ABSTRACT
Twinning with a sibling's representation may continue even after the "twin" sibling dies. Observable reactions of children to the death of an important other, including a sibling, have been published abundandy in the psychoanalytic, psychiatric, and psychological literature. This chapter discusses the metapsychology of childhood mourning and focuses on the fate of the mental representation in an adult's mind of a dead sibling by providing the case of Carol. Carol was a 24-year-old unmarried elementary school teacher who sought treatment three years after the death of One of her brothers in an automobile accident. Object constancy is a key concept in child development. Prior to the development of object constancy, that is, prior to the development of the child's ability to integrate and maintain internally representations of the other, such as mother, even when the other is not present, the pleasure-pain principle governs the child's response to a loss.
