Routledge Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: Ability and Disability in Clinical Process (Relational Perspectives Book Series)

Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: Ability and Disability in Clinical Process explores a previously neglected area in the field of psychoanalysis, addressing undertheorized concepts on siblings, disabilities and psychic survivorship, and broadening our conceptualization of the enduring effects of lateral relations on human development. What happens to a person’s sense of self both personally and professionally when they grow up alongside a severely disabled sibling? Through a series of qualitative interviews held between the author and a sample of psychoanalysts, this book examines both the unconscious experience and the interpersonal field of survivor siblings. Through a trauma-informed contemporary psychoanalytic lens, Dobrich combines data analysis, theory-building, memoir, and clinical storytelling to explore and explicate the impact of lateral survivorship on the clinical moment, making room for a contemporary and nuanced appreciation of siblings in psychoanalysis. Working with Survivor Siblings in Psychoanalysis: Ability and Disability in Clinical Process, will be of immense interest and value to psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals, and for all therapists who work with and treat patients that are themselves survivor siblings. Uniquely integrating both academic and memoir writing, this book will also engage those building theory around the implications of the analyst’s subjectivity on clinical processes. Review Sibling relationships are the longest of human relationships; yet, they are rarely studied. Johanna Dobrich grew up with a severely disabled brother and artfully explores this life experience and it’s relationship to her work. In Survivor Siblings, she examines the experience of ambiguous loss embedded in these sibling relations. (For me, it was my little brother's polio). Johanna Dobrich has wisely uncovered a critical sibling experience that some of us have had, but she is the first scholar I know of who is looking into it. Bravo! We need to know ourselves before we can help others to know themselves. Dr. Pauline Boss, author AMBIGUOUS LOSS, 2000, Harvard University Press, 2000; LOSS, TRAUMA AND RESILIENCE, 2006, WW Norton. With a soulful, fierce intellect and unflinching honesty, Johanna Dobrich brings her reader into an intimate and keenly observed examination of the ways in which her experience as the sibling of a severely disabled brother has shaped both her psychic life and analytic understanding. In doing so, she creates a larger portal for considering how minds respond to developmental traumas that go unseen, unacknowledged and unformulated. This impressive book joins memoir and interview material with a rigorous engagement of contemporary relational thinking. The result is a richly textured tapestry that marries experience with theory to produce an inspiring clinical wisdom that demonstrates how healing the other and healing oneself is a false distinction. Whether or not you are a survivor sibling or even a sibling, you will find yourself in these pages and know yourself and analytic theory all the better for it. Martin Stephen Frommer, Ph.D. Faculty, Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center Associate Editor, Psychoanalytic Dialogues This long-overdue book belongs in the library of all psychoanalytic therapists. It is a significant contribution to relational scholarship. It is also a gift to the many therapists who grew up alongside a damaged brother or sister, chose their profession partly because of their struggles and achievements as a sibling, and yet have never been fully able to tell their complex stories – partly because psychoanalysis itself lacked the space for such narratives. Dobrich has mined her own experience as a "survivor sibling" in a ground-breaking qualitative study. Her voice is intimate and compassionate, her interviews with colleagues of comparable backgrounds are riveting, and the illumination she offers to r