ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a primary and needed review of the material on brothers and sisters in Sigmund Freud's publications. Freud's "Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis" is quite literally stuffed with sibling preoccupations—incest in phantasy and reality, heterosexual and same-sex, the impact of a sister's death, and the buzz of a large sibling circle. Freud's work on the "family complex" indicates his awareness of and attention to the importance of sibling issues in clinical practice and theory. Freud recognized the brutality and imbalance of power that is involved in adult-to-child abuse, the repetitive cycle of abuse for siblings, the potentially long duration of incestuous sibling behaviour, and the impact of premature sexual enactment that leads to further sexual activity. Freud implicitly and explicitly stated the potential importance of birth order and gender in his writings. The chapter discusses two of Freud's case studies, the "Rat Man" and the "Wolf Man", looking at the role of brothers and sisters.
