ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s, and with the growth of Observation Studies on children, there has been an important shift in thinking about siblings and their relationships with each other, and a new awareness of the significance of sibling interactions. Sibling incest taboos develop from the matrix of childhood playing and exploration and the barrier against sexual enactment, at a young age, has a fluid quality. In an autobiographical moment, A. Freud acknowledged the importance of early attachments amongst children who live and play together. Sexual relationships between brothers and sisters, at whatever age, as opposed to childish games of nurses and doctors, are likely to be a pathological resolution of parental neglect and a flight from oedipal conflict rather than a helpful and creative solution. When Freud claimed that the passionate relationship that he had had with his nephew John determined all his future relationships with his contemporaries he was pointing to the important attachments which children make with one another.
