(Not in My Dearest Enemy My Dangerous Friend: Making and Breaking Sibling Bonds
Dorothy Rowe is a clinical psychologist and writer who is renowned for her work on how we create meaning, and how the meanings we create determine what we do.
Dororthy Rowe interviewed on ABC Radio National (Australia) on Friday February 15th, 2008. Listen to it free of charge on ABC's website.
"It's a fact that your sibling knows you very well and when we know someone that well, we know just how to please them but also how to destroy them."
Dorothy Rowe interviewed in The Guardian, April 2007
Stories about siblings abound in literature, drama, comedy, biography, and history. We rarely talk about our own siblings without emotion, whether with love and gratitude, or exasperation, bitterness, anger and hate. Nevertheless, the subject of what it is to be and to have a sibling is one that has been ignored by psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists.
In My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend, Dorothy Rowe presents a radically new way of thinking about siblings that unites the many apparently contradictory aspects of these complex relationships. This helps us to recognise the various experiences involved in sibling relationships as a result of the fundamental drive for survival and validation, enabling us to reach a deeper understanding of our siblings and ourselves.
If you have a sibling, or you are bringing up siblings, or, as an only child, you want to know what you're missing, this is the book for you.