Difficult or Disabled Siblings - Jeanne Safer -Life Challenges

People Tell Their Stories:
Family and Relationship Issues

Growing up with a Difficult or Disabled Sibling Jeanne Safer, Ph.D. Excerpted from the “Introduction” of The Normal One: Life With A Difficult or Damaged Sibling (Delta Trade Paperbacks, New York, 2003)

Nobody knows I have a brother. My best friends never hear his name. He has always been a source of embarrassment and discomfort for me, but I've never wondered very much about his impact on my life. Being his sister feels vaguely unreal and irrelevant; my destiny has nothing to do with his.

This is astonishing, because I am a psychotherapist who has spent years trying to understand my own and my patients' childhoods. Somehow I've managed to erase my own closest relative.

I am not alone. Beyond slogans ("all men are brothers," "sisterhood is powerful") and the occasional soft-focus picture book, shockingly little attention is paid to siblings in general, much less to troubled, difficult, or disabled ones. And although millions of people have such relatives-85 percent of Americans have siblings, so few extended families are exempt-practically nothing has been written about them. Worse, little has been thought about them; newspaper headlines (the Kaczynski brothers, wayward presidential siblings), literature (Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the plays of Williams and O'Neill), the Bible (Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brothers), and the dreams of their higher-functioning brothers and sisters tell their story, not psychological research. Their influence is intensified because it is so hidden, even in a culture where people willingly expose the most intimate details of their lives.

The purpose of this book is to reveal the neglected, lonely, and lifelong trauma of growing up with an abnormal brother or sister and its effects on personality and society; the reality of the lives of the "normal ones" is far more complex than the sentimental image presented by the media and even by their own families. It examines the world all such siblings share, whether the disability is mental or physical, minor or catastrophic, ignored or overemphasized. It analyzes how and why their influence is repudiated, and offers remedies.

Normal ones suffer from a psychological condition I name "the Caliban Syndrome" after the brutal, repugnant slave of the magician Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest, the not-quite-human creature who tried to rape Prospero's flawless daughter Miranda. Caliban is the "thing of darkness" Prospero must accept at the play's end. Because a damaged sibling is always a disavowed part of self, I believe every intact sibling must come to terms with the Caliban within in order to become fully human. Understanding the influence that such a sibling inevitably has on one's destiny is an essential-and frequently avoided-task.

Whatever their relationship in the external world, damaged siblings loom large in the internal world of their normal brothers and sisters, as manifested in the four symptoms of the Caliban Syndrome that this book examines:

Premature maturity
Survivor guilt
Compulsion to achieve
Fear of contagion

The Caliban Syndrome has an impact far beyond the immediate families of the disabled and the difficult. These relationships are an exaggeration of the dynamics of every sibling relationship, which like every other human bond always has its dark side. Disconnecting internally from unacceptable aspects of a sibling is as universal as the primordial emotions these relationships evoke, and we pay a price for amputating them. Without acknowledging hate and repudiation, we can never truly love ourselves or anyone else; superficial assertions that short-circuit the full intensity of these prohibited emotions never work. Neither does professing spiritual uplift or sugarcoating the lifelong rigors and frustrations of having your closest relative never be your peer. Acknowledged or not, growing up with a difficult or damaged sibling is one of the defining experiences of a person's life.

The disabled and their parents have much-needed advocates; until now their siblings have had practically none. In their behalf, I take issue with the current politically correct euphemism "special needs" children because I believe that all children have special needs. Compassion for the extraordinary trials their families endure and admiration for their achievements should not blind us to the damage done by ignoring the toll on their normal siblings. I use the terms normal, abnormal, intact, and damaged not to make value judgments but to reflect more accurately the point of view of higher-functioning siblings, who typically live in an environment that requires them to suppress taboo emotions, judgments, and the evidence of their senses. Idealizing their lives as somehow ennobling, and concomitantly denigrating and denying that there is indeed such a thing as normality (with all its contradictions and complications), damages everybody and leads to dangerous self-estrangement in society as a whole.

No one with an abnormal sibling has a normal childhood. Consciously or unconsciously, every intact sibling is haunted by the fear of catching the disability, a fear that always has a modicum of psychological truth. Family gatherings and significant events become occasions for anxiety and suppressed shame. Cheerful caretakers, mature before their time, they are supposed to consider themselves lucky to be normal. They feel tormented by the compulsion to compensate for their parents' disappointments by having no problems and making no demands, and they are often unaware of the massive external and internal pressure to pretend that nothing is amiss. Their success is always tainted by their sibling's failure, their future clouded by an untoward sense of obligation and responsibility. Their goal is to be as different from their sibling as possible. They live forever in the shadow of the one who does not function.

It is not my intent to create a new category of victim; the Suffering Olympics already has a surfeit of contenders, and I believe passionately that defining yourself as a victim-no matter what you have endured-is the opposite of insight, and actually perpetuates the ordeal by cutting off the possibility of integrating and overcoming it. In fact, one of the most striking characteristics of these siblings is their lack of complaint and their tendency to hide from themselves the burdens that their very normality has placed on them. I want them to know and others to appreciate what they, and those like them, experience.

The book begins with the story of my relationship with my own older brother, who was emotionally troubled from childhood on and also became seriously ill as an adult. It reflects the guilt, the grief, and the self-knowledge I have gained from my ongoing struggle to overcome my resistance and acknowledge his significance in my life. Sixty other "normal ones" aged seventeen to seventy-five, whose brothers and sisters range from microcephalic to highly obnoxious, tell the poignant, often secret stories of their lives. They also report their powerful and revealing dreams, which have never before been systematically studied for clues about their hidden inner world.
Having a damaged sibling marks you. No matter what you achieve, where you go, or who you love, that other's life remains your secret alternative template, the chasm into which you could plunge if you misstep. Whether you know it or not, his is the doom you dare not duplicate, the fate you contemplate with shame, guilt, secret envy, and-always-relief. You are ashamed that you are related, guilty that you have a better life, envious that nothing is expected of him, relieved that you are not the misfit to be scorned or pitied. Because a sibling is your closest relative, you are eternally enmeshed with each other. Your sanity and stability are forever suspect. You can consciously disconnect your destinies, but you cannot sever the fundamental tie because it embodies the disavowed part of your history and character with which you must come to terms or never truly know yourself. I hope this book eases and illuminates the way.

Excerpted from the “Introduction” of The Normal One: Life With A Difficult or Damaged Sibling (Delta Trade Paperbacks, New York, 2003)

Jeanne Safer, PhD, is a psychotherapist who has been in private practice for almost three decades. A supervisor and faculty member at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, Dr. Safer lectures on the inner life of men and women, has appeared on television (The Today Show, Good Morning America and as a psychological expert on The Montel Williams Show) and radio and has contributed articles to The New York Times, the Washington Post, Self, Fitness, and Cosmopolitan. She is also the author of two previous books, Beyond Motherhood: Choosing a Life Without Children, and Forgiving and Not Forgiving: Why Sometimes It's Better Not to Forgive. Both Beyond Motherhood and The Normal One were finalists in the Books for a Better Life Award for the year's best self-improvement books. Dr. Safer lives in New York City with her husband, historian and political journalist Richard Brookhiser. Her website is: http://www.thenormalone.com