ABSTRACT
In 1857, the year following Anna Freud’s birth, his brother Julius was born and died a few months. The beauty of the oedipal theory is that it simplifies attachment to nannies and to siblings and to the generational mix-up of attachments in Freud’s family. P. Gay is surely right when he suggests that Freud’s mind was made up of “childhood conundrums” in which his half-brother was a father. Brilliant though Freud’s insight was into the importance of the Oedipus complex, it has had the consequence of marginalizing sibling attachment and reducing siblings to substitute figures in the oedipal drama. In May 1856 Freud was born. In spite of their poverty and the death of Jakob Freud’s father, his family turned Freud’s birth into something noteworthy. Emanuel, in his twenties, was himself married with a son, John, this same John who became Freud’s “inseparable companion”.
