets of his mother’s “emotional manipulation” is significant, as his anxieties, fantasies, conflicts, and attempts to defend against becoming engaged in this dynamic seem to be pillars in his imaginations and interactions with female peers. As I write this, in thinking about Michael’s imaginations and fantasies about female peers, I find that I wish that I had thought to ask him what came to mind about “sister(s).” What may have come to mind, for example, about having a sister(s), being a brother to a sister(s), the presence of “sister(s)” in/for the brotherhood? As well, how he may have responded to my asking about his not having a sister(s)? I wonder if/how/in what ways the construct “sister” may, or may not, seem psychically available/ at play for him. I remain curious about my having not have asked him about this topic, and what lesser conscious (sibling related?) influences may have been thus involved.

The phrase and concept, “emotional manipulation” seems central to Michael’s anxieties and fantasies about women. Michael’s few explicit references to his mother include that she engaged in “emotional manipulation” with him, and with his brothers.

Michael seems to experience his mother’s behavior as a threat to the integrity and stability of his self, as well as to the integrity and stability of brotherhood.

The psychic effects of Michael’s experiences with his mother’s emotional manipulation include fantasies about the ways in which men and women generally think that seem to be divided along gendered lines. Michael seems deeply wary of becoming involved, willingly or not, in a psychic process in which another person, tries to coerce him, consciously or not, into a role, a fantasy, that involves erroneously shifting

235 responsibility or blame to whom he rationally knows to be innocent others, including onto himself. As mentioned previously and will be described further in this section, Michael is most concerned about becoming a target of this dynamic, which he calls “emotional manipulation,” with women peers. He expresses that he cognitively doesn’t believe that this is an engendered dynamic, but it is clearly not part of the moral code and psychic experience of “team spirit” or the “brotherhood,” and as such, it is not a feature in his relationships with men and male peers, nor does it seem to be a component in his fantasies about them.

Below, Michael references his occasional speech impediment in another example of his mother’s “emotional manipulation.”

Michael: And, the only memorable instant related to [(speech impediment] with respect to my peers, was probably after the first four of my brothers left the house, and started to do their own thing, then my mom wasn't as busy as she was. So, I think that, that having six kids as well as having a full-time job, it kept her very, very, very busy, and I think it allowed her not to deal with her own problems. So, as soon as those four left, then she started having more free time, and some of these problems started coming back up to the core, or to the front, whatever. So as the problems started emerging, the natural, at least her natural reaction was to blame me and my younger brother. The problem was that we weren't helping enough around the house that we weren’t doing or jobs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that this was the source of tension between herself and my father. Yeah, so this story that she was spinning at the time. And so, then what happened was it was her idea that we should go to some kind of family, not therapy but something

236 along those lines. So then one day, myself, my younger brother and her we went to one of these sessions. And she whatever got talking, but the thing which sticks with me, I was maybe 14 at the time, so my younger brother was 11 at the time.

And during one, with this particular person, we went to two or three sessions, but during one of them the topic of my [speech impediment] came up. And my mom explained, not explained, I guess, rather she said to the therapist that she thinks that the reason I have the [speech impediment] is because my younger brother used to corner me and beat me up when I was a child.

Researcher: What? That's what she said?

Michael: That's what she said.

Researcher: Ugh, I'm so sorry.

Michael: It's not me, it's my younger brother, who was 11.

Researcher: I'm sorry for you both.

I asked Michael about how he spends time in his mind, what he thinks about when he isn’t working. In his below response, he describes another example of this experience of the intrusion of his mother’s emotional manipulation. Specifically, in this case, Michael senses his mother’s “agenda.”

Michael: I don't really think about the past too much. Possibly the future. But also, not thinking too far into the future. But whilst in the present, it's not as if I'm

237 thinking important things. Like, I spent an hour the other day trying to pick out a new digital piano I'd like to buy in October. Despite the fact I kind of knew which one I already wanted because I had spent that hour previously.

Researcher: You like it?

Michael: Yeah, I like it. Yeah. I think in terms of my relationship between the present and the future. The future always seems to be this kind of four or five months down the road, where I'm going to have more time for myself, I'll have more time to do things outside of work, and I'm kind of sacrificing my time now.

I'm maybe a little overworked now, but the future is going to be better, it's going to be far more, and as soon as we get these two or three papers out, I'll have more time for myself, but it seems like that's been the case for the last, like, two years, three years. But, I'm not sure if that's just because I'm in the PhD program now, or whether it's more a fundamental problem with my ability to manage time. I think it's more of, I remember this one time that my mom said to my girlfriend, she said something very similar, it was something like 'I hope you realize, he’ll put his work first.' And that was said as sort of as a warning, I think.

I don't think it's true. She has said some questionable things, in general, so it's not as if‌

Researcher: As if....

Michael: She says things that are inaccurate, inappropriate, and it feels like she says some things sometimes with some sort of an agenda. And this was one of

238 these things, I think, so I didn't pay any attention to it, but…I haven't spent too much time trying to understand her agenda, because- I don't care.

Meaning category 3: The psychic significance of “emotional intelligence.”

Intellectualization: “Rational and logical” as an antidote to emotional manipulation.

In the fourth interview, I asked Michael what he liked about himself.

Michael: I kind of like that I'm very rational and logical, but I also don't like that I'm very rational and logical. Because I feel like I'm not sure if I'm too rational or logical, that I can't, it's not that I can't feel or that I don't experience the same

heights or

excitement of things. It’s more that it’s….

Researcher: Can you say more?

Michael: It's not that I never do, but that I don't do as often. I hate, I feel like some people that it's a natural reaction to respond to things without necessarily thinking.

People have, people I find much more emotionally respond to things. So, I feel like people's, like, emotional range can filter out a lot, which my emotional range doesn't filter as much, which is nice because it doesn't have the lows, but it also doesn't have the highs at the same time. I feel things, but not in a raw, emotional way. More like I see something and I'm like looking at it. In terms of being

239 affected by others, I kind of feel like, I mean, like why should this person experience this, when all these people are X-Y-Z. It's not really like aw, that's awful, I feel for that person, and it's more like well, that's fucked up, because that person doesn't have to go through this or doesn't have to experience that because of all the other things.

Researcher: Your mind, you organize it, you kind of contextualize it?

Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But then, for instance, examples: so (next month) I'll be changing apartments and the person from my old apartment, she was put on the lease because the primary lease holders were leaving. So, I told her a month beforehand, I'm moving out on the eleventh (of the month), and she texts us on 23rd (of the month prior) saying she'd found two people to take our rooms. So perfect, sorted. But, then she texts me on the fifth (of the month) asking if I could push back my move out date from the 11th until the 15th, so I was on my way back from the mountains. That's an extra hundred dollars, which, like, I have no use for that room from the 11th to the 5th, and I guess my first reaction was, it's messed up that these two people have pushed back their move in date, and now this individual is responsible for that rent between the two periods. But then as I thought about that I was like, well, it's very unfortunate that she's responsible for the rent between these periods, but there is multiple steps which she could have taken to prevent her from getting into the situation. So, I texted back, I was like, I'm sorry, I made arrangements to minimize the amount of time I'd be paying rent

240 in two places. And she was like, fine, but then when I got back to the apartment she started telling me the back story about this I kind of like oh yeah, you know, it's unfortunate, because like whatever, et cetera, one person traveling says that she doesn't want to start paying rent while she's traveling, and another person says the other person says she's still trying to find a job and they're just kind of like standing there like, okay. There's this awkward silence between us as she's waiting for me to volunteer. And I'm still just standing there like—yeah. So, I don't know. So like, in that situation, like, it sucks for what's happened to that person, but I mean, if you apply some logic and reason, it's not my fault.

Essentially all they're saying is I now owe $700, can you give me $100 so I can pay for that $700, it's like, well, I could give it to you or I could give it to anybody else on the street because they have as much claim to it as you do. What I do find a little problematic is that she also said to me is that this is just one of those things that's no one's fault. I was like, well, I could sit you down for the next ten minutes and explain to you how this is entirely your fault, but I'm not going to do that.

Researcher: She did not take responsibility. And, you do not like to be emotionally manipulated.

Michael: No. And, exactly. Exactly that.

241 Researcher: And to try to avoid that, or to prevent that, you sort of filter the emotional reactions and demands and experiences of other people through a lens of “to whom belongs the appropriate responsibility?” And, when somebody does not take responsibility, and feels to be trying to manipulate you, intentionally or not, into feeling bad for them, or agreeing with what you sense is a false premise, you feel you are being worked—consciously or not.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. Consciously or not. Yeah.

Researcher: Which, as I understand what you are saying, among other feelings, results in your sense of isolation. You are alone in your rational and logical thinking. You may imagine she has a motivation, perhaps one she's not aware of, but still, it’s being imposed on you, and in this case, and she's not taking responsibility for it. You see that, you pay attention, you have antennae that are attuned to this kind of stuff. Is that right?

Michael: Yeah, that's fair. All fair. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So, afterwards, what I said to her was like, look, your biggest problem was not your seven hundred dollars you have to pay now, your biggest problem is that you've two tenants moving in who've already acted in bad fit before the first day, and that's the biggest problem. So, like, I was like, kind of thinking about saying to her, look, first of all, I'm not going to give you money to allow them to push the move in date, but what I will do is, if you e-mail them right now and say this is the move in date, you will take it or leave it, if they leave it, then I will extend my move in

242 date while you find new people to take that room, but I'm not going to extend it for people to take advantage of you, but if you are in a situation, and basically because those two people have acted in incredibly bad fit. So, I was kind of thinking of saying to her, but then, like, her attitude that, like, no one did anything wrong, and she's only trying to be fair to these people, I was like, you clearly still don't appreciate the situation here. These people agreed to a move-in date and now one of them apparently doesn't even have any money, so why was she looking for an apartment in the first place? Another is traveling and doesn't want to pay for an apartment she's not staying in, yet you're asking me to pay for an apartment I'm not staying in.

Researcher: You imagine she wanted you to rescue her. To fix the mess she got herself in, but she doesn’t acknowledge she had any agency in it. You were imagining that you could actually be helpful her, if she had approached you with taking responsibility.

Michael: Exactly that. Yeah. Totally. If she had come to me and said, look, I messed this up. I should have got them to sign the lease I have to fight them in this, we're now fifteen days in, they still haven't signed the lease and they've backed me into a corner. I would be like, well, let's see what we can do. But, it's just so far away from that, like this is not my‌. I do, I really do like that I am part rational and logical, but it also comes back to that most people aren't really like this. It does become very isolating, yes. And as well as that, as well as most people aren't like this, it's not exactly socially acceptable to point out to people the

243 multiple things they could have done differently, or, it's not socially acceptable to point out how they were wrong.

Michael described his capacity to intellectualize his feelings as what he likes about himself most. Additionally, he described his awareness of a consequence he associates with it that it can be emotionally isolating. In an effort to imagine an intimate relationship that he would want, one unlike his parents, and with a woman with whom there is not the threat of emotional manipulation, he imagines she must also possess the quality he likes most about himself, “emotional intelligence,” specifically defined as the capacity to be “part rational and logical.” Michael’s definition of emotional intelligence includes a capacity to effectively distinguish fantasy and reality. Specifically, he seems to imagine that he, and women with whom he could feel safe and be close, do not engage in emotionally manipulative unconscious agendas that mis-assign blame and personal responsibility.

Michael seems to hold the belief that the antidote to a vulnerability to being emotionally manipulated is through the use of his rational mind. He describes that he experiences some distance from his emotions generally, and, importantly, specifically from an empathic awareness of female others’ emotional reactions. He has significant anxiety that his empathic capacity is a vulnerability that can, and will, be exploited, by specifically through the process of what he calls “emotional manipulation.”

Fantasies of safety and intimacy through a shared capacity for “emotional intelligence.”

244 Researcher: Do you have relationships in which you can talk to people directly about responsibility and reality?

Michael: Family to some extent, but mostly men. But, it's not men because they're men, it's men because my friends are men. I mean I've got more men in my life that meet that criteria purely because there's more men. I would want this in a relationship, also. In a relationship, I need to be able to do this to them, and they need to be able to do this to me, it has to be an equal relationship. I mean that's definitely something I think about, It's fine applying this logic and reason to work or to social situations, or even among friends. But I kind of feel like it's a filter that I should turn off for dates, or especially at the start of relationships. Where people still aren't fully comfortable with each other and might say or do silly things that shouldn't be over-analyzed. They want to get a feel, they want to feel you. Yeah, yeah, instead of having this filter between us where I over-analyze everything that happens. Like the last thing I want to do is turn it off and end up in a relationship which isn't what I want. I mean it just comes back to my relationship that my parents have, and that's something I really want to abide, and I

just don't want to settle, and it seems like there's a lot of settling in the world right now. Yeah. I'd sooner rather just stay single than settle.

Michael’s solution to the fantastic conflict that he wants to be close to women, but women may be emotionally unsafe, is to imagine that if he finds a woman with his similar capacities to be “rational and logical� she will, by virtue of having the same take

245 of “objective reality” as does he, will not engage in irrational, lesser conscious psychic maneuvers such as projection, or projective identification, and he will be safe to be in his feelings with her—safely achieving the intimacy with a woman that he craves.

Researcher: Do you have a sense of what you are looking for in a relationship?

Michael: Somewhat similar to me, yeah. If they're not similar, it's going to make it very hard work. I mean, I set parameters in terms of personality, not necessarily in terms of age, or things like that.

Researcher: Personality.

Michael: Similar in terms of someone that's some part rational…smart is important. It's not smart in terms of, like, intelligence. Not smart in terms of this is where I got my bachelor's from, it's more like an emotional intelligence.

Researcher: Emotional intelligence. A capacity for being part rational and logical, similar to you in that way.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. That’s fair. Yeah.

246 Dreams.

In thinking about Michael’s tendency to intellectualize as a way to try to manage the anxiety and unmanageable feelings of vulnerability, I was curious about Michael’s sense of his lesser conscious mind. I asked him about his dreams.

Michael: Yeah, dreams. I'm a good sleeper. If I fall asleep, I sleep through the night and wake up, then, there are no dreams, but if I fall asleep, wake up, and I go back to sleep and wake up, then there are dreams. Most of my dreams are related to something I was thinking about that day. Or the previous day. It's mostly like feelings, kind of, like I'll have thought about a particular situation or someone or something, briefly and then if I have a dream about them, it's like that thought but just amplified and embedded into a story.

Michael describes that his dreams include thoughts, “remains of the day”, and seem “mostly like feelings.” His description of his dreams may illustrate his sense of his lesser conscious mind’s more relaxed position relative to a perceived need for rigorous assessment and management of his thoughts and feelings. In his waking life, his feelings are filtered through his conscious thought processes, his secondary process thinking, in which he seems often to utilize intellectualization in an effort to manage his sense of empathic vulnerability. In his description of his dream life, my impression was that Michael described a sense of a more lyrically integrated relationship between his thoughts and feelings, and perhaps also his fears and wishes.

247 Alter egos: fantasies of individual generativity, brotherhood, and “team spirit.”

I asked Michael about his associations regarding alter egos. Who/what else may he imagined he could have/may have been?

Michael: I don't know… I mean I'd love to be a professional soccer player….but, for the soccer. Not to be famous. I wouldn’t like to be famous…Yeah…no. And, I once heard a story, I don't know if it's true, but apparently there's like four or five guys who all sit around a table and write most of the famous pop songs, that are out right now. So, I don't know if it's true, but, these guys are getting, like, not all of the money, but a lot of the money from these songs that are being sung by whatever, whoever, like Katy Perry or people like that. And no one knows who they are. Which is nice, which to me is like a lot better than being famous.

Michael’s ideas about who he is, and his alter ego fantasies about who else he could be, seem dominated by references and themes of brotherhood and the centrality of the group. In imagining possible alter egos, Michael’s fantasies seem to clearly represent the primacy of brotherhood and “team spirit,” (soccer team and a group of men working together). Interestingly, in his description of alter ego imaginings, Michael also threads the theme of “being known vs separation and privacy” throughout. Michael seems to use a variety of language to describe the central fantasy of his being able to generatively inhabit his person, his identity, his individuality, having that be known or unknown, public or private, famous or anonymous and, I imagine, the varying possibilities for how

248 that may be able to manageably (re: anxiety about guilt) co-exist with the primacy and integrity of brotherhood, loyalty, and “team spirit.”

Summation.

In sum, the three meaning categories which emerged from the data for this case study were: 1. The primacy of gender and the centrality of the group: “a band of brothers” 2. The psychic impact of “emotional manipulation” 3. The psychic significance of “emotional intelligence” As in the previous two case studies, gender emerged from the data as the most significant theme in this case study. Michael’s sibling related internal landscape is meaningfully and centrally organized with constructions of gender.

Impressions from the interviews.

My impressions of Michael included that he is quite thoughtful, cerebral, and presented with an even, steady manner; he was very easy to be with in the room, I liked him. Interestingly, he was referred to be a participant in this research project by my husband, with whom he was working in an intense scientific environment that happened to be composed of very nearly only men. My husband is quite a bit older than Michael, and I had the sense that Michael’s interest in participating in this project had, perhaps lesser conscious, origins in a sense of duty, or loyalty, or wanting to be of help to my husband, who was an elder statesman “brother” in their workplace “band of brothers.”

249 Michael had a confident, composed, and strongly athletic presence. He seemed intense, focused, and was very still as he sat on the couch to do the interviews. His gaze was direct, and also quite still. In the room, I often had a sense of him as physically beautiful, and interestingly, images of art, male statues, came to mind. He seemed to me comfortable to be observed, studied, (as a student of art may study a sculpture) but, also somehow unreachable as if the idiosyncratic essence of his person was inside a marble statue, a still and impenetrable replication of a Platonic ideal of masculinity.

Pseudonym.

At the end of the final interview, I asked Michael to choose a pseudonym.

Michael: My middle name is Martin, I think from an uncle who was a priest, or something. And then the one from confirmation is Michael. So, let's go with Michael.

What came to Michael’s mind was a choice between his middle name, which his parents chose for him, or his confirmation name, that he chose for himself. Both names have stories attached to their meanings. Michael chose his confirmation name. In the Roman catholic religious tradition, in preparation for religious confirmation, children are asked to choose a saint’s name as a confirmation name. Michael was the name he chose.

In catholic theology, Michael is an archangel, a spiritual warrior in the battle of good versus evil. He is a champion for justice, chief opponent of Satan, and a guardian of the

250 church. Michael is the leader in the band of brothers that are the male saints in catholic theology.

Case Study 4: Maud Descriptive data.

At the time of these interviews, Maud was a 23 year old Ph.D. student in a competitive scientific and mathematical discipline at a major research university on the west coast of the United States. There are five siblings in Maud’s family of origin, of whom she is the second oldest. Maud’s only sister is currently twenty-five, thirteen months older than she, and her three younger brothers are currently between the ages of seventeen and twenty- two. Maud’s parents were born, raised, and educated in the same major western European capital city in which Maud was born; and, from the time she was a baby through the time she finished middle school, Maud and her siblings moved with their parents to several different countries, on several different continents, as their father traveled for his work. Though, of the multiple languages Maud speaks fluently, English was not her first, she demonstrably speaks it very well.

Introduction to the meaning categories.

As was demonstrated by a careful interpretation of the data in the previous case studies for this research project, psychic utilizations and meanings of gender as influenced by and constructed through sibling experience is an overarching theme that emerged from the data culled from the interviews with Maud. The substantive ways in which the data suggests that Maud psychically utilizes gender, as well as the relevant and

251 interrelated construct of “feminism,” and other utilizations of sibling related fantasy that emerged through my psychoanalytically informed interpretation of Maud’s narrative, are listed below and illustrated in detail throughout the case study.

Categories of meaning.

1. On being female: sibling related psychic utilizations of gender.

2. Psychic utilizations of “feminism” 3. Psychic utilizations of sibling related fantasy

Meaning category 1: On being female: sibling related psychic utilizations of gender.

On being female: Meanings organized through the prism of sisterhood.

In the first interview, I asked Maud to tell me about herself as a sister, she began with the following:

Maud: My sister. We are different and very similar in some ways. Well, yeah, my sister is complicated. I'm more introverted, she's more extroverted. She's really social. She doesn't like conflict. And, yeah, in the brotherhood, she's more...she likes to act as the mom. She is the oldest. But, she doesn't like that all the time. It's interesting. But yeah, she's a... for example, usually when I was younger, when I had any trouble, or extra, I was going to her because it's easier, even if I love my mom and we had no problem. It was just easier to talk to her, my sister… Yeah.

And, well, it was the age of 11 to 14, and my sister was 12 to 15…that was I think

252 the hardest for us, because when you're young, you have arguments, but it's nothing. But, then. She had a lot of friends. I had absolutely no friends.

Researcher: You had absolutely no friends?

Maud: Well, it was a small school, and I was not very open to. I was just reading a lot and... yeah, I don't really know why it was so. Yeah, not so much fun. But I think a lot of people are like that at this age. She got along very well with other people. As complicated as she could be. Yeah, but at the same time, she doesn't have... she never had boyfriends for example. So, it's kind of weird thing. I always feel that, if one was doing something, the other would do something else. For example, I never thought about being a doctor, because it was her dream since she was young.

Researcher: If one was doing something, the other would do something else.

Maud: Yeah, it was her dream to be a doctor, medical doctor. Then she couldn't do it. Because she was not good enough in math, and in the (western European country’s) system, it's not possible. And, I was good in math, and I never thought about it.

Researcher: You never thought about it. Would you have wanted to do that?

Maud: Maybe. I think I wouldn't have been good, because it's like‌you need empathy. And, she has a lot of empathy.

253 Maud’s imaginations about who she wants to be, feels she is, feels she must be, as female, seem intricately connected to, and influenced by, her imaginations and experiences of the varying ways her thirteen months older sister stakes her claim on being female. Maud seems to seek to manage the psychic tensions thus created through varying defensive adaptations, examples of which will be illustrated throughout this case study.

In the above narrative, Maud describes her sister and herself as opposite in all the roles and characteristics she mentions. Regardless whether Maud and her sister may have similar or shared interests, capacities, desires and/or identities, she seems to imagine that only one of them can own, or occupy, a given aspect of interest, capacity, desire, identity.

Maud’s statement, “if one would do something, the other would do something else,” regarding herself and her sister, in many ways may represent the conceptual psychic construction of who she wants to be, knows she is, and feels she can’t be, should be, in her femaleness. For example, despite having a high capacity for math, which may have allowed for her to pursue a premedical and medical education in her country of origin, Maud reports she never imagined if she would want to become a medical doctor, as that was her “sister’s dream.” Further, she imagines she does not, or must not, have sufficient empathy, as she describes her sister as having a lot of empathy. Maud’s sister had friends, but never boyfriends, while Maud had boyfriends but not friends. Interestingly, Maud does not speak specifically about the ways in which she finds they are “very similar.” My sense, at the time, was that she was alluding to their shared femaleness, but I find it interesting that I seemingly relied on my sense of what she meant and did not explicitly ask her to elaborate.

The last section of the above narrative about her sister, is found below:

254

Maud: Yeah, so with my sister I was... yeah, we like to... sometimes we talk about it. It's interesting… Yeah, she was... Yeah, because of all the trouble. But also... yeah. It's kind of weird because we love each other a lot. And that's always... I thought when I was young, that it was because of other people around us, and not because of us. Because when we were only together, everything was going well.

Just like the other interaction with other people was always a mess. After that people thought that we were the two monsters. But I always thought it was the other people who love my sister and I. Part of it…the problem. The difficulty. I think now we have very strong connections.

Maud interestingly describes, “because of all the trouble,” and while that may be assumed to be an interpersonal reference to their historical relationship, I imagine that it is also an intrapsychic reference to the “all of the trouble,” all of the psychic conflicts and tensions that were created for Maud in both simply having a thirteen months older sister, the primitive competitive anxieties, the potential of the intensity of the attachment, perhaps, among myriad other potential psychic complexities inherent in the nature of siblinghood.

Additionally, in the above narrative, Maud seemingly struggles a bit to

formulate, and to articulate, how when she was young, she thought everyone else was the cause of the difficulty, and that she and her sister, when alone, free from interference and intrusion from without, were fine. Further, Maud goes on to say, that it was interaction “with other people that was always a mess.” And, that with interaction with others, people perceived her sister and herself to be “the two monsters.” But, Maud, says, she

255 always thought it was the other people, specifically the other people who loved them, who contributed to “the problem,” and “the difficulty.” And, that now, as adults, she feels “we have very strong connections.”

Here again, a case may be made for an interpersonal understanding and interpretation of the above section of data; however, I suggest that a psychoanalytically informed intrapsychic reading of this section of narrative suggests that Maud may also have historically imagined that, in herself, the aspects of herself she allowed herself to inhabit, and the aspects of herself she assigned to her sister, (engendered, all) may have co-existed in some way, free of the “difficulty” of strife and conflict, without the intrusion of how she imagined outside others who loved her, (her parents? And, the sociocultural norms and pressures her parents represented?) saw the full range of her self, both her “acceptably” feminine aspects as well as her “unacceptably” masculine aspects?

Referencing Sigmund Freud’s tripartite model of the mind, Maud’s narrative may be interpreted as fantastic wish that without the intrusion and outsized influence of an overreactive super ego, the contents of her id (all the desires of her female self) may have all been acceptably, internally managed between a strongly functioning enough observing ego and a more reasonable (not dominated by unmanageable shame) super ego. In this fantasy, without feeling compelled to cast out unacceptable aspects of herself, Maud may imagine a sense of psychic stability and wholeness, without the guilt, shame, and anxiety that accompanies deeming parts of herself unacceptable and disowning them as an attempt to stay psychically afloat.

256 On being female: through the lens of sibling play.

Maud: But, my sister and I, we did not play together. Not really. We had no interest, common interests, that was very weird. I have no memory of playing with my sister, except in the swimming pool with all the other brothers, and everyone else. It’s weird because my memories of when I was a child, is always playing with my brothers, and I just wonder what she was doing during that time.

I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. She was a lot, with always another friend.

She had at that time, a really close friend. I think she was sometimes playing with us but, the strong memories are without her.

Above, Maud’s description that she and her sister had no common interests, and her memory that they never played together, lends further support to the previously described the psychic construct Maud employs in which femaleness, including the capacity for shared interests and mutual relating, is an overarching paradigm applying to both her sister and herself, and, in which Maud attempted to psychically negotiate primitive competitive anxieties and insecurities by the property of division. As each sister is allowed to inhabit certain aspects of femaleness, femaleness gets divided into parts, and parts get taken up wholly by only one of the sisters, with as little sharing, or crossover as possible.

257 Maud goes on to further describe her brothers:

Maud: I think when you’re a child, you have a lot of imagination and we had stories, like crazy stories, with my brothers, about wars, about we were building cities in all the first floor on the house, like crazy serious, so we had a strong connection about all of this, and my sister was, she wasn’t playing with us, so. I was 12 years old, even at 13 years old, I was still playing those games, and it’s kind of old. Well, socially it’s not always like accepted, so I think with my brother it was fine, it’s like we have this space where we, we just want to have fun. It’s weird because my memories of when I was a child, is always playing with my brothers, and I just wonder what she was doing during that time. I don’t know.

Honestly, I don’t know. She was a lot, always another friend. She had at that time, a really close friend. I think she was sometimes playing with us but, the strong memories are without her. I think when you’re in child, you have a lot of imagination and we had stories, like crazy stories with my brothers, about wars, about we were building cities in all the first floor on the house, like crazy serious, so we had a strong connection about all of this, and my sister was, she wasn’t playing with us, so….

Researcher: You liked the activities…you liked being with your brothers…

Maud: Both, yeah. I was 12 years old, even at 13 years old, I was still playing those games, and it’s kind of old. Well, socially it’s not always like accepted, so I

258 think with my brother it was fine, it’s like we have this space where we, we just want to have fun. But, I think that I discovered that later, it was not always considered so normal. I get presents for Christmas or my birthday, it was never the same games I was playing with. I had all the girls things, like the dolls, and … purple, pink.

Researcher: that didn’t feel like you?

Maud: Yeah, did not. But, I was asking for it. Just because they say, want me to do it, like when you open this toy magazine and you see that only girls are playing with this, you feel a shame of looking at the other ones. That’s why I really don’t want to give that to my children because like- I was most worried about what people could think of me, than what they actually thought of me, because like, they don’t really care. I was feeling really bad. It’s weird because my understanding of that moment changed with talking with my parents, and understanding what their memories were. But, what I know is people around me were actually telling my parents that I was different, in a certain way. Like more, a lot of, from character, and that is not so normal for a woman or…I think. Very sexist things. So, now I know that adults or grownups were saying that, but I wasn’t, didn’t know that before so, what I felt is ... Yeah, I think, I couldn’t really put words on it but, I think I felt that way, I felt a little bit different. I felt that I had but, I still liked very girly things, like I was making my jewelry’s. I was doing that all the time, and drawing, and writing in the, well trying to write because I

259 was just writing and then just drawing it, and writing again, anything, like girly things, decorating my room. By myself. I had video games that were really for girls but, I also played with my brothers on, it’s just for me there is some things I like, some of it I didn’t, and they were just like.... Because, for example, when they started to fight, like to create a game that was too much of war, I was annoyed with it. I liked all the architecture, the story we had around it, and when it was just about war and destruction, no. So, it’s like I’m not completely like t hem. But, I couldn’t see myself in what society wanted me to do.

In playing with her brothers, Maud seems to more comfortably experience herself as authentic in the presence of others. Her gender, in this context, seems not to be psychically problematic for her, instead, it seems psychically manageable for her to join the aspects of her femaleness which aligned with her brothers’ maleness in play. Maud remembers her sister as never playing with the rest of the sibling group, rather, she remembers her sister’s having had a very close friend with whom she played, a “sister,” I imagine, who was comfortable to share interests and play together.

Further, in the above description, Maud relates her awareness of, and enjoyment of, several detailed examples of her more traditionally “feminine” interests, interestingly engaged in by herself. In this description, in and of herself, perhaps somehow separate from the psychic impact of her sister’s femaleness, she describes herself as enjoying aspects of her engendered self that she often in other contexts seems she may have denied.

260 Maud also describes the shame she felt as she realized that her parents were guiding her interests by their choice of presents, for example, to more traditionally feminine choices, as defined by their sociocultural context, and, seems to attempt to manage that shame, in part, as will be discussed further in this chapter, by wanting not to do that to her children.

Maud further identifies that the messages she understands her parents were receiving about her from outside others were “very sexist,” and suggested she was not a normal girl, that she was not inhabiting “normative female behavior.” She seems to have channeled her very understandable rage at being thus characterized, in part, into a passionate relationship to what she calls “feminism.” And, in this way, she may attempt to reconcile the feelings of outrage and shame with what she feels is her authentic female self (comprised of the aspects of herself she more comfortably allows herself to inhabit) and her weak, dependent, female self (representative of the aspects of femaleness she has sought to assign to her sister, and about which she seems to feel shame). I wonder about her fantasies of what she imagines society wants her to be, and I wonder about my not having asked her that question directly.

Same sex crush: the libidinization of disowned aspects of one’s own femaleness?

As Maud may attempt to achieve a manageable sense of psychic stability through assigning some of the shame, guilt and anxiety producing aspects of her femininity to her sister, her sister “owns” a lot of aspects of herself that Maud characterizes as traditionally feminine. Interestingly, however, Maud seems to have kept sexuality for herself. She

261 allows for herself to be a sexual person, and she describes men as her preference in sexual partners. She describes her sister as beautiful and skilled with having friendships but, somewhat inexplicably, never having had a boyfriend.

In the below narrative, Maud responds to my having asked her about the experience of having a crush on someone.

Maud: So, I remember, one of my best friends, she's always one of my best friends, I remember, a time I started to be interested... I felt ready to have a boyfriend. So, this is around 17, I would say. And, at that point I remember having... it's different than a man's crush, it's very different. But, I remember thinking that I really liked being around her. And so, it's like then the border between like, is it a crush or not. But, it wasn't physical or sexual. And, actually I don't think I ever had any sexual crush with women, and it's mostly that kind of things. So, this happens at this time, then I was like, "Oh no, am I homosexual," because in the traditional Catholic environment, you don't want to think about that. When you hear your mother saying it's a disease, you don't want that. And then I started to be really surrounded with men, so I don't really have the women's crush. But, oh, yes, I remember one crush I had. Ah yeah, I remember. So, undergrad, last year of undergrad, before the master, I remember one... Yeah, yeah, I had a crush, but I was not even friends with her, nothing. I just knew her, and I just really liked the way she was. But, it wasn't sexual, again. It's weird. It's like a feeling of... it's like a beautiful painting, you feel happy around it.

262 Researcher: And, you want to keep looking at it.

Maud: You're going to keep looking at it, yeah. Exactly.

Perhaps Maud’s evocative description what she calls a crush in a woman in her last year of college was in some way a libidinization of the way in which that woman inhabited her femaleness. My fantasy is that that particular woman, whose beauty struck Maud like a painting to which your eyes remain drawn, represented something about femaleness that excited Maud, perhaps related to aspects of her own femaleness that she projects out, and, as such, that which drew her in about that woman, and held her attention, fundamentally belongs to her.

Maud: But, always, my sister is more friends with women than I am, so I'm like, it's easier for me to talk to a man, is so easy. I'm more used to seeing them, I know how they react. So, it's interesting because recently, well recently, a year ago I had like, I tried to, so, I try to flirt with women, and it's actually like so easy, because now I know all the tricks from the book.

In Maud’s description above, my sense is that she enjoys a sense of agency and empowerment as experienced through the lens of libidinized feminism. She frames her interest in trying on flirting with women as squarely belonging to the construct of feminism, and I imagine the motivations behind her interest in playing with flirtation in this way, is again a libidinized striving for an experience of wholeness and connection

263 within herself. She inhabits the “feminist� aspects of herself, and through the psychic utilization of desire, she may connect to disowned aspects of her own femininity. As in the previous example from the narrative describing her crush on a girl in college, in this piece of narrative about flirtation, she inhabits her female self, in part, and locates other aspects of her cast off femaleness in another woman, whose role is that of a libidinized object.

With brothers: a capacity for sharing and similarity.

Maud: With the brothers, it is more like... so when we grew up, it was just like my three brothers.

Researcher: A cluster.

Maud: Yeah. The cluster. Yeah. And growing up, I was at certain times closer to one or the other. I was quite close to the last one, because we share a lot of thoughts and feelings. In a way we are similar, I think. But, it's very interesting to have siblings for that, because you can see some of your personalities being inserted in all of them. I have... more about the existential thought with my younger brother. The second one, he's an engineer. He loves to create, he loves to code and stuff, like I do. So, we have that in common. The older one, I'd say, more like, we like sport, adventures and these other things which I like too. So, yeah. We have things in common, but other things no one. It's like... yeah, I mean, it's normal. We are from the same parents. We are the mix of... Yeah. We

264 have very strong relationships. Yeah. Interestingly it's not in the equation of moving somewhere. I think none of us are thinking like that. But because we know anyway, we moved so much and we've been together so much, that we've known that everywhere we're going to be will always be connected to each other.

For example, last year we gathered. Well, all of us except the youngest one, because he's too young, but we gathered in London to visit)…So, it's like, yeah, family reunion without the parents. Yeah, just the siblings. That was great. Just. we wanted to do that. So, we just did it. And now they try to do it, only my sister [and two named brothers]. Well, in [specific country in Europe] because my brother is doing an internship there anyway. It's like we try to do that together. So it's kind of... yeah, for example, sometimes, I think we don't really need to be together to feel together.

Interestingly, and very differently than the way she described the potential similarity and commonality with her sister, in light of their shared femaleness, Maud above describes The meanings Maud makes with her statement, “I think we don't really need to be together to feel together” seem to represent more broadly and specifically, aspects of psychic internalization, object permanence, related to her siblings. More specifically, perhaps Maud’s feeling that she can locate her siblings internally is related to the way in which she feels psychically connected to them through the assigning of varying aspects of herself to sister, and through the varying ways in which she allows for experiencing differing aspects of her experience of herself with her brothers, both based, in some part,

265 on her imaginations and utilizations of gender, as well as on her imaginations psychic utilizations of differing aspects of their varying individualities. As such, and broadly, as she locates and experiences herself, she may locate and experience her siblings, and vice versa.

Meaning category 2: Psychic utilizations of “feminism.”

Femininity as weakness. Feminism as strength.

Maud seems to utilize “feminism” as a frame through which she manages and organizes many aspects of her personal, political, philosophical, cultural and religious fantasies related to gender. Feminism seems to be a principal concept through which Maud assigns meaning to varying aspects of herself as female, and to try to shore up senses of internal vulnerability and instability related, in large part, to conflicts around the fantasies she has, and meanings she makes, about her femaleness. Maud may attempt to utilize feminism to achieve a greater sense of agency and empowerment, as well as a way to strive for psychic integration, a reconciliation of her fantasies related to her engendered strengths and weaknesses, achievements and failures. And, interestingly, though she frequently references the word, “feminism” and psychically utilizes it conceptually, in many ways, she does not explicitly define what it means to her.

Maud: Feminism. Politically, philosophically. It is very important to me. Most important thing, really. But there are two parts of it. But, it’s not really two parts of myself, is more like, I was myself and I had society pushing me to be something. I had this image of what should I be, but I was something else. So, it’s

266 really two parts of me…Yeah. There are two things happening, right? One thing is that I want to behave well and that be accepted. And that’s part of the... I know some people who had no problem, women who had no problem when they were child, being...Yeah. So, this feminist thing is also related to, I want to behave well, and that people will like me, but while I’m becoming dependent, I’m showing more weaknesses, I will also need more attention. And more attention means I want to behave well so the person will like me. And then, what will this mean for those that are educated in and see that it is a man’s world. It’s to be expected to be nice, to not...Yeah. And I hate that. So, I hate myself. Each time I finish a relationship, or the last two men I was with, the relationship ended where I was not happy with me. I felt I was not okay, not a good person. And yes, you cannot love the other if you don’t love yourself. I’ve never really understood that, but it’s kind of the idea. If you don’t like yourself, I guess it starts being a real dependency on the other and not real love.

Through the paradigm of feminism, in two parts, as she describes, Maud seems to uncomfortably attempt to reconcile her authentic female self and the woman she feels she is not, but whom outside others, (and, to some degree perhaps her own super ego) would deem acceptable. I imagine that these “two parts” of feminism to which Maud refers also represent the aspects of her femaleness that she inhabits, and those which she assigns out.

Maud seems to psychically organize the former as representing “strength,” and the latter as representing “weakness.” In the “two parts” of feminism, it is though the former aspect, the position she defines as strength based, that Maud allows herself to psychically

267 and concretely align with other women. Feminism, in this way, is the frame within which, as an adult, Maud can comfortably inhabit being a woman, and being intimate with other women, including her sister. It is this aspect of feminism to which Maud refers as representing her authentic female self.

Regarding the latter defined aspect of feminism, this seems to be the lens through which Maud describes herself as weak, dependent, a failure. She describes that in this aspect of “feminism,” as she inhabits the aspects of femaleness that “society” deems acceptable, she finds herself rooted in conflict and self-loathing, and unable to find a way out. Significantly, she seems to describe experiencing this second aspect of feminism, the weakness and dependency, primarily in the context of being in a relationship to men, in the case of being in intimate relationship with a man, and in a wider cultural sense in relation to her living, and working, “in a man’s world.” I am drawn back, on this point, to remembering that in the context of her young adolescent play, Maud seemed to comfortably describe playing with her brothers in ways that may have been described within the context of her familial and wider culture to have been “boy’s ways,” but she seemed to manage to comfortably enough not characterize it as such for herself.

In part of the narrative in which Maud describes playing with her brothers, previously referenced, she seemingly comfortably interwove a description of her play with her brothers with descriptions of her interests and play by herself, (making jewelry, decorating her room). In the immediate section of narrative above, however, about feminism.

268 Maud: Feminism. Politically, philosophically. It is very important to me. Most important thing, really. But there are two parts of it. But, it’s not really two parts of myself, is more like, I was myself and I had society pushing me to be something. I had this image of what should I be, but I was something else. So, it’s really two parts of me…Yeah.”

Above, Maud describes her construct of feminism as made up of two parts, her authentic female self, and the female person society was “pushing” her to be. Her imagination of what she should be, based on feedback from without, and who she actually is. I would add that these two parts, the two parts of feminism are psychically engaged to represent multiple aspects of herself, including the aspects of herself that she assigns out, to her sister, onto her social and cultural milieu at large, etc. And as such, friends and family must also hold feminism in highest esteem as a value, because for Maud, in many ways, it represents herself.

As Maud describes the ways in which “society” dictates she behave, both in relationship with men, and in the fact that her world is a “man’s world,” she describes that there are two things happening, she wants to “behave well” and be in line with her fantasies about what it means to be appropriately female in her sociocultural matrix, and she also seems to want to be herself. I am imagining that she wants to be herself as the second part of what she describes is happening, but notably, she does not articulate it.

What she does elaborate, are consequences she imagines and experiences from behaving “as is expected” with men and in the “man’s world.” Specifically, she described the dependency on, I imagine, the outside, male oriented, approval and “attention” she

269 craves, her want for which, she expects to increase exponentially with her “good” behavior. Inversely, as she engages in “behaving well” and seeks approval and attention from without, her self-esteem declines. Maud may imagine she is caught between the poles of engaging in the behavior, and experiencing the resultant psychic and emotional states, that will win her approval and attention from men and the wider “man’s world”, and inhabiting herself in a way about which she feels good, and in which she feels authentic.

Thus, Maud may have lesser consciously constructed a direct conflict between inhabiting who she imagines she is, and that whom society wants her to be. Further, Maud seems to interestingly tie her anxieties about dependency and wanting attention and approval to the version of herself that behaves as society dictates, not who she refers to as her real self. In this way, Maud may attempt to stave off dependency related anxieties in friendships, as she relates to friends from the aspects of herself that she more comfortably inhabits, and she frames friendships in “unconditional” acceptance, which allows her to intellectualize the emotional risks involved in wanting approval, attention, and dependency with women.

Maud may also attempt to manage these same anxieties in intimate relationships with men by moving into primary partnership only with men with whom she has a very strong intellectual connection. She seems to gravitate toward choosing men with similar professional interests and who work in the same field as she with whom to be in intimate relationship, and when the intimate aspect of the relationship does not work out, she seems to rely on shifting the partnership to a friendship (as in friendships, Maud utilizes a construct of “unconditional acceptance” to allow for her to defensively avoid any feelings

270 of loss or dependency) in order to mitigate any sense of loss. Despite this attempt to psychically regroup, in the service of avoiding feeling the weakness that she associates with being dependent, Maud describes hating herself after her last two relationships with men ended. I imagine, in some part, she hates herself, in fact, for what she construes as the weaknesses she inhabits in feeling dependency. She may feel particular hatred for that weakness, as she constructs it, as for her it is related to a what she psychically holds as a foreign, from without, not me, (disavowed) aspect of femaleness that society (her own desire) forces upon her.

More about Maud’s psychic utilization of men, as well as her fantasies, conflicts and anxieties around managing risk of loss and dependency, in light of her siblings, will be discussed further in this case study.

A religious representation of feminism.

The socio-political cultural matrix within which Maud, and her parents, were raised is heavily influenced by the legacy of Catholicism. Maud’s family is Catholic, and the social class in which she was raised, in the country in which she born and with which she identifies, as a national identity, has been deeply steeped in the legacy of the Catholic church. Maud described her relationship to religion as follows:

Maud: Well, I was very religious at a point, but I was never about this Jesus God thing. I was mostly like, when I pray, I pray Mary. Because I don't get... yeah, most of the church thing, I don't understand. Never really. I was mostly... so I was raised in a Jesuit environment. And, I really liked that level of questioning, that I

271 liked. Yeah, but not really like... I don't really... for me, when they teach it, it's more like they - Jesus, God and Holy Ghost- are all three same. There was Mary, only key thing. Me and my brothers and sisters, we don't follow the... we don't go to church.

My fantasy is that inherent in Maud’s description of her experience of religion above, may be a sense that for her, men, represented by “Jesus, God, and Holy Ghost,” are all the same. Maleness represents strength and power, and is imbued self-admiration and esteem from within, and with perceived prestige from without. And, as she is not among them, she is not male, she can find power in a psychic form of emasculation, maleness is all the same, individuality is neutralized, and significance is muted. Maleness ceases to matter. “There was Mary, only key thing, may be interpreted as, “femaleness,” or “feminism,” is the only key thing. Another interpretive aspect of the narrative above which may be considered is that Maud’s statement about Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost as all the same may extend to her brothers as all the same, and her sister, (herself) as “only key.” In this way, Maud represents a feminist Catholic fantasy, in which women have agency, and are empowered, but, as previously described, as Catholicism is interwoven into the social, political, and philosophical fabric of the culture of her country of origin, this also thus may be understood to represent Maud’s fantasy for the cultural and political representation of female empowerment.

Meaning Category 3: Psychic utilizations of sibling related fantasy.

Sibling sameness and the psychic role of “unconditional” love.

272 Maud describes that she and her siblings are a very close group who enjoy each other’s company and are deeply loyal to each other.

Maud: I'm just thinking for my brothers and sister. With things that are important to me, like sexism and feminism, this is like, I will try to convince them as much as I can, because I love them. So, I want them to be on the same side. But for my siblings, if things that they do, I don't like, actually, I know them so well that I just deal with it. We fight all the time, we fight. It's not really that, it isn’t bad fighting, but we know each other, and we are very similar. So, there's this interesting thing where when you see something you don't like in the other person, usually you have it. I would say it's just like... I don't really know how to explain. So, if it's something I don't like, but I'm not threatened or impacted by it, I just leave it there. So, I know it. If it's something I'm impacted by... I think with time, I just accept. We have a feeling of the love that... The love my brothers and my sister have for me, it's to same I have for them. And that's unconditional.

In the above narrative, I wonder about the ways does Maud imagines she and her siblings are very similar? Are they similar in their relatedness? Are they similar in the sharing, projecting, aspects of themselves into/onto others in the group? May Maud imagine there are bits (aspects) of herself in the others and bits (aspects) of the others in herself, rendering them all, in some way, “similar”?

Further, I wonder about the Maud’s psychic utilization, and the meanings she makes, of “unconditional love” with her siblings. Maud uses the term “unconditional” to

273 describe the love she and her siblings have for each other. In this context, Maud seems to use the term to relate a sense of profound loyalty and acceptance that she has for and with her siblings. As well, her use of the word in the context of her siblings seems to indicate a sense of permanence, an “ongoingness” of the relationships, no matter what.

Maud also extends use of the term “unconditional” regarding her acceptance of friends, though there seem to be some significant differences in the nature of the psychic phenomena employed via the use of the word “unconditional” in terms of her love for her siblings, and in the way she uses the word to organizes her “total” acceptance of friends.

More about which will be discussed further in this case study, but in general terms, the psychic use of “unconditional” with Maud’s siblings seems to suggest a deeply committed, intertwined, and a temporal quality to her feelings for them. Differently, in friendships, Maud’s use of the term seems to be meant to describe a sort of emotional distance, the utilization of a lens of blind acceptance as a way to manage the risks of dependency, to remain unaffected by, and unentangled with, another.

Maud: So friendships, maybe….So maybe it's because I was alone a lot of time, or I felt alone, actually, because I was not so alone. But I felt alone, and then when I had friendships, I was just happy with that. Yeah. I guess I value that. And I just take that as a gift. I felt like I really needed friends in (the country in which she lived between 11 and 14 years old) but I didn’t have. After, they came. It’s maybe becoming older, I don’t know…I feel like I missed something. I couldn’t understand, I always felt threatened and not accepted, but a lot people were actually really nice. Like when I go back and try to think about it, yeah some things happened like that are not very nice, but you know, this age no one is very

274 nice, but people were just okay to be friends with me. I was just never…I think it’s so reinforcing, because yes people, it’s a sense of loneliness. Like you start to be in your own head and create stories about what people think of you. But there is nothing actually. So, for my sister, she was much better at creating friendship maybe because she was able to show weaknesses. It’s more, if they are my friends, they have to, well they have to, they need to, follow certain ideas, like about society that I have. Like, for example, gender equality, they have to, like there are boundaries, like if I have a friend who just starts to tell me, “I don’t think women, feminism isn’t important any more... I would just be really mad and just not talk to him again.

Notably, Maud comments above that perhaps her sister was so much better at creating friendships because she was able to show weaknesses. For Maud, she seems to have tried, through her construction and utilization of feminism and the meanings she makes of it, to allow for a connection with, a sharing, a recognition of similarity, with her desires to be intimate and aligned with other women. This seems to be one way in which Maud attempts to shore up her anxieties around dependency and her unmanageable sense of vulnerability related to being perceived as having and showing weakness.

Maud: I never fight with my friends. Yeah. No, I don't fight with them, never.

Never. Never. I feel like there's ways in which you're more careful. If they don’t agree, about feminism, for example, as I said, I just don’t talk to them again. So, I just feel easy. It's what people say about me. They're like, "You're simple." When I'm dating for example, some people... Recently, I was talking with a guy I was

275 dating and he said, "Yeah, with you, everything is so simple." But, my brothers and sister would say I'm difficult. I have a character, things. And, when I want something, I will ask for it.

Researcher: Two very different ways of being here, it sounds like? Two different sorts of experiences people have of you depending on their role in your life.

Maud. Yeah. Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative). And, this is a problem for relationships, because when I start a relationship with someone, I'm easy. And then I start like... The relationship is becoming strong, and I shift to this more... I don't know. I just expect more things from the other. I expect them to... I want things.

Researcher: You want things.

Maud: Yeah. It’s that.

Maud describes that with her siblings, and in primary partnerships, she has “wants.” She “wants things.” Desire seems to create complexity, tensions, what she refers to as “difficulty,” a more multifaceted character. Maud’s psychic construct of femaleness, the psychic complexities of which she may seek to manage with the property of division, is also employed in varying ways in relation to men. Specifically, there is evidence from the data to suggest that Maud’s formulation of her ambition, and her professional interests and identity as they intersect with male peers, (brothers and not) are

276 influenced by the same mathematical principle of “borrowing”, “taking,” with male peers as they are with female peers, (sister and not). Demonstrated in the narrative below, Maud speaks directly to “taking the (professional) skills” she covets, and feels she needs, from each of her boyfriends.

“I took the skills.”

Researcher: Your boyfriends, the men you choose, are they usually in your field of work?

Maud: Oh, yeah. Yeah, all of them. All of them. Except one who is an architect.

All of them engineers. Mostly good coders. I became that because of them. I took the skills.

Researcher: You took the skills. That’s what you want.

Maud: It’s that. That’s what I want. I feel that I knew I wanted to take that from them, which is really mean. It's just, this is the first I say it, but I think it's been a long time, too long. It's not something to say to a friend. And, also, the mind connection was really strong with all of them.

Researcher: What else do you want to take from them?

277 Maud: Experience, sometimes. That's why they should be older. It wasn't the same for my first boyfriends, I didn't want to take anything. No, I was less selfish.

Its more creating something…and, the architect, him being an architect and an artist, that was important for me because I wanted to be an architect.

Researcher: You wanted to be an architect.

In terms of Maud’s psychic utilization of male peers, one of the fantasies she seems to imbue with meaning about men (by “men,” I imagine Maud is generally consciously, and lesser so, referring to white, heterosexually identified male peers from the privileged, educated social class and culture in which she herself grew up) is that men rule the world. She imagines men are granted greater acceptance and access to professional and avocational interests that she has, and that she wants, and in order to compete with them, and to be visible, rather than invisible, (in her femaleness) she must use her libidinized proximity to them to get close enough to “take their skills” for herself.

Interestingly, Maud describes in a section of narrative discussed further in this case study, that she is only jealous of her siblings, not ever in friendships, nor in intimate relationships with men. I imagine, however, based on her description above, of “taking skills” from men, that there is evidence to suggest otherwise, particularly regarding what she imagines is men’s gender (and race, class, etc.) privilege in the area of empowerment, internally, as well as the empowerment she imagines men are granted from without.

278 Maud: I like to paint. I like that. I was very interested with all of his work and I think that's great. He was sensitive to music, art- we could go to any museums together which is important. Yeah, that's mostly what I'm looking for and explore, like being with someone that is really curious, open mind, that is curious about art, curious about talking about things. Open mind, but also that can express his mind. Sharing minds. I feel now if I want to describe what I'm looking for, it's really someone who could understand some things in me but not only the good things, also bad things.

Researcher: Anything particular you want them to understand?

Feeling understood: “melancholy.”

Maud: I don't know. It's like sometimes I have this melancholy, I don't know how to say it, and feelings, like bad feelings about the world, and this can be deep, and I can feel really bad and I would like to share that. I live it, it's okay to live it. It's temporary most of the time... it can be a good momentum also, but it can be tough. It can be like a dark side. The boyfriend I had before had this, he was older, and he went through it, but I don't like the person he became because of that, because of this…darkness…but, that's what I'm looking for in someone, like all of this. Understand the good and the bad.

Maud has a fantasy for her melancholy to be understood by an intimate male partner. In saying that she wishes for him to “understand the good and the bad,” I image

279 she may be lesser consciously referring to a wish for what she imagines are her dualities, to be understood. “The good and the bad” she feels herself to be, may represent a number of internalized dual constructs, including: weak/strong, dependent/independent, female/male, feminine/masculine, inherent/from without, the dual construction of feminism, as she utilizes it, unconditional/conditional, and sibling/non sibling. In some ways, specifically related to her femaleness, Maud seems to experience herself in separated aspects. These fantastic, psychic bifurcations may have been created in an attempt to manage the primitive anxieties that were raised through conflicts that came up around what she imagined were unmanageably disparate aspects of herself, (for the purpose of this study, specifically as they intersected with sibling related psychic phenomena), but Maud’s bifurcated internal state leaves her feeling psychically fragile and vulnerable, depleted. She seems to long for integration, for a sense of wholeness instead of parts, and in the narrative above, consistent with her imaginings that men have all the power, perhaps she imagines that she is insufficient in herself (her female self) to create a sense of wholeness, of carrying and understanding “the good and the bad,” and that she is may achieve an improved sense of psychic wholeness and stability through the fantasy of a man’s understanding her as giving her what she needs.

Meanings and utilizations of sibling related jealousies.

Maud speaks directly about the presence of strong jealousies among her siblings and boyfriends, as well as the absence of jealousies with friends.

280 Maud: But also, my sister, we are very different. In a way that I think we had a lot of jealousy between each other, because she had a health issue when she was young. Kind of all of her younger age. She always had problems. When she was born, the left side of the brain was less irrigated. So, she had all the right side less developed. The muscles and all that. So, she had a lot to go to the doctor every day, the medication etc. Then she got life. So, that’s what my parents told me, I don't remember that. She had an infantile anorexia. So, I remember all the time my parents always mentioning my sister has to eat. Yeah, she has to eat. Yes, it's important. And yeah, all of that, plus when she started growing up, she was not growing up very quickly. So, my parents were scared that she was too small, she would be too small. They helped with hormones. And that was a lot for her.

Friends that were mine also were always with her. I think that was... yeah, I remember clearly telling my mom that that was not fair.

Yeah. But I think I was jealous also. Yeah, she was, I think more beautiful. She had good friends. All that. And so, yeah, I became very jealous. I think now might be the other way. So it's interesting because recently we met, and I just... yeah, I had a problem or something and I just... I think maybe I cried and she said, “Wow, I thought everything was so good in your life, and you have men in your life, you have a good job, you have good studies!" She thought it was perfect. So, I think she's jealous also, in a way. Things I have. Like when I'm telling her something like... well, she's telling me a story, and I try to give advice, and she's always in defensive reaction. She's like, “Don't tell me what I have to do.” I think it's kind of jealousy, but at the same time, we really love each other.

281 So yeah, we were known to have love. But, yeah, I try to call her. Well, something nice happening is she is starting to do a motorcycle license, and I have a motorcycle license also. So, she's like, she wanted to do that, and be the same, and now she's doing it. So, I'm glad she's not just jealous. Just doing what she likes. So, that's good. It’s good to have things to talk about.

Above, Maud’s positive reaction to her sister wanting to, and beginning to, work toward also getting her motorcycle license seems to have been the only specific description in the interviews of the two sisters sharing an activity or capacity. Is seems notable that the commonality happens to be around earning a motorcycle license, which is something that Maud did first, and that I imagine may be associated with a version of femaleness and feminism that is strong and empowered, rather than weak and dependent.

I further wonder about the associations Maud may have to having said it is “good to have things to talk about,” in conjunction with her sister’s decision to work toward her motorcycle license. I wonder if she may imagine that they don’t have things to talk about, or that there is nothing comfortable, or safe, to talk about outside of a concretely shared interest or capacity? If that were to be so, why might that be? Perhaps, rather than having a psychic motivation to avoid speaking about common endeavors or capacities, which, one may imagine, may evoke primitive competitive anxieties, Maud seems to find an intersection, or shared capacity with her sister to provide a “good thing” to talk about. In turn, perhaps that may mean that the other areas of divided ownership of capacities, desires, and interests between them may be more psychically dangerous fodder for conversation? Perhaps the latter may risk evoking as a more unmanageable form of

282 jealousy, a more unmanageable construct of primitive competitive anxieties, those which may be motivated by (coveting?) competing for, disavowed, projected aspects of the self in the other?

Maud: So the thing is, I don't really remember playing with people I didn't like, or people that didn't like me. The only thing I remember is that, my best friend when I was young, she had other friends. I was not at all her best friend or anything. She had multiple ones. I have never been jealous. I salute about that.

Researcher: And, did you feel jealous in your family, with your siblings?

Maud: Yes. Yeah. Only with friends, I do not. But with family, oh, I'm really jealous. And I'm jealous about talents. Not in the friends. Yes, not in the friends. I feel that I have an explanation, but I don't know how to put words on it. It's interesting. Yeah. With friendships, it's like if I was not as... It was that they're not close enough. I just take what they...With friendships, or dating, when you move, I just forget. It's like a defensive reaction. So, I started to have availability for s someone else. But I don't have jealousy. It is hard for me to understand.

Maud describes above that she is “really jealous” with her siblings, and specifically, she is “jealous about talents” with them. She also interestingly describes that she is not at all jealous with friends, such a thing is actually hard for her to understand.

With friendships, she says, “it’s like as if I was not as…It was that they’re not close enough.” With her siblings, Maud may experience being “close enough” to have the

283 feeling of jealousy awakened. Perhaps in referring to being jealous of their talents, she is motivated by primitive competitive anxieties evoked by talents (competencies, achievements represented) which she imagines belong to (reside in) her siblings, that she wishes to have for herself (to take), or to share. Perhaps also, Maud is imagining coveting talents that may be hers, projected out onto (into) a sibling.

With friendships, Maud describes that she holds them at a distance (not close enough), perhaps as a way to manage the emotional risks she organizes as “weakness”dependency, vulnerability. She describes that when partners and friends move, for example, she simply makes room for another. In this way, she may imagine she needs to protect herself from ‘weakness,” she may imagine friendships and intimate partners to be fairly interchangeable, lacking specificity and individuality.

Psychic utilizations of peer groups.

Maud: I hate groups. And I didn't know at the time that I hated groups, it just- I don't know why. That's interesting because if I find a solution, I can tell people why I don't like groups, it will be much easier. But, I really hate groups, it's weird.

I like to have one connection. In high school, I wanted to be part of a group, it's also like a social constriction of, you need to have it, this group of friends, I had that, but, I was also unsatisfied because I always thought I was not in the group.

Like never making a real connection with people.

Interestingly, Maud describes at multiple times, and in multiple ways, how much she enjoys being part of a sibling group. Additionally, in the next section in which she

284 describes her positive fantasies about having multiple children, a group, and being a family group. Given this, it is interesting that she below describes her strong negative feelings about “groups,” without specificity to the type of group, and seemingly, without a sense of all the positive associations and feelings she describes and ascribes to sibling groups. Though in her sibling group, she seems to more closely experience herself as whole, chiefly through the psychic utilization of division and projection. Maud may psychically assign uncomfortable, intolerable, aspects of herself onto other siblings, and perhaps recognizes through the vehicle of envy, “jealousy” (interestingly, as she describes, only employed and experienced within her sibling group) what is missing, what she wants for herself, what she covets, and then fills in for what she imagines are her vulnerabilities and deficits through “taking” her siblings “capacities,” and inhabiting them in herself. Within this closed sibling system of projecting, borrowing, taking, she may experience a sense of blissful wholeness in herself. Between her brothers and sister, she may feel most of the parts of herself that she locates in others to be close by. She may experience them as a complete group, missing nothing. In this way, within this sibling system, she describes the feeling as “unconditional love.”

In non-sibling peer groups, specifically in friend groups, part of the way that Maud seems to try to manage and regulate psychic and emotional risks and vulnerabilities with friends. Maud’s lesser conscious motivations in offering an “unconditional” acceptance of all friends, may include that she imagines this approach serves as a prophylactic attempt to avoid any exposure to a sense of weakness, or vulnerability. It seems that Maud may imagine that blind acceptance, “unconditional love,” as she constructs it, will shore up any psychic insecurities, primitive competitive

285 anxieties. She has utilized this strategy with her siblings in a way that seems to have been useful to her. Though, the application of this sibling dynamic, in which she does allow for hers and her siblings vulnerabilities and weaknesses, does not work as in the same was as applied to groups of friends. I imagine Maud finds herself deeply conflicted in not wanting to risk any vulnerability or “weakness” in friendships, while also wanting to she defensively employs “hating” groups, to assist in reducing her risk of feelings of dependency, and other “weaknesses” (the second aspect of feminism, as she constructs it).

Fantasies related to having children: another sibling experience, and another group.

I asked Maud about what came to mind about parenting, and she described, Maud: I picture a family, children. I would really want to have children. Since I'm 17, I knew I wanted children, but I also never thought about a husband. So, for me this is not part of the equation. Even like a partner. No. There are special case where you can raise children alone, but it's always, I feel if I can give them the chance to have a father, that's just better for them, I think. But yeah, it's not like…I think it's more selfish construction, I just want children on my own and could have fun with them…I want multiple kids. Yeah. I love kids. Because they can play together. Like I played with my brothers and sisters. Then you can see it's like a strong part of my life and I think it's so important. Yeah. I don't know if it's like you can find, if you can find this in other type of relationships. But the idea of having brothers and sisters, I don't know. I think it helped me in my life in

286 many ways, to move, to be okay with have to change environments and, yeah. So, it's like a strong base, like you create the base and it's very strong and then you can build whatever you want. Honestly, my brothers and my sister, that’s just so reassuring. Like they will always be there. I have a lot of dreams where they die, and that's awful.

Maud’s narrative about seems to suggest her imaginings regarding both providing aspects of the sibling experience to her own children, specifically what she describes as the very important sibling group experience, and, in so doing, joining the group, and having the sibling experience again, herself. Maud’s not imagining any kind of a partner in her fantasy of having “multiple kids” and in describing her desire to “play with them” she imagines that she can recreate her own sibling experience through having children.

The image that came to mind for me when Maud was describing this in the interview was of Wendy and the lost boys from the story of Peter Pan. Maud, as Wendy, was not quite an adult herself, at seventeen. In this imagining of mine, she is more the unpartnered oldest sister of the group, rather than their mother. At seventeen, Maud was approaching the transition from high school to college, and perhaps a sense of the end of her own childhood. Specifically, at this time, she was nearing the end of having her siblings as a concretely intact, day to day, group of partners, and perhaps her specific fantasy around having children, and the images that came to mind for me in listening to her, represent an attempt to manage the resulting anxieties therefore related.

Further related to Maud’s fantastic musings about having her own children, from a piece of narrative referenced prior in this case study.

287 Maud: But, I was asking for it. Just because they say, want me to do it, like when you open this toy magazine and you see that only girls are playing with this, you feel a shame of looking at the other ones. That's why I really don't want to give that to my children because like- I was most worried about what people could think of me, than what they actually thought of me, because like, they don't really care. I was feeling really bad.

Consciously, Maud may wish not to pass down to her own children the same anxiety and shame she experienced in relation to her imaginations of others’ negative reactions to aspects of the way in which she inhabits being female. And, in so wishing, perhaps she imagines a mutative, or reparative, experience for the shame and anger she carries from the meanings she makes of her own engendered childhood and adolescent experience.

Fears and wishes? Frequent dreams of siblings’ deaths.

Below, Maud described to me that she often dreams that herself, and her siblings, die.

Maud: In my dreams…I have dreams where my brothers and sister, they die. I do too. I have these dreams often. Yeah, some of my brothers. Yeah, my sister. Yeah, most of them. They are dying a lot in my dreams. Death is really present in my dreams. It’s really weird. I haven't experienced death a lot. I don't know. Well, this is very simple dreams but dreams about yeah, my brothers and sister being

288 hurt, this is happening a lot. Yeah, they're all part of my dreams. But yeah, so I feel I need them. Like if there's something happening to them…

Researcher: How are you feeling?

Maud: Sad, like just soulful, anger. I love them. It's, what am I going to do now?

I remember I even had dreams of them being killed in flights, but I know my brothers, the little one, he has dreams like that. I think most of us have dreams about some of us of the family dying. We share that, my brothers and sister. And I talked to friends about, what do you dream? They never dream about this kind of thing, the family dying. For me it's so common. I wonder if it's my brain trying to get used, no, not used, showing me what is the feeling, so I understand what I have. I feel sometimes when I dream a lot about this as I said and yeah, it reminds me, what do I have? What I have with them, my brothers and sister.

Sigmund Freud, in his (1932) work, The Interpretation of Dreams, in describing the nature of “typical dreams,” of which he includes dreams of the deaths of siblings, writes: The case of dreams where the death of a dear relative is represented, is different when emotions of sorrow are also felt. These mean what their content says: the wish that the person concerned might die…If anyone has a dream filled with grief that their mother or father, brother or sister has died, I never take this dream for evidence that the dreamer wishes them dead now (italics his). The theory of dreams does not make so great a demand; it is content to conclude that- some time in childhood- he has (italics his) wished them dead (pp. 191-192).

289 Freud then goes on to augment his assertion with a description of the psychological nature of the relationship of siblings. He writes: Let us look first at the relationship children have to their brothers and sisters. I do not know why we assume that it must be a loving one…but, very many adults too, who are very close to their siblings today and support them, lived in a state of scarcely interrupted enmity with them during childhood…Children are ruthlessly self-centered, they feel their needs intensely and aim quite ruthlessly at their satisfaction, particularly at the expense of their rivals, other children, and above all, their brothers and sisters…Thus, many people who love their brothers and sisters today, and would feel bereft at their death, carry ill wishes toward them in their unconscious from long ago, which can be realized in dreams (pp. 192-193).

Above, through the specific context of a dreaming about the death of a close family member (sibling), specifically in the case that the dream also involves sorrowful affect, Freud describes the role of the unconscious motivation of wish fulfillment.

Considered with his ideas of the psychological role of rivalry in sibling relationships, it may provide a useful and apt psychoanalytic framework for considering Maud’s description of her dream material. Perhaps Maud’s dreams of the deaths of her siblings, and their similar dreams, reflect, in some part, archaic remnants of rivalrous wishes for their disappearance.

Alter egos: Imaginations of aspects of identity otherwise constructed.

Maud twice referred to having wanted to be architect. What I imagine about that includes her possible interest in and capacity for the design and utilization of spaces. I

290 imagine that Maud spends a lot of lesser conscious time imagining how to optimally design and utilize the differing psychic needs and wants she has, and that the idea of an spending her time and having a professional identity oriented around how to best put together varying (disparate) aspects, wants, and needs into some kind of a functional, pleasing whole felt deeply familiar to her. And, in this way, I can imagine how she may have imagined that to be satisfying.

Maud also mentioned that she did not ever imagine if she would have liked to have been a medical doctor or not, as it was her sister’s dream, which was unattainable for her within the educational system of their country of origin. As well, Maud noted that she does not possess the empathic capacity her sister has, which she imagines is required to be a medical doctor. My sense at the time when Maud was speaking about this in the interview was that she may have wanted to be a medical doctor. I imagine her sister’s childhood history of serious medical problems may have been part of what may have motivated her interest, but Maud’s psychic organization did not allow for her to consider that as an option for herself. Interestingly, the profession she has chosen is similar to her father’s, and fairly identical to that of two of her brothers. It is an engendered fantasy involving her femaleness and her sister, that seems to have disallowed Maud from considering a career in medicine.

Summation.

In sum, the three meaning categories that emerged from the data were: 1. On being female: sibling related psychic utilizations of gender

291 2. Psychic utilizations of “feminism�

3. Psychic utilizations of sibling related fantasy Again, in this fourth case study, gender was the overarching theme that emerged from the data. As the narrative data and psychoanalytic interpretations also demonstrated in the previous three case studies, Maud’s psychic utilization of gender and siblinghood are prolific and inseparable.

Impressions from the interviews.

In meeting, Maud seemed socially at ease. She has an open, friendly manner and a direct gaze. She felt to me to be very bright, curious and thoughtful, and to have an inherent, fundamental confidence. Before we began the first interview, as we engaged in a short bit of initial, light conversation, I noticed that I wondered if we had grown up in a similar social class. Maud felt familiar to me, in some general way. I remember that I was interested at the time about the possibility for these to have been sibling related associations.

Prior to meeting in person Maud and I interestingly had much more communication via text than I had had with any other potential participant prior to meeting. The significant number of text (her choice of communication method) exchanges concretely involved trying to establish a time to speak on the phone to discuss her potentially becoming a participant, though at that time I felt that Maud seemed a bit skittish and I wondered whether she would decide she wanted to participate.

When we did speak on the phone, my sense of her included that she did feel to me to be fairly apprehensive and timid. She felt to me a bit deferential. I was, therefore,

292 surprised by my immediate sense of her in person, as it was very different than my prior text and phone experience of her. During the course of the five interviews, my impressions of Maud were quite consistent, she felt to me that she inhabited herself squarely and easily, with a strong sense of curiosity and an open mind. As I write this, dualities, imaginations of being a sibling, having a sibling, multiplicity in femaleness, and differing ways of being in response to differing psychic intersections with reality and fantasy, come to mind.

Pseudonym.

Maud chose her pseudonym saying it is from the old Germanic, and is a form of her given name, a relatively common female name in the romance language of her culture of origin. She told me clearly that there is no “e” (feminine?) on the end of “Maud.” And, in addition to its old Germanic origin, she told me the meaning of the name “Maud” is “powerful warrior.”

293

Chapter V

Discussion Introduction It was the goal of this research project to explore and describe remnants of siblinghood in the psychological lives of four adults. Generally, a careful analysis of the data revealed that the psychic impact of siblinghood for each of the participants, subjectively interpreted through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, was demonstrably profound. This chapter will have as its focus a description of the results of an in-depth cross case analysis of the data, with specific attention to the major themes and relevant sub-themes gleaned from the four within-case analyses. The remainder of this chapter will include discussions of theoretical, clinical and research implications based on the data derived through this research project, a discussion of possible reasons for the dearth of literature on this research topic, and finally, a summation.

Summary of Findings from the Cross-Case Analysis As described, the first section of this chapter will be the cross-case analysis of the data that emerged from the interviews with this study’s four research subjects.

The cross-case analysis will contain a description of the major themes that emerged from the within-case analyses, illuminating relevant points of conference and difference within each theme, among the four participants. As in each within-case analysis, this cross-case

294 analysis will describe three major themes and a number of relevant subthemes, each of which will be described in detail below, and among all of which, the supraordinate finding was the psychological utilization of (meanings made of) gender, in relation to psychic siblinghood. Additionally, a cross-case analysis of the section “impressions from the interviews” from the within-case analyses in Chapter IV, will be reviewed.

The psychological impact of gender.

The psychological impact of gender was the predominant finding that emerged from the data with each of the participants. In each case study, psychic utilizations of gender, which emerged from a psychoanalytically informed interpretation of participants’ sibling related material, were interwoven throughout every meaning category. In each of the four case studies for this research project, my sense of the data included that psychic meanings and utilizations of siblinghood were, in varying ways, fundamentally interwoven with gender, a psychically embedded social construction. As demonstrated through numerous examples in the case studies, each of the study’s participants made specific psychic use, and ascribed meaning to, their “being a brother” and “being a sister,” as well as to “having a brother(s) and having a sister(s). In this sense, gender is a central organizer for the psychic meaning of siblinghood. For each participant, “being a brother or a sister” to brothers, and/or to sisters, interestingly evoked both similar and differing psychic fantasies and utilizations, more about which will be described further in this chapter.

295 Gender and the contents of preconception.

As I began this research project, I was curious about the consideration of psychic siblinghood within the context of Bion’s construct of preconception. Specifically, the possibility of a “preconception” of siblinghood that “awaits its realization to produce a conception.” I wonder if perhaps the concept of preconception may be used to frame a human subject’s initial locating and naming siblinghood, subjectively determined and developed by the unique ways and timings through which each person experiences, in Bion’s language, the “awakenings of what is recognized as being related, yet unknown,” the bits which contain what becomes known and articulated as “siblinghood.”

The results of the data from this research project further raised my curiosity about the possibilities involved in an interrelationship of psychic siblinghood, Bion’s idea of preconception, and the ways in which gender may shape and influence the contents of that which may be preconceived. As my interpretation of the data included that participants’ psychic meanings and utilizations of siblinghood were inextricably interwoven with gender, possible ways in which gender may shape and influence the contents of that which may be preconceived, for the purpose of this study, related to the phenomenon of psychic siblinghood, remains for me an interesting and relevant topic.

It is important to note that though each of the participants in this research study had siblings, as posited multiple times in Chapters I and II, it is my assumption and contention that the psychic utilization of siblinghood is available regardless one’s sibling status.

296 As cited previously in Chapter 2, Bion (1963) writes: The term “dog” (“unconscious,” “dream,” “table,” etc.) is used when and because a set of phenomena is recognized as being related yet unknown. It is used to prevent the scattering of the phenomena. Having found the name, and thereby bound the phenomena, the remainder of history, if so wished, can be devoted to determining what it means—what a dog is; the name is an invention to make it possible to think and talk about something before it is known what that something is…To sum up: the pre-conception awaits its realization to produce a conception: the term “dog” waits for a real dog to provide it with meaning (pp. 86-87).

In further reference to Bion’s concept, the “preconception awaits its realization to produce a conception,” the “set of phenomena” that get imbued with the meaning, and articulated with the language, of siblinghood may or may not be related to biological siblinghood. Biological siblinghood, in this way, is not a mandate for psychological siblinghood.

Psychological utilizations and representations of siblinghood.

The word itself, internalization, suggests that something initially other and outside the boundary, something with its own essence, has been taken inside... it may somehow be shorn of its quality of otherness, and be experienced as part of the essential self, or ego; in that case it will be called identification…what is internalized may be seen as being absorbed into an undifferentiated or regressively dedifferentiated or merged selfother; in this account it will be presented as dissolved in symbiotic union, distinctions between self and others having become irrelevant, impossible, or unbearable…it may

297 seem that the status of the internalized other is not fixed; in these instances it may be best described as shifting between the status of the introject, identification, and the primitively merged. In another kind of repetitive shifting, the internalized other may seem repeatedly to get projected back into the external world and the reintrojected again” (Shafer, 1990, p. xiii).

As previously reviewed, for each case study a subjectively informed and psychoanalytically theoretically situated analysis of the data revealed substantive examples of each participant’s utilizations of sibling related psychological phenomena.

Following, my interpretations of the relevant interplay of sibling related fantasy and the psychoanalytically informed constructs: “like a brother/sister,” “similar” and “different,” castration anxiety, primitive competitive anxieties, libidinization, and representations and utilizations of groups, among all the participants are presented with particular attention to aspects of conference and difference.

“Like a brother/sister.”

In responding to my question about who comes to mind when they imagine someone who is “like a brother” or “like a sister” to them, Andrew, Doug and Michael each responded freely, and in some detail. Maud, interestingly said that no one came to mind, and that no one would, as for her, her siblings have a status that is not replicable.

The ways Andrew seemed to psychically utilize the first cousins and male friends he described as “like a brother/sister” seemed very different than they ways he characteristically makes psychic use of his sister. For Andrew, “like a brother/sister” seemed predominantly organized around his subjective experience of “effortless

298 communication” and “lack of conflict”. Andrew seemed to associate an idealized intimacy he may have imagined “should” accompany siblinghood, with persons with whom he may imagine he is as similar as possible, (specifically, with whom there is no evocation of conflict or aggression) and with whom he may imagine feeling fully and intuitively understood. In this way, for Andrew, “like a brother/sister” seemed the opposite of how he seemed to describe, construct and imagine his actual sister.

Fundamentally, for Andrew, “like a brother/sister” seemed centrally organized around those with whom he imagined he could psychically utilize to augment his own sense of psychic and sexual vulnerability. He seemed not to, in any way, imagine his younger sister as psychically supportive to his primitive anxieties, rather, it seems there is evidence to suggest that he may imagine her as a major contributor to them, and as such, (partially) accountable for his psychic discomfort. In this way, Andrew seems to imagine “like a brother/sister” as those with whom his anxieties may be soothingly bound, a psychic utilization he does not employ with his sister.

For Doug, and Michael, the persons whom they described as “like a brother/sister” seemed to represent some of each of their psychic utilizations of siblinghood. Doug described two colleagues a work and a friend from college. In reference to the colleagues, both of whom work for him, Doug described them in terms that suggested a psychic use of rank order, a construct with which he seemed also to describe his sisters. In a similar organization, the friend from college that Doug described as “like a brother” is someone to whom he feels somewhat similar in intellectual capacity, but whom Doug seems to conceptualize as significantly more helpless than himself. In this way, very similar aspects of the way Doug may imagine his relationship

299 to his older sister is represented, with Doug playing the role of his oldest sister.

Doug

seemed to describe “like a brother/sister” as including those to whom he experiences an attachment over time, and with whom he feels secure in a sense of “loyalty” and “commitment”, and it seemed in each case, with whom several sibling related dynamics may also have been at play. The specific sibling related dynamics identified in Doug’s descriptions of “like a brother/sister” seemed to be organized around the “rank ordered” roles in which he descriptively cast himself and the other(s). Doug also described his relationships with each of these three “like a brother/sister” people in terms of his very long term, almost unbreakable, commitment to them. In the ways described above, I imagine Doug’s associations to “like a brother/sister as perhaps representing a lesser conscious attempt to psychically prop up his deep sense of insufficiency through remnants of sibling related fantasy, specifically involving idealized identifications and conflicts and fantasies associated with primitive competitive anxieties, grandiosity and helplessness.

Michael responded that no one came to mind regarding “like a brother/sister” “back home”, he said he “had enough brothers”. I imagine he may have responded in this way as he may consciously, or lesser so, perceive it to be disloyal to the “band of brothers” to give anyone else a similar title. In this way, Michael and Maud seems similar. Interestingly, and different than Maud, Michael does describe a few friends in the city in which he lives in the U.S. whom he says fit “that description”. Each of the friends Michael describes are male, also from his country of origin, and with whom he describes a sense of “loyalty.” “Loyalty” is described as a value present in “like a brother/sister” for Andrew, Doug and Michael.

300 For Michael, the friends he describes as “like a brother” seem to represent the “band of brothers” fairly directly; they are “good guys” he says, “solid guys.” Less directly, I imagine Michael may allow for himself to be in some ways more different from the friends in the “like a brother” construct than he does with his brothers. Notably, Michael’s seems not to be noticeably conflicted about his educational and professional ambition within the “like a brother” construct. In his narration about “like a brother” friends, I sensed something missing than was present in some of his narrative about his brothers. My fantasy about what I sensed as missing in relation to the “like a brother” construct may have been some sense of guilt/anxiety related to having an ego ideal (becoming a Ph.D. in a scientific discipline, moving to America), that I sensed in some of his narrative about the brothers. I imagine perhaps my sense of the missing feeling may be related in part to a psychic utilization of “like a brother” as a way to experience a “band of brothers” as similar enough, but which also allows for a more comfortable degree of individuality, which may allow for a reduction in any guilt related psychic tension.

While Michael seemed soothed by the engaging in some cultural and recreational (drinking at a pub on weekends) similarities to the “band of brothers” within the “like a brother” construct, the differences between the two groups regarding any possible internal pressure to have hidden any aspects of himself he may imagine are at odds with the expectations for the good of the brothers group, and the resultant difference in the lesser conscious need to manage guilt, among other aspects of primitive competitive anxieties, are significant. It may be difficult, for example, to maintain the value of “team

301 spirit” if the presence of rivalry, envy, winners, and losers are allowed onto the psychic field of play.

Maud, similar to Michael in the context of his country of origin, stated she imagined no one with a “like a brother/sister” description. Siblings, the sibling group, for Maud and Michael, seemed in many ways psychically held as a unique and protected class of their own, though Michael allows for some replication, (“like a brother) in the life he has in the U.S. separate from his brothers. Similar to Andrew and Doug, Maud seems to psychically utilizes her siblings, in part, through projecting unmanageable aspects of herself (perceptions of weakness/femininity) onto her sister, (thereby keeping those aspects of herself close at hand, with the psychic utilization of her sister as herself).

As well, Maud seemed also to allow for the presence of envy (specifically around “capacities”) among siblings, and only among siblings, all of which is wrapped in a blanket of “unconditional love” which includes a sense of loyalty that Michael seemed also to describe regarding his brothers. Maud, however, seems not to seek to similarly identify, or utilize in the above described ways, any peers but her siblings. My sense was that Maud remains profoundly psychically invested in the psychic utilization of her siblings, and perhaps anxious and conflicted in her imagination about expanding that investment.

302 “Similar and different.”

“Cloning…seems to be a final solution to problem of otherness. And, of course, the end of any continuing need…for two sexes in the task of reproduction. In one fell swoop, cloning is a cure for sexuality and difference” (Phillips, 1998, p.88).

“The sibling is par excellence someone who threatens the subject's uniqueness.

The ecstasy of loving one who is like oneself is experienced at the same time as the trauma of being annihilated by one who stands in one's place” (Mitchell, 2003, p.10).

Andrew seemed to employ the psychic use of “similar” and “different” to attempt to help himself shore up his profound sense of psychic insufficiency (castration anxiety) as well as to attempt to manage his primitive competitive anxieties. In these ways, broadly defined, Andrew’s use of similar and different seemed similar to Doug’s.

Andrew seemed to imagine intimacy and safety are located within “effortless communication,” which, in turn, he further may imagine is possible only with a matching kind of similarity. Andrew seemed to use “different” as the psychic label for others, namely his sister, in whom he locates (deposits) unmanageable aspects of himself, most significantly related to aggression, badness, and psychic and sexual insufficiency.

Andrew seemed to seek to attempt to manage primitive competitive anxieties that may be raised between himself and his sister by locating his sense of psychic insufficiency in her person, her gender, and in their dyadic sibling construct; each of which Andrew describes as lacking. Andrew seemed to attempt to rid himself of his aggressive anxieties, as well as to manage the primitive competitive anxieties that are raised between them, by locating his sense of psychic insufficiency and insecurities about being enough, in her.

303 Additionally, related to gender, Andrew seemed to make very specific and concrete psychic use of “similarity” and “difference.” My sense is that he may seek to shore himself up through the similar gender identification and libidinization, of masculinity. Similar to Michael, Andrew (though with somewhat different aim) utilizes “team spirit” and “band of brothers.” Fantasies related to differences in gender may be one way in which Andrew attempts to manage his aggressive anxieties, his primitive competitive anxieties, and his sexual desire.

For Andrew, (and in some ways, similarly for Michael) through fantasies of gender similarity which seem to involve identification and idealization, and stripped of his (their) primitive aggressive and competitive anxieties, men (I imagine both themselves and others) may be experienced as desirable, admirable, “effortless,” and pleasurable. Whereas, the construct of differently gendered female peers generally (and notably for Andrew, his sister) seem in many ways a source of intense psychic discomfort. I imagine one way in which Andrew psychically utilizes gender, (difference) in this example of the construct of women, is as the repository of his aggressive and competitive anxieties and guilt, as well as objects of desire. Andrew seems to attempt to manage all the conflicts created through his fantasies of women and difference from a fantasy of safe enough distance, through using fantasies of porn, and groups of women (polygamy) as more manageable substitutes for the emotional risks involved with a whole person.

Like Andrew, Doug seems to also utilize “similar” and “different” to shore up a fundamental sense of psychic insufficiency and to manage his intense profound sense of psychic and sexual insufficiency (castration anxiety), as well as primitive competitive

304 anxieties. For Doug, the sibling related psychic use of “similar” and “different” seems quite extensive and profound. “Similar” and “different” are significantly employed in his central organizing “Baby/boy genius” psychic construct. Similar to Andrew, Doug seems to attempt to manage an unmanageable fantasy of psychic insufficiency (castration anxiety) by shoring himself up through fantasies of identification (“similar”) with his older sisters. Doug may imagine that he is as smart and capable “(genius) as his older sister, maybe even more so (grandiosity and use of rank order), as well as he may imagine that he inhabits a similar sense of agency accomplishment and his middle sister.

Doug may also lesser consciously seek to shore himself up through devaluing his middle sister’s intellectual capacity, agency, and manifest achievements. Doug also seems to psychically attempts to prop himself up through the use of “different.” Specifically related to gender, Doug uses “different” as part of his justification of the “boy/genius” construct, his fantasy seems to include that within his family, which gets carried into his imaginations of peers generally, his intellectual capacity (genius) and other capacities (violin) are “different” than many/most. For a potential fantasy of high capacity difference, (grandiosity) Doug seems to suffer the consequence of a perception of isolation. In this way, he may imagine himself a further degree “different” from his peers, further removed from “similar”.

Michael may psychically utilize the sibling related psychic significance of “similar” as a value, a code, among band of brothers, a form of loyalty, as any acknowledgment of difference risks a break the ranks. Similarity among the brothers may fundamentally be what allows for Michaels description of “team spirit”- finding pleasure in being together, working together, being a group, with no organization around winners

305 and losers. In this way, for Michael, (as well, in ways for Andrew and Doug) similarity may be psychically employed as an antidote for the imagined destruction inherent in allowing for primitive competitive anxieties to come to the fore, and an antivenom for any that may get from time to time, evoked. In large part, I imagine individuality (difference) is imagined to be a threat to team spirit and to the general integrity of the band of brothers, as it may allow for the evocation of primitive competitive anxieties.

Differently than for Andrew and Doug, Michael’s use of “similar” and “different,” as well as identification, with his brothers and as he describes, with male peers, (friends, colleagues) seems less fraught with residue from unmanageable castration anxiety and more organized around managing primitive competitive anxieties.

Michael’s use of “similar” and “different” in the psychic intersection of siblinghood and gender regarding women different than is Andrew’s or Doug’s. For Michael, the centrally organizing experience of “emotional manipulation” (projection and projective identification), with his mother, as a psychic and emotional threat, seems to also be a thread in his fantasies about female peers. Michael’s engendered fantasy of “emotional manipulation” seems to include that “emotional manipulation” is a risk with women, (difference) generally, not men. And, he further may imagine “emotional intelligence” (rationalization/part rationalization), how he imagines his mind, and most men’s minds, are organized, is its antidote. While Michael’s mother is the sole subject described in his narrative of the origins of regarding the impact of what he terms “emotional manipulation,” he may lesser consciously extrapolate his maternal experience to female peers, and therefore may imagine that the threat of attempted projection, projective identification, and the antidote of rationalization may be in women generally,

306 are the criteria he seeks most to avoid. Michael may further imagine in privileging seeking female peers who are similar to himself in demonstrating a capacity for being “rational/part rational”, a sense of psychic and emotional integrity, safety, and the capacity for intimacy may be more likely.

Maud seems also to extensively psychically utilize similarity in gender.

Femaleness seems to be the organizing principle of her fantasy of psychic vulnerability, and in this way, this same central position on the psychic relationship to one’s own gender is also shared by Andrew and Doug. Maud may imagine that her femaleness is a threat to a deeply rooted sense of psychic (physical, sexual, cultural, professional) sufficiency. She specifically seems to imagine that femininity represents weakness, and thus she attempts to shore herself up against insufficiency by projecting out what she imagines is feminine onto her sister. Maud seems to allow for what she calls “feminism” as a way to inhabit being female that is strong, rather than weak. As such, and as previously demonstrated in Chapter IV, and will be further demonstrated later in this chapter, Maud seems to inhabit a split construct of femaleness. She may imagine that she is safe from the perception of weakness (by herself and from without) as long as she inhabits the aspects of femaleness that she includes under the banner of “feminism,” and disavows the aspects of femaleness that she imagines are “feminine.”

The sibling related psychic utilization of “difference,” for Maud, seems employed as “not me” in both the disavowal and projection of threatening aspects of her own femaleness, as well as in part, her envy of what she imagines is her brothers’ privilege and empowerment (recognized both from within and without.) Her brothers, for examples don’t have to “take” the skills they want and need from another gender. Her brothers’

307 Maud may imagine, aren’t left with “hating” themselves for inhabiting themselves in ways imagine they must, in order to be/have/do what they want.

In this way, for Maud, “similar” and “different” seem both employed within the construct of being female, (the sibling representation of which is her sister as feminine and herself as feminist) as well as between female and male (the sibling representation of which is herself as female (both parts) and her brothers as male. In her narrative, as highlighted in the within-case analysis, Maud describes her siblings (including herself) as similar, as does Michael, regardless what else they may say about their differences.

Libidinization.

From this perspective, the sexual instinct is not simply a striving, an impulse, a desire, but the vehicle (not a vehicle) by which human beings create meaning. In other words, Freud did not simply propose that the sexual instinct be thought of as, generating sexual wishes and impulses. Of much wider significance is the idea that human beings interpret all perceptions in terms of sexual meanings, thereby creating experience. One makes sense of one’s internal and external perceptions through the lens of a system of sexual meanings” (Ogden, 1983. p. 507).

As posited in Chapter II, Ogden’s description and interpretation of Freud’s ideas regarding libidinization proposes that all human behavior, including all cultural achievements and psychopathology, can be understood through sexual meaning. Freud’s concept allows that a subject makes sense of her internal and external perceptions though the lens of the system of sexual meanings. Ogden refers to the metaphor, “the sexual instinct is the Rosetta stone which allows the human being to translate raw sensory data

308 into meaning-laden experience” (p. 507). While for Freud, “phylogenetic inheritance” is the basis for the capacity of instinct to give rise to predetermined constellations of libidinal meanings, (the Oedipal construct etc.) the data for all four participants in this research project revealed varying forms of sibling related psychic utilization of libidinization.

Andrew seems to psychically utilize two aspects of sibling related libidinization, perhaps organized as one form with men, and one form with women. Regarding the former, as described in Chapter IV, Andrew seems to attempt to manage his guilt around his own capacity for aggression, of which his sister (and female peers by extension) are a main target, and his primitive competitive anxieties, as well as his anxiety related to his sense of psychic vulnerability and insufficiency, by directing his libidinal interest toward identifying with idealized male peers. Similar to Michael, in general structure, Andrew’s psychic life seems largely informed by a libidinized brotherhood.

Andrew seems deeply conflicted about his sexual drive. He describes feeling very guilty about it, trying to “control” it, from the time he was in early high school. Andrew identifies sexual desire as aggressive, and he characterizes aggression as bad, and therefore himself as bad. Andrew seemed a bit unaware that he would speak about his sister in very similar terms, and in the same thread of narrative, he could be intensely anxious about “being perceived as that guy,” that guy, he describes, who is coercive, critical, dismissive with women, their feelings and/or their bodies. As such, Andrew seems to seek to manage the anxiety created, by channeling his aggressive desires toward porn and masturbation. Andrew may lesser consciously imagine that porn and masturbation are ways to direct libidinal energy toward his fantasies of aggression

309 without engaging them directly with women, attempting thus to reduce his guilt and anxiety. And, in directing libidinal energy toward an identification with idealized masculinity, Andrew may experience his depleted psychic state as more fully supported.

Further, the data from Andrew and Doug’s narratives suggested similar demonstrations of the libidinization of siblinghood. Andrew and Doug each demonstrated psychic evidence of significant investment of libido in their sisters, which seemed to create intense conflicts and guilt for Andrew, the presence of which he had a vague awareness, but about which he seemed totally unaware of the origin. Doug seemed lesser conflicted about his libidinal investment, imperceptibly guilty.

I became aware in the interviews with Andrew and with Doug that for both, in some ways the girls and women they each described as having had intense crushes on, and in whom they have had romantic and sexual interest seemed to me very similar to their sisters (for Doug, his middle sister). I noticed that the content of the physical descriptions and other manifest characteristics were often similar, and, interestingly, I also noticed that both Andrew and Doug felt similar in describing the girls and women who have been objects of desire and their sisters. Something about the ways in which they seemed to inhabit themselves in relation to the women they desired: the presence of intense longing, a deep desire for their approval, a notable sensitivity to their reactions to them, seemed deeply similar to the ways in which they inhabited themselves when speaking about their sisters. Additionally, relationships with the women to whom Andrew and Doug seem libidinally drawn have, as yet, “not worked out.” Andrew has reacted to the “not working out” in the same way he seems to inhabit the “not working out” with his sister, psychically attempting to minimize their significance by shifting his attention and

310 libidinal investment more fully to identifications with groups of idealized men. Doug seems to inhabit the “not working out” of the most significant intimate relationship he described as a profound loss. I had the sense the loss was in some way still very alive for him. My further sense included that the way in which he inhabits the loss of that most significant partnership may be holding the psychic and libidinal place for her prototype, the person with whom the feelings and the suffering of the relational distance also belong, his middle sister.

Doug’s psychic use of the libidinization of his middle sister may interestingly include the qualities of hers that he took as his own (as may Maud’s, with her siblings and also with intimate male partners). Doug seems to in some ways psychically borrow, from his middle sister, with the lesser conscious aim of increased senses of agency and empowerment, the connection with her therewith providing the psychic space for libidinal investment. Doug, as I imagine did Maud with her siblings, took bits of his sister into himself. Further, Doug described that as a young boy, he sought emotional refuge in his middle sister, sleeping in her room for a year after the dream about the wolves. Doug also interestingly described seeking what I understood as a similar aim for emotional refuge in his most significant intimate partner. Through her, Doug described seeking to shore up his “self-esteem” his “confidence,” he tried to manage his profound sense of psychic, masculine, insufficiency through “leaning on,” borrowing from her stronger sense of agency and self-concept.

For Michael, there seemed an energy, a sense of psychic depth and traction, to the construct of the “band of brothers” which seems to dominate his sibling psychic life.

His psychic sibling life seems populated nearly entirely with men. He described no

311 significant female peers in the history of his life, but interestingly, one six-year primary relationship. At the time of these interviews, Michael’s primary relationship had been over for more than five years, more about that will be discussed further in this section. I interpret my sense of Michael’s energetic traction as imbued with meaning and as a manifestation of psychic libidinization of siblinghood. In this broad way, though the origins and aims are very different, Michael and Andrew seem also to share a similar sibling related libidinized construct regarding the organization around groups of men.

Regarding libidinization and female peers, Michael seems to be organized around restraint and emotional safety. His primary criterion for a sexual interest in a female peer seems to be her demonstration of emotional reliability. Michael seems to seek to identify with this capacity in another, which he holds in high regard in himself. This may be understood as a form of libidinized similarity. With Michael, I was also aware of a sense of physical energy in the room, a sort of sparkly something, but in some way, it seemed inaccessible, remote. The sense of restraint I describe about Michael seemed to have a physically energetic quality as well as a psychically energetic quality. Michael has had only one significant intimate relationship, and it was significantly longer than were Andrew’s and Doug’s. Michael’s gave an uncharacteristically, for him, long and detailed description of the “not working out.” And, as I write this, I realize that I had the same sense of the physical and psychic tension as he was describing her and what happened to their relationship. It has been a number of years since that relationship ended, and he describes having no significant connection with female peers, including friends, colleagues or partners since. I imagine in negative relief, the space that she, and their

312 relationship, formerly occupied, is now strung with lights and sparkles in the emotional distance, not reachable directly, and not currently temporally connected.

Maud’s psychic employment of sibling libidinization may be also be demonstrated in two forms as interpreted from the data. In one way, it seems engaged by the evocation of the identification of disowned aspects of herself found in the other- an active dynamic with her sister, deeply imbued with meaning. In this way, I subjectively interpret Maud’s evocative descriptions of a same gender crush, and same gender flirtation as descriptive of her highly libidinized relationship with her sister, as described in Chapter IV. I am reminded of Juliet Mitchell’s (2003) point, cited in Chapter I: An examination of siblings and sibling relationships will bring both genders into the analytical picture. The sibling, I believe, is the figure which underlies such nearly forgotten concepts as the ego-ideal – the older sibling is idealized as someone the subject would like to be, and sometimes this is a reversal of the hatred for a rival. It can be an underlying structure for homosexuality (p. 16).

The second form of sibling related libidinization that seemed to emerge from the data in Maud’s narrative involves the legacy of sibling related dynamics with male peers to whom she is romantically and sexually drawn. Discussed prior, Maud describes that men to whom she is substantively attracted are men “of similar mind.” What she says she wants from them, in part, is to “take their skills.” Maud’s sibling dynamics, in part, seem to include the use of projection of unmanageable parts of herself onto her sister, and the envy of her siblings “capacities.” In this way, Maud’s use of sibling related libidinization may be broadly similar to Doug’s and Andrew’s. Doug also “takes” from his middle sister. He “takes” her sense of agency, her feeling of accomplishment. Andrew projects

313 his sense of psychic insufficiency onto his sister, and “takes” what he describes as her original bravery, as his own. Similar, also, to the way that Doug and Andrew and Michael felt to me when speaking about their siblings, Maud’s speaking about her siblings seemed accompanied by a notable use of affective intensity and evocative language.

As with Andrew, Doug and Michael, my sense of the psychic and physical energy attached to Maud’s reference to her siblings, in addition to the specific language selected, is part of what informs my understanding of her libidinal use of them. In every case, my subjective interpretation of the participants’ language and affect were useful in the recognition of threads of sibling related libidinal investment.

The psychic utilization of sibling related play.

Each of the participants freely discussed the topic of sibling related play in the interviews. In “Playing and Reality,” Winnicott (1971) writes, “It is my purpose here to simply give a reminder that children’s playing has everything in it (p. 50). Winnicott’s reference may be useful in imagining that play, for each of the participants involves, in varying ways, representations of sibling related internalizations, mental objects, and mental object relations.

Andrew described that as a very young child he had the sense that he played with his sister because he was “supposed to,” because “she was there,” and that he doesn’t have a sense of having enjoyed playing with her. He said: My sister never had that chemistry of where me and her could, after maybe second grade, there wasn’t this chemistry where we could just sit and hangout and fulfill ourselves. I think it was not the same direction. I think she really loved

314 being around me and she wanted to be around me, but I didn’t reciprocate that because we had way different friend groups. I was captain of the football team, and my close friends that I played sports with and hung out with were guys.”

I find Andrew’s language interesting in the above quote. I imagine that anxiety related to his sister, (“after second grade” one is about eight years old) perhaps, in part, anxiety as a consequence for both his locating his own feelings of psychic insufficiency in his sister, and tensions related to imbuing his sister with libidinal interest. Winnicott writes: Playing involves the body: (i) because of the manipulation of objects; (ii) because certain types of intense interest are associated with certain aspects of bodily excitement. Bodily excitement in erotogenic zones constantly threatens playing, and therefore threatens the child’s sense of existing as a person. The instincts are the main threat to play as to the ego; in seduction some external agency exploits the child’s instincts and helps to annihilate the child’s sense of existing as an autonomous unit, making playing impossible (cf. Khan, 1964). Playing is essentially satisfying [italics Winnicott’s] this is true even when it leads to a high degree of anxiety. There is a degree of anxiety that is unbearable, and this destroys playing (p. 52).

In playing with boys, particularly playing sports, Andrew’s, similar to Michael’s and Maud’s, seems to utilize identification and the lesser conscious direction of libidinal energy toward the “team spirit” construct as a way to manageably frame primitive competitive anxieties. Andrew, Michael, and Maud all seem to usefully frame a capacity to play within a sibling related, (constructed as “brotherly”) paradigm.

315 Maud also seems to make some use of the team spirit construct, specifically in play with her brothers. While Andrew and Michael frame “team spirit” play as likegendered play, Maud’s use of gender related ideas seem a bit more fluid. She describes what I understand to essentially be the same components of “team spirit” play in comfortably allowing for authentic aspects of herself to engage with authentic aspects of her brothers in play. Regarding her sister, I imagine related to Maud’s sense of unmanageable engendered anxiety, including her use of projection in locating her sense of engendered “weakness” in her sister, Maud described “never” playing with her sister, and very rarely with female peers. She does, however, describe an interest in, and ability to, play by herself.

Notably, regarding the concept of “team spirit” and the management of primitive competitive anxieties, Michael describes that in playing sports with his brothers and male peers, winning was not the goal. The goal was a positive, mutually satisfying individual and group experience. In this way, there was not a focus on winners and losers, there was a focus on the feeling of playing something together.

Doug describes vaguely remembering playing with sisters. The one specific memory he relates involves his sisters’ dressing him up as a girl. My memory of Doug’s language and affect during that description is that it was fairly unremarkable. Further, Doug describes that as a young boy he played with neighborhood kids, but nothing was particularly memorable. For Doug, the centrally organizing Baby/boy/genius psychic construct may have made it difficult for him to engage in play. His extensive psychic use of helplessness and grandiosity as attempts to manage his profound anxiety of psychic and masculine insufficiency, as well as his fantasies of isolation, may also have created

316 intense anxiety related to the evocation of primitive competitive anxieties. The description of his relationship to video games and the friend with whom he played them, seemed to me the most significant example in which Doug seemed to be able engage in any form of play, specific to this example, I imagine a form of parallel play.

Winnicott writes: In playing, the child manipulates external phenomena to playing, and from playing to shared playing, and from this to cultural experiences‌. The essential feature of my communication is this, that playing is an experience, always a creative experience, and it is an experience in the space-time continuum, a basic form of living (pp. 50-51).

Sibling related psychic utilizations of peer groups.

Internalization of an object relationship necessarily involves a splitting of the ego into parts, that when repressed, constitute internal objects which stand in particular relationship to one another. This internal relationship is shaped by the nature of the original object but does not by any means bear a one to one correspondence with it, and is in addition, potentially modifiable by subsequent experience. The internal object relationship may later be re-externalized by means of projection and projective identification in an interpersonal setting thus generating the transference and countertransference phenomena of analysis and all other interpersonal interactions (Ogden, 1983. p. 227).

As discussed in his case study, and previously in this chapter, Andrew seems deeply psychically invested in groups of peers, historically boys, now men. Andrew

317 explicitly details in his narrative many ways in which it is in groups of peers that he feels comfortable, fulfilled, excited, interested, challenged. He describes that friends are important to him, and the friends with whom he feels closest, are men he admires and who are similar to himself. Additionally, through the “lack of conflict” and “effortless communication with the men in his friendship groups, he describes feels good about himself, like he’s “a good person.” Through employing identification and idealization with groups of male peers whom he admires, Andrew may be able to bolster his fragile sense of self and shore up his primary sense of psychic and masculine insufficiency.

Doug seemed to attempt to psychically manage his sense of psychic insufficiency, sexual insecurity, and primitive competitive anxieties in his sibling group through the utilization of “taking” from his sisters’ capacities to shore up his own, as does Maud, and what Doug psychically “took” and/or “borrowed” from his sisters’ were used in the construction of his primary psychic organization, the baby/boy genius construct.

Differently than Andrew, Doug explicitly discusses in the interviews that he has never been comfortable in groups of men. Doug states several times that he has “never understood” how boys, now men, “work.” In this way, I imagine that Doug’s difficulty in relating to men, groups of men specifically, may be related to his deep sense of psychic insufficiency. Doug seems to imagine that the primitive competitive anxieties which are evoked in groups of male peers are unmanageable. To attempt to stabilize his psychic fragility in groups, he may utilize aspects of his “baby/boy/genius” construct, primarily helplessness, grandiosity and isolation. As well, when possible, as is the case with the groups of employees he has, and in significant friendships, he seems to defensively utilize rank order as a way to additionally support his sense of internal fragility.

318 Michael, like Doug, Andrew and Maud, has a sibling related centrally organizing psychic construct, in his case, a “band of brothers.” Michael was born into a group of male peers, and the stability of the actual sibling group, as well as the psychic construct of “the band of brothers,” in which he is deeply libidinally invested, seems manifestly and fantastically represented in his thinking generally, as well as in his friendships and collegial relationships.

As mentioned previously in Chapter IV, as well as earlier in this chapter, Michael clearly describes the lack of a sense of competition among the band of brothers, rather, he describes that the focus of each brother is on the well-being of the group (“team spirit”).

In this way, primitive competitive anxieties may be more adequately managed. Michael seems to inhabit “team spirit” within each of the peer groups he described, in which he is a member, and perhaps not surprisingly, he is a member of many academic, professional, recreational and friendship groups.

For Michael, Doug, and Andrew, there seems to be a continuity and connection to sibling related fantasy in their ongoing inhabiting of sibling related dynamics and psychic utilization of groups of peers. Maud, differently, plainly stated in the interviews that she “hates groups,” and that she doesn’t know why. Interestingly, Maud repeatedly describes how much she loves her sibling group, (though she does not refer to them as a group, perhaps in some way(s) she doesn’t hold them in mind as a “group”?) My sense, as described in Chapter IV, and previously in this chapter, is that Maud significantly, psychically utilizes her siblings individually by locating aspects of herself in them, thus contributing to a significant libidinal investment in each of them. In this way, broadly, Maud utilization of her siblings seems similar to Andrew’s utilization of his sister. Maud

319 also, as described, “takes”/borrows from intimate partner’s capacities, (as I imagine she does with her brothers, who also have her same professional aims and interests). This dynamic utilization of Maud’s siblings seems similar in many ways to Doug’s utilization of his sisters. Michael describes an individual psychic utilization of three of his five brothers in differing ways. He identifies with and admires varying aspects of his oldest and second oldest brother’s capacities: good father, good role model, charismatic, socially adept, successful with flirtation, and with his one younger brother, he seems to inhabit a sense of competence and some pleasure in the responsibility he feels in his role as older brother.

Specifically related to the psychic utilization of the sibling group, differentiated from the psychic use of individual siblings, Maud seems to utilize the group, and the group’s closeness (“unconditional love”) to construct a sense of psychic wholeness.

Maud may imagine herself as a “feminist,” female/strong, but not feminine/weak.

Through the use of identification, Maud may imagine she is in part like her sister, and in part like her brothers; specifically, in her potential use locating unmanageable parts of herself into her sister (femininity/weakness) and “taking”/borrowing from her brothers’ capacities, and very significantly, her sense of their culturally sanctioned privilege, which she imagines is inherent in their masculinity. As Maud fairly liberally seems to psychically assign and “take” aspects herself and her siblings’, she may imagine an experience of herself as “whole” within the sibling group. All the disparate aspects of herself are close at hand, securely bound together through “unconditional love.”

Maud’s psychic utilization of her sibling group may be seen at play with her peers, in many ways, such is also the case for Andrew, Doug and Michael. Maud, in her

320 sibling group, has the role of sister, both older and younger, and sister to a sister, as well as sister to brothers. Each of these permutations contributes to the specific ways in which Maud psychically utilizes female and male peers, individually and in groups. Similarly, Andrew, Doug and Michael also psychically represent their roles and ways of inhabiting themselves in their sibling group in myriad ways with peers. In addition to the representation of his fantastic utilization of his sister with female peers, Andrew assigns significant meaning to his fantasies related to the psychic role of “brother to brothers” that he creates with peers. For Doug, the “baby/boy genius” psychic construct may have been born out of his anxieties and fantasies related to his sibling group. This organizing construct, for Doug, may have been created in part through his psychic utilization of his sisters, and seems manifestly and fantastically represented, as previously described, in his descriptions of varying groups of peers. Michael’s psychic utilization of his sibling group, “band of brothers” is also demonstrated in his many peer groups, as previously described.

Utilizations of sibling groups through fantasies about raising children.

As discussed in Chapter IV, Andrew describes detailed fantasies about how he would instill the value of loyalty and make sure that his own children would understand that they must protect each other, at any cost. I imagine that Andrew refers to these fantasies in reaction to guilt about not having protected his sister from the harm that happened to her. Immediately prior to relating the detailed fantasies about how he would ensure that his own children would not do what he himself has done, he seemed to assign some blame to his own father for having not made it clear to Andrew that it was his

321 responsibility and duty to protect his sister. Andrew may imagine that his father may have been able to protect him from the guilt he may suffer related to a potential fantasy of failing to protect his sister. His blame and rage at his father does not seem to work to manage his guilt, however, and so he may then imagine a scenario, being the good father, in which he will save his children from that which causes him guilt and anguish. In this way, Andrew may seek a way to ameliorate guilt from his perception of his sibling related failure. I imagine Andrew’s perception of this particular failure may serve as some confirmation of the fantasies involved the first description Andrew gave of his sister and himself as very young children: she was brave, (she psychically and physically survived the trauma that was done to her, as well as her attempt to take her own life) and he is weak. Andrew’s fantasy of his sister as the brave one, and himself as the too anxious (too careful) one, seems to underlie his libidinal investment in his sister, as well as his libidinal fantasies of strength and purity through identification with male idealized others.

As is the case for Andrew, Doug’s fantasy about having children seemed to me in part organized around archaic sibling related fantasies. Doug imagined he would like to have children, and that he would be really good at it, but he seemed to me deeply anxious about feeling like he had what he would need in himself to be “the kind of dad I’d want to be.” Doug’s fantasy of having children seemed organized, in part, around the poles of grandiosity and helplessness that define the “baby/boy genius” psychic construct.

Differently than Andrew, Doug seemed to imagine that he would want to give his children (several, he said) the same kind of sibling experience he himself had, but he struggles to imagine himself as the competent and confident man he imagines is his

322 father. A sense of psychic and sexual insufficiency seemed to pervade Doug’s imaginings of parenthood. My association at that time in the interviews was to a colloquial phrase, “How can I have a baby and be the baby?”

Michael was the only participant who did not speak directly to the idea of having children. Though he seemed to very much admire his oldest brother’s inhabiting of fatherhood, when I asked him about imaginations of parenting, he only mused that he imagined that he would like that in his future. My sense at the time was that unlike Doug’s, Michael’s imagination of his own capacity did not seem for him problematic, he seemed to feel as if he had been a competent older brother, a serious role in the “band of brothers” moral code. Rather, my sense was that his lack of elaboration had potentially something to do with guilt. Similar to Andrew, I had the sense that Michael struggled a bit with guilt, and I imagine it was related to his having chosen his own ambition (himself) over remaining in his home country (“band of brothers”). More will be discussed about Michael and guilt in the next sub-section of this chapter, but on the subject of parenting, my sense was that Michael may not (yet) comfortably reconcile that his parenting will be done here, on the west coast of the U.S., in geographic isolation from his brothers. His children, in that way, would not grow up with the “band of cousins” that is the extension of the “band of brothers” in the village of his home country.

And, as discussed in Chapter IV, Maud described her fantasy of having children, and like Andrew and Doug, she imagines having children, in part, as a psychic extension of her sibling group. Maud, as previously discussed, imagines that there may be a reparative and restorative function in providing for her children the reflection of themselves that she may wish had been provided for her, about herself. Maud may

323 imagine parenting, and participating, in a sibling group of children of her own as a way to do things differently and perhaps feel better herself. Specifically, perhaps for Maud, having a fantasy of having children may allow her to imagine that through parenting differently than she was parented, she may be able to manage any shame and anger she felt at feeling like she, in her inhabiting of her femaleness, was perceived as “not normal” from without.

Psychic utilizations of geographically and culturally related peer groups.

Another form of psychic utilization of peer groups that seems to contain remnants of sibling related fantasy for all four participants involves their fantastic utilizations related to peer groups located within a specific geography and culture.

Andrew made multiple references to people who live in the state in which he grew up. As mentioned in Chapter IV, Andrew was clear that he was only on the west coast of the U.S. to complete his graduate degree at a specific university. He said that he felt the move was worth it, because of the reputation of the school, but as soon as he finished his degree and his work obligations, he was moving back to his home state. When Andrew spoke about peers who live in his home state, (people he may or may not know), I had a very similar sense as when he spoke about the groups of male peers. Andrew spoke about people in his home state with a sense of idealization and sameness. He described them as “good people,” “people who are invested in their communities,” “nice people,” “down to earth” people. Andrew said he felt like them, (peers in his state) and that he had missed being there among them. I had the sense that he imagined he would be liked there, that the sameness he imagined through their state affiliation would provide that he would fit

324 in, that he would find “effortless communication” among peers there. Through the fantastic use of idealization, identification and sameness, Andrew seemed to be able to utilize the idea of the group of his fellow statesmen, himself as one of them, as psychically fortifying, in much the same way as he seemed to utilize groups of known male peers.

Similarly, Doug spoke generally about peers in a specific area of the west coast of the US (a place in which he did not grow up) as a group of peers with whom he had “a lot in common.” Like Andrew, Doug had readily available fantasies of a group of peers defined by the geography, and attributes of “open mindedness” and similar interests to himself. Doug seemed to imagine that he fit (similar) in in this specific geographic area due to the peers who also live here. He made multiple references to the cultural group of peers in his general geographic location in a similar way to the way he referred to other groups of peers of whom he had been a part, most notably, peers who also attended his same college. Doug seemed to try to manage his sense of isolation in his “baby/boy genius” psychic construct by speaking about the group of people who come to this specific geographic area as, like himself, “weird geniuses.” As Doug was referring to a theoretical group of peers defined by geography, capacities and interests that he imagined himself to also have, (similarity) Doug’s grandiosity seemed not to be threatened by this imagination. Rather, like Andrew, Doug seemed to be able to use the idea of sameness with the geographically and culturally bound peers to help shore up his senses of helplessness and psychic insufficiency.

Broadly speaking, Michael, like Andrew and Doug, also seemed to use his sense and imaginations of his peers in this specific west coast of the U.S. geographic area, and

325 embedded within the American culture at large, as psychically useful. As mentioned in a previous subsection of this chapter, my sense was that Michael may have been lesser consciously conflicted about leaving his country of origin to follow his own ego ideal, which for him seems to include living in the U.S. For Michael, it seems the geographic area in which he lives, goes to school and works, now psychically, and in many ways concretely, functions as a wider group of peers whom he may imagine are in some ways similar to himself. Specifically, the peers in his current geographic area, for Michael, may in some ways psychically represent aspects of his own academic and professional ambition. In this way, Michael, similar to Andrew and Doug, also psychically utilizes the construct of sameness, organized around imaginations of peers who live in a specific geographic area and about whom he may imagine specific personal and cultural attributions. Andrew and Doug, however, essentially only employed the psychic functions of identification, idealization, and sameness with one geographic area, for Andrew, the area in which he was raised, and for Doug, the area to which he imagines all the “zany geniuses” aspire to come to make their mark. Michael, interestingly, had two sets of geographies and cultures to psychically manage, as well as what I sensed was some measure of guilt involved in the sibling related psychic and concrete ramifications of having chosen one over the other. I imagine Michael’s interest in doing well in school as an aspect of his individuality, inhabiting a high level of academic capacity and ambition seemed not necessarily part of the code for the “band of brothers.” Though Michael seemed to me to describe the values of the group of brothers as including a sense of similarity and cohesion, some of the brothers had left the country, or the area, for work, and Michael seemed quite matter of fact about that. In fact, individuality may have

326 been fine, as long as it didn’t threaten the integrity of the group. One way that Michael may psychically usefully weave together aspects of each of the two geographically and culturally organized group of peers, is in his “like a brother” friends who live near him, in the U.S. As referenced prior, Michael seemed to significantly emphasize the fact that his “like a brother” friends in the U.S. are from his same country of origin. In this way, Michael may be able to mediate some of the potential conflicts (guilt, loss, anxiety) that may be associated with psychic aspects of his geographic and cultural bifurcation.

Through being a part of a group of “like a brother(s) he is able to psychically participate both in a “band of brothers” and groups of peers who represent aspects of his individuality and the desires of his ego ideal.

Maud seemed to psychically utilize her experience moving to different countries while growing up, in part, to solidify her psychic utilization of her sibling group was her primary (sole) source of relational continuity. My sense was that Maud spoke of groups of peers in the varying geographic areas, within the varying cultures in which she has lived, and now lives, with an open feeling and descriptive language. Further, she seems to include herself in the group of peers in the varying locations, she did (does) not seem to hold herself apart.

Maud’s most significant use of her varying peer related geographic and cultural locations may contribute to how she contextualizes non sibling peers as impermanent.

Maud may psychically utilize the temporal context in which she inhabits geography, and peers within, to extend to friends/colleagues/partners an “unconditional” acceptance related to the degree to which he allows for herself to be lesser affected by non-sibling peers. Maud continues to inhabit, with work related plans to continue to inhabit, a life in

327 which she moves to varying countries regularly. As such, she imagines having children who will travel with her, as she did with her family, but that all other non-sibling related peers will be geographically and contextually, and temporally psychically organized and contained. Maud may attempt to blunt the psychic threat of weakness and the emotional risks related to intimacy, in part, through these above described ways in which she knits together non-sibling peers, geography and the temporal.

Sibling related psychic meanings in alter egos and pseudonyms.

When conducting the interviews, I imagined the participants’ possible psychic utilization and psychoanalytically informed interpretation of alter ego fantasies and pseudonyms as representations of self (alternate selves, psychic others). In this way, I was specifically curious about the possibility of the presence of sibling related fantasy in the participants’ associations to alter egos and pseudonyms. As described near the end of each of the four participant’s case studies, I asked each of the participants about their imaginations on the topic of alter egos, and to please say something about their choice of pseudonym. Remnants of sibling related fantasy emerged from the data in each participant’s alter ego and pseudonym associations, as described in Chapter IV. In a cross-case analysis of alter ego fantasies, interestingly, Andrew’s and Doug’s alter ego associations each had strong themes of agency, competence, and generativity. I imagine these common themes are related to their shared imaginations of their own psychic and sexual insufficiencies. While Michael and Maud also described fantasies that included generativity and agency, the context of their associations seemed to me more related to wishes of versions of themselves/their work, in which they imagine they could

328 satisfyingly inhabit themselves while maintaining the context of their respective sibling related psychic paradigms.

Impressions from the interviews: Transference and countertransference.

Naturally, I am in possession of my own subjectivity. I will reconstruct what I hear from the other and my hearing will differ from that of any other listener. My history as a subject makes me full of my own mental contents. But each patient organizes my contents differently. Even as an unconscious subject I am still shaped by another’s effect upon me. My self is given new form by the other… I establish an internal object that bears the proper name of another person, and when I think of that person, this object is released to its own experiencing.

Although preconscious and conscious objectifications of the other contribute to this formation of an internal object, it is an internal structure, constructed unconsciously” (Bollas 1994, p. 25).

The significant impressions that came to mind from the interviews with each subject were described at the end of each case study. Bollas’ thoughts, referenced above and in Chapter IV, inform how I think about the way that my impressions were formed, and how I imagine each participant may have formed impressions of me. What specifically comes to mind regarding a cross-case analysis of the threads of transference and countertransference includes my sense that in the varying ways each participant responded to me, there was something(s) in the language, affect, my sense of their psychic use of me, and/or my sense of my psychic use of each of them, that I recognized as very likely in some way(s) related to some aspect(s) of how I subjectively recognized

329 and interpreted remnants of each participant’s (and my own) psychic utilizations of siblinghood.

What comes to mind of my impressions from the interviews with Andrew includes my sense that there were traces of aggression in his narrations about women peers. I imagine there may also have been traces of his attempting to manage conflicts related to remnants of libidinized sibling related aggression in his reaction(s) to me, perhaps specifically identifiable within his narrations related to masturbation and pornography. Additionally, I noticed that my fantasies and associations with Andrew, specifically those about his small stature and his capacities for mischief and magic, seem devoid of a sense of his having a mature masculinity or sexuality. In this way, I wonder if my associations were, in some part, a defensive/diffusive reaction to my sense of his lesser conscious aggression. I wonder if the fantasy that came to mind involving my potentially blinking and finding him suddenly perched on the top of the couch, represents an aggressive attack/counterattack of my own, fantastically stripping him of mature masculinity and sexuality, instead characterizing him as diminutive, clever and mischievous. I am aware, as an older sister of a younger brother, that pulling rank and metaphoric emasculation may well be within my wheelhouse of lesser conscious reactions, specifically in the midst of fantasies that I may be utilized/engaged to psychically help manage/carry an other’s sexualized aggression.

My dominant impression from the interviews with Doug includes that in my repeated associations to literary references involving characters mired in sadness, loneliness, isolation and/or struggling with disfigurement, I imagine I may have been responding to my sense of the scope of Doug’s “baby/boy genius” psychic construct as

330 potentially psychically “disfiguring” and isolating for him. I imagine this above description may have been what was related to the varying times I had vague, uncomfortable sense of something repellant, and which may have also been related to my feeling sad and sorry for him. As discussed in detail in Chapter IV, I understood Doug’s “baby/boy genius” psychic construct as containing bits of sibling related psychic phenomena, largely employed to manage primitive, competitive anxieties and deeply felt senses of psychic and sexual insufficiency. I also imagine that my impressions of Doug, and his of me, may in part reflect bits of sibling related fantasy evoked by my role as the researcher and his as a research participant, which I imagine may include aspects of helplessness, grandiosity, longing, rejection, competition, authority, rank order, constructs of gender and sexuality.

What remains of my impressions of the interviews with Michael includes my sense of his comfort with, and reliance on, his own mind (secondary process thinking), as well as my impression of his physical beauty and contained psychic/libidinal energy.

Perhaps Michael may imagine that the essence of his individuality (including his emotionality) may be able to be safely kept behind (inside?) his more public-facing thoughts and physical person. I imagine Michael may organize the experience of having female and male peers notice/be drawn to his thinking and his physical presence (team sports/sexuality), as something he can more comfortably tolerate wanting and enjoying (re: my sense of his being comfortable to be observed/studied), with the imagination that his specificity (feelings) may remain hidden, safely protected by the capacity and stability of his thoughts and physical presence. As I write this, I am reminded of my frequent associations to beautiful marble statues (archangel Michael) while in the room with him.

331 In this way, Michael’s more vulnerable inner self, what I imagined was most alive about him, may be imagined to be kept safe behind his powerful, compelling outward facing self. Perhaps Michael may then imagine that he can remain “one of the group” (brotherhood, team spirit) with male peers, as he may be used to sublimating his individuality (his particular wants/needs/feelings) for what he may imagine may be the “good of the group.” And lastly, perhaps Michael may imagine that he can more safely risk aspects of intimacy with female peers through embodiment and a capacity for rational thought (“emotional intelligence”), if he imagines his feelings (inner self) may thus remain protected from the consequences of “emotional manipulation”.

What resonates most about my impressions of the interviews with Maud is the way in which I imagined and experienced her differently in two fundamental contexts, via text/phone and in person. The language that comes to mind is duel/dual. I imagine that I experienced her in two (dual) ways that were also at odds in some way in her (dueling). As described at the end of her case study, I experienced her as anxious, deferential, scattered and skittish over text and telephone, before meeting, and in person, I experienced her as calm, confident, curious, engaged and direct.

As I think about these “dueling” “dualities,” I think of Maud’s conflicted relationship to her femaleness, and the ways in which she psychically seems to try to manage related tensions through dividing her femaleness into two (dual) parts, “femininity,” which she seems to imagine as weakness, and about which she seems to feel conflicted, and perhaps thus, which she largely seems to assign to her sister; and “feminism”, which Maud seems to inhabit as strength, and on balance, about which she seems more comfortable to claim in herself. I imagine I initially experienced Maud over

332 text/phone in some way informed by fantasies related “femininity” and “sister”; while in person, I imagine my sense of Maud was more related to fantasies related to “feminism”, and “brothers”, especially related to ways in which she seems to more often have inhabited herself in play and activities with her brothers in which they all had a common interest. Further, on the subject of sibling related transference/countertransference, I imagine that my strong association upon meeting Maud, (which I experienced as if it came out of the blue) that she and I may have been raised in the same social class, may have also interestingly represented a sibling related psychic remnant for me, for her, for each of us?

Research, Clinical and Theoretical Implications Psychoanalytic theory, broadly defined, privileges the role of early life in the contents of mental life. As siblinghood is an aspect of early psychic life, the argument for the necessity of this study was that theoretical, research and clinical consideration of its psychic impact has been unusually sparse. This section’s discussion aims to describe some of the research, clinical and theoretical implications that were derived from this research project.

Research implications.

The data which emerged from this research study supports the theoretical and clinical significance of allowing for the possibility of remnants of siblinghood in psychoanalytically informed ideas, discussions and work. This study’s qualitative methodology allowed for an in depth, subjectively informed, hermeneutically situated interpretation of the psychic remnants of siblinghood for four participants.

333 Qualitative inquiry allows for meaning laden learning, meaning that emerges from deeply listening to subjectivity. While future research studies on the psychological impact of siblinghood employing differing methodologies would usefully add to the body of knowledge in this subject area, this qualitative inquiry of mental life utilized a hermeneutic which was well suited in allowing for the emergence of lesser conscious meaning through deeply listening to subjectivity. For the purpose of this study, psychoanalytic theory then provided the frame within which I subjectively interpreted the data.

This research study’s participants all had biologically related siblings, with an average age difference of two years. As a fundamental premise of this study is that psychic siblinghood is a universal construct, it seems very important to suggest that future research studies with participants who have differing sibling configurations (non or partly biologically related siblings, step siblings, foster siblings, no siblings) would be extremely helpful to add to the body of research in this area.

Further, all research participants in this study were within a narrow age range, were very similar in terms of how much formal education they had, and the academic and professional disciplines in which they are engaged, each identified as heterosexual, and each identified as Caucasian. Future research studies that include a greater variety of participants in regard to each of the previously mentioned demographics would be a helpful contribution to the body of research on this topic.

Finally, as the supraordinate finding for this research was the impact of gender on the psychic life of siblinghood, future research on that topic specifically would be a significant contribution to the psychoanalytic canon.

334 Clinical implications.

The primary clinical implications of this research study include the possibility of increasing the options considered in psychoanalytic understanding and interpretations of clinical discussions, as well as informing pedagogy and theory in academic and clinical training programs, as well as in organizations in which clinical services are provided.

Psychoanalytically informed thinking and work about adult mental life that remains parentally organized around the vertical axis at the expense of the inclusion of siblinghood and the horizontal axis disallows innumerable possibilities for understanding and meaning making inherent in the psychic use of siblinghood. The degree to which my interpretation of the data for each participant in this study suggested the significance of the impact of siblinghood in the participants’ psychic lives was striking. Including an awareness that sibling related material may be present in someone’s: thoughts, feelings, fantasies, conflicts, dreams, ego ideal, wishes, fears, sexuality, identity, and work, among any other areas, allows for a greater likelihood that we may be more usefully able to listen, think, speak and work in a psychoanalytically informed way.

Theoretical implications.

The predominant theoretical implication that was derived from this research study supports Juliet Mitchell’s (2001, 2003) contributions to psychoanalytic theory on the substantive contributions of the psychic role of siblinghood beyond rivalry. The data that emerged from these four subjectively interpreted, psychoanalytically informed case studies suggested that derivatives of psychic siblinghood are found in primary psychic

335 constructs, in vestiges of primitive anxieties and fantasies, and derivatives of which were located in fantasies of identity, ego ideal, death, peers, work, sex and love.

As mentioned in Chapter I, in “Some Reflections on a School Boy,” Freud writes, “The nature and quality of the human child’s relations to people of his own and the opposite sex have already been laid down in the first six years of his life …The people to whom he is in this way fixed are his parents and brothers and sisters” (1914 p. 243). This results of this study support Freud’s observation about the significance of the psychic impact of siblings. Specifically, the results of this study suggest that the psychic impact of siblinghood may be broader, and more far reaching, than may have often been discussed the psychoanalytic literature to date.

It is my hope that this study may contribute to theoretical ideas and discussions that include the potential for remnants of siblinghood in psychoanalytic constructs in which parental influence may historically have been the dominant paradigm considered.

This data suggests that it may be helpful for allow for the possibility of sibling related fantasies in theoretical discussions of the impact of gender, and anxieties related to fears of psychic and sexual insufficiencies, in addition to thinking of sibling related potential in more theoretically well-trod topics such as primitive competitive anxieties, for the individual human subject, as well as in considering groups. It is my contention that it is useful to include thinking about the possibility of the impact, meaning, and role of psychic siblinghood in psychoanalytically informed philosophical and political discussions, as well as in those related to the individual.

336 Resistances: Power and incest.

In response to the underrepresentation in the literature of the impact of siblinghood in adult mental life, a discussion of two possible reasons for the clinical and theoretical resistance to this concept may be useful. The relative little that is written in the theoretical and clinical literature about the consideration of sibling related transference in psychoanalytically informed work with adults, and the striking fact that despite Juliet Mitchell’s having raised the subject for the psychoanalytic community again nearly twenty years ago, the literature indicates that sustained interest in the topic seems not to have since developed. Consideration of ideas related to the possible collective resistance to the concept seem relevant at this point.

The possibility of sibling related transference/countertransference, for example, has not received nearly the same attention in the theoretical and clinical literature as has the possibility of parental transference. One idea that comes to mind regarding a possible collective clinical resistance to considering sibling related transference/countertransference involves the design and perpetuation of psychoanalytic theory and practice as pedagogical. Historically, the distribution of power in the psychoanalytic clinical setting has tilted dramatically toward the clinician, who “understands” the patient, and shares her understanding with the patient through her interpretations. More contemporary psychoanalytic theories have inhabited the idea that understanding is “co-created” by the clinician and patient, a dynamic which seems to more equally share a balance of power; however, it is interesting that despite more contemporary theoretical ideas of co-creation, there is still not a significant increase in clinical and theoretical discussions of sibling related transference. Despite many

337 contemporary theories’ interest in the inclusion of the person of the clinician in models of thinking and treatment, theoretical and clinical discussions, reflected in the literature, including references to transference/countertransference contents, still seem to privilege a hierarchical organization, the vertical axis. Perhaps acknowledging the significance of the horizontal axis in psychoanalytically informed treatment serves to in some way fundamentally deemphasize the authority of the clinician. And, in so doing, one may imagine that consideration of remnants of siblinghood in clinical work, including in transference/countertransference, may threaten historical theoretical precedent regarding the balance of power in the clinical relationship, and in clinical thinking and interpretations, the uncomfortable effects of which may serve to prevent a recognition of the topic in clinical work.

In addition to possibilities related to increased consideration of the psychic use of siblinghood as potentially threatening the authority of the psychoanalytic clinician, the subject of incest may play a considerable role in a collective resistance to the concept.

Incestuous desire is central in Freud’s seminal idea of the Oedipal concept, with its attendant fantasies and conflicts. Freud posits that a “successful” resolution of the Oedipal conflict is integral to an adult’s optimal capacity for love and work. Through his Oedipal construct, the presence of unconscious/lesser conscious incestuous longing, and the psychic consequences of such, are pillars in Freud’s conceptualization of mental life and in his theory of psychoanalysis. The incest taboo, widely regarded as a response to managing incestuous libidinal desires, is most often organized as representing a parent and child, a vertical hierarchy. I suggest that the vertical axis provides a measure of protective generational distance, which may help mediate incestuous desire, and which,

338 by definition, is not available for siblings on the horizonal axis. As demonstrated in this research project, the data that emerged from each of the participant’s narratives, in my estimation, allows that they each meet broadly defined criteria for within normal limits psychological development and functioning, which suggests that significant libidinal investment in siblings may be, in varying ways, normatively present in adult mental life.

I am curious about how the lack of significant representation in the literature, and how the possibility that unconscious/lesser conscious fantasies and conflicts raised by the specter of incestuous desire in siblinghood may go unnamed and therefore unavailable for consideration in the course of psychoanalytically informed clinical experience, may be mutually influential. Perhaps these interrelated factors significantly contribute to why psychoanalytically informed theory and practice, evidenced as well in many academic and training curriculums, have not taken up significant interest in the subject of where and how sibling related fantasies and conflicts may be identified in adult psychological life?

Summation This qualitative research project was a study of mental life. Specifically, the aim of this interpretive, psychoanalytic case study research project was to explore and describe the psychological impact of siblinghood in four participants: Andrew, Doug, Michael and Maud. Through each participant’s willingness, using my subjective interpretation and the theoretical paradigm of psychoanalytic theory, this qualitative study substantively demonstrated the unconscious/lesser conscious impact of siblinghood

339 and the potential scope of siblinghood’s psychic remnants in each of her/his psychological lives.

340

Appendix A

Recruitment Flyer

341 Institute for Clinical Social Work, Chicago IL., Ph.D. student looking for people who are interested in being participants in a qualitative research study.

The purpose of my research study is to complete a dissertation using a qualitative research design. The goal of this study is to explore the effects and subjective meaning of ordinary siblinghood in the psychic lives of adults.

Please note, psychological siblinghood is a relevant concept for both those who are a sibling, as well as for those who are not.

It is not necessary to have a sibling(s) to be eligible for participation in this study.

Please contact Caroline Moore, LCSW at cmoorelcsw@icloud.com, (602) 430-8306



If you are between the ages of 21 – 90



And, you have an interest in talking with me about your sibling, and sibling related, experience during three to five in-depth 60 to 90 minute interviews, which will be conducted in a private setting in person, or over a HIPAA compliant virtual platform.

342

Appendix B

Brief Telephone Pre-Screening Script

343

Following, is a script of what I will say to potential participants interested in my study: “Hello, I am working on my dissertation for a PhD in clinical social work at the Institute for Clinical Social Work. I am conducting a research project looking at what remains of siblinghood in the psychic lives of adults. Psychological siblinghood is a concept that is relevant both to those who have siblings and those who do not. You do not need to be a sibling to be eligible for this study. This study will involve three to five 60 to 90 minute interviews with each participant. The number and length of the interviews was chosen to allow for a thorough enough understanding of each person’s experiences. I will be asking about your experiences of siblinghood, including, but not limited to, memories, thoughts and feelings about your childhood family experience, whether you are a sibling, or not.

Additionally, I may ask you about other significant people in your life, partners, cousins, friends, colleagues, for example. I am also interested in hearing what aspects of this topic each participant feels are important, even if what feels important is not necessarily something that I have thought to ask you about directly. I will aim to give each person enough room to talk freely and share his stories about this aspect of his life. The interviews may be done in a private setting of your choice, in your home or office, for example, and they may be in person or over a HIPAA compliant virtual platform, depending on our mutual availability. Would this study be something in which you think you would be interested in participating?�

If yes, proceed to the following screening questions:

344 “I’d like to ask you a few initial questions to see if you would fit the criteria for this study.”

-Are you a sibling?

-If so, how many siblings, and in what configuration? (older/younger siblings, twin)

-How old are you?

-In what city and state do you live?

-Are you interested and able to meet with me three to five times, for 60 to 90 minutes each time, to talk about aspects of your historical and current life?

-Have you had any experience with a sibling that could be characterized as unusual or extraordinary?

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. The next step will be my contacting you within the next few weeks to discuss your participation in this study further. Would that be ok with you

345

Appendix C

Script for Informed Consent

346 I have invited you to participate in my dissertation research, the purpose of which is to explore where the conscious and lesser conscious effects of ordinary siblinghood are found in the psychological lives of adults. Thank you very much for your interest in this research. You will be asked to meet for three to five 60 to 90 minute interviews, in person, in a private location at your home or office, or via a HIPAA approved virtual platform.

During the interviews I will ask you some questions related to your early family life, experiences with classmates, friends, colleagues, primary partners and current family structure, your work, hobbies, and civic and/or religious activities.

I will audiotape our meetings. Everything we discuss together will be fully and confidentially protected. The tapes and transcripts from our meetings will be stored on a password protected computer and/or in a locked cabinet during and following the study. I am mandated to keep these materials for 5 years and then destroy them. I am the only one who will know your identity. Your name will never appear in the interviews, or in the transcripts. Rather, a number, which will be the only means of identification for your narrative.

Possible risks for participation in this study are not known at this time, but, are expected to be minimal. Specifically, it is possible some emotional discomfort related to reflecting on the study’s topic may come up during our interviews, in which case, please let me know. In the event you do experience emotional discomfort in the interviews, and wish to debrief with someone, I will provide you a referral. Furthermore, you have the right to refuse to answer any question I may ask you, at any time, for any reason, And, you have

347 the right to stop the interviews and withdraw your participation at any time, without penalty.

After you carefully read and review the informed consent, I will ask you to verify your understanding of it, specifically the purpose of the study and its risks and benefits, in your own words, and I am happy to discuss any questions you may have about it with you.

348

Appendix D

Interview Guide

349 After obtaining informed consent, relevant demographic information will be gathered, particularly focused on the topic of siblinghood. At this point, I will specifically ask the participant to describe the structure of his/her family in early life.

I will ask about how many parents he/she has, and how many siblings. I will ask about sibling gender and order.

Then, for the remainder of the first interview, and in all subsequent interviews, the format will be loosely structured, beginning with my asking a question(s) related to the topic of siblinghood, and allowing the participant to consciously and lesser consciously choose the material related to the topic that they wish to relate. It will be my priority to focus my attention on the meanings of the sibling related material that emerge from the interviews. The opening questions I will pose will include asking him/her to please describe what comes to mind (memories, thoughts, feelings, etc.) regarding some, or all, of the following:

-family members, including nuclear and extended family members, (siblings, cousins, older generation) -any significant changes that occurred in family configuration -your childhood and adolescent family life -school (including classmate experience) -friends, peers in childhood and adolescence.

-hobbies and interests in childhood and adolescence.

350 -important non-human experiences in, and since, childhood and adolescence (pets, stuffed animals, etc.)

-crushes, early partnerships -adult partnerships -your current family life -adult friendships -work choices (including colleague experience) -adult interests, hobbies -civic, recreational, political, religious groups of which participant is a member -children (fantasies, actual experience)

351

Appendix E

Informed Consent Form

352 Institute for Clinical Social Work Research Information and Consent for Participation in Social Behavioral Research Title: “The Psychic Life of Siblings: An Exploratory Study”

I, ________________________________, acting for myself, agree to take part in the research entitled: “The Psychic Life of Siblings: An Exploratory Study”

This work will be carried out by Caroline M. Moore, LCSW, under the supervision of Jennifer Tolleson, Ph.D., Dissertation Committee Chair.

This work is conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Clinical Social Work, 401 S. State Street, Chicago, IL 60601, (312) 935-4232.

Purpose The purpose of my research study is to complete a dissertation using a qualitative research design. The goal is to explore the effects of siblinghood in the psychic lives of adults. Findings will be included in a bound dissertation document and may also be used to develop papers for conference presentation or journal submission. This completed dissertation document will be available on-line.

Procedures used in the study and the duration of participant engagement Participation in this study includes three to five interviews focused on your experience of siblinghood. Interviews will be recorded and transcribed by a professional transcriber who has signed a confidentiality agreement. Transcriptions will be used in a case study

353 design method in which your narrative will be used to as a basis for identifying meaning categories in the within-case analysis, and as a basis for building theory in the cross case analysis. You will be given the opportunity to review your case study and provide feedback. Each interview will last approximately one to one and one-half hours. There will be no financial compensation for participants in this research project.

Benefits There is no direct benefit to you for your participation beyond the opportunity to engage in an in-depth process of self-reflection about the research topic. Participating in this research is a contribution to the knowledge base of Clinical Social Work.

Costs The cost to you for your participation is 4 to 6 hours of your time.

Possible Risks and/or side effects The very limited risk of this study is the potential for you to experience some uncomfortable feelings that may arise as a result of your sharing personal thoughts and feelings related to this research topic. While this risk is unlikely, if necessary this researcher will provide a referral for a person with whom to debrief, or you may, of course, debrief with any person chosen by you. It is important you know your rights to refuse to answer any question asked of you, for any reason, and you have the right to withdraw from this study, without penalty, at any time.

354 Privacy and Confidentiality Privacy will be provided during interviews as in person and/or via a HIPAA compliant virtual platform. Interviews will take place in your home or office. I will not share your identity with anyone. Your identifying information will be kept confidential. No one will know your identity except for this researcher. No actual names will be used in the dissertation and other identifying information will be disguised as necessary. You may choose an alias by which you will be referred in transcripts and study results. If you decline to choose an alias one will be assigned to you. Digital audio-recordings will be given to a professional transcriber who will have signed a confidentiality agreement with the principal researcher in a password protected digital file in a password protected computer. All digital recordings will be erased after transcription. All tapes and transcribed data, identified only by number, will be kept on a password protected computer, and/or in a locked cabinet where no one other than the researcher and her advisor may have access to them. All tapes and transcripts will be destroyed in five years.

Subject Assurances The following is the format that should be followed in creating the assurances: By signing this consent form, I agree to take part in this study. I have not given up any of my rights or released this institution from responsibility for carelessness.

I may cancel my consent and refuse to continue in this study at any time without penalty or loss of benefits. My relationship with the staff of the ICSW will not be affected in any way, now or in the future, if I refuse to take part, or if I begin the study and then withdraw.

355 If I have any questions about the research methods, I can contact Caroline Moore, LCSW 602-430-8306, cmoorelcsw@icloud.com or Jennifer Tolleson, Ph.D., at (312) 935- 4244, jtolleson@icsw.edu.

If I have any questions about my rights as a research subject, I may contact John Ridings, Ph.D., Chair of Institutional Review Board; ICSW; At Robert Morris Center, 401 South State Street; Suite 822, Chicago, IL 60605; (312) 935-4232.

Signatures:

I have read this consent form and I agree to take part in this study as it is explained in this consent form.

_________________________________

_____________

Signature of Participant

Date

I certify that I have explained the research to _____________________ (Name of participant) and believe that they understand and that they have agreed to participate freely. I agree to answer any additional questions when they arise during the research or afterward.

____________________________________

_____________

Signature of Researcher

Date

356

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