Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the importance in psychic reality for some patients of early relationships with siblings and presents experiences from working with twins, and thinks about the particular character that twin-ship is likely to stamp on later struggles for separateness. It considers how relationships with siblings, rather than with parents, may be the decisive factor in the internal worlds of some patients. The book describes cases where pathological structures cause stalemate in the movement of transference and countertransference until the therapist’s radical shift of mind and heart creates a new situation, and, for the patients, establishes the therapist as a new experience. It is concerned with the dire effects on personality development of maternal absence.