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Transactional Analysis Journal
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DOI: 10.1177/0362153713518174
2013 43: 347 originally published online 10 January 2014 Transactional Analysis Journal
Servaas van Beekum
Changing the Focus: The Impact of Sibling Issues on Group Dynamics

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Article
Changing the Focus:
The Impact of Sibling Issues
on Group Dynamics
Servaas van Beekum
Abstract
The author explores the impact of a shift in focus from the classical vertical orientation in psy-
chotherapy and consulting to a lateral-horizontal orientation within a two-person psychological
frame. He discusses sibling transferences in group dynamics and illustrates these ideas with a case
vignette drawn from his experience with a training group.
Keywords
siblings, transference, group work, relational approach, holding, loss
Over the last decade or so, I have become increasingly interested in sibling issues in consulting and
therapy. This has all to do with my personal background of being the fifth child in a family of nine.
One of the challenging aspects in my own journey of training and being on the couch has been to
acknowledge the profound effect my siblings had on me and that it was not all about my parents
and parental messages. Bernes (1972) script apparatus (p. 110) and vertical psychotherapeutic
orientation did not work for me. Once I acknowledged this, the challenge became to have the dis-
cussions with my peers, my trainees, and my analyst, who often were, like me, initially not pre-
pared to think into a lateral frame. Struggling between my classical training in the vertical
paradigm and the emerging new evidence of horizontal influences on script building, I started
to embrace interpretations of script impact from a more horizontal perspective. A breakthrough
publicationcall it a peer permissionwas Juliet Mitchells (2003) book Siblings, in which she,
in a scholarly and passionate manner, challenged the near exclusive dominance of vertical com-
prehension to the interaction of the horizontal and the vertical in our social and psychological
understanding (p. 1).
In 2012 the Australian Centre for Integrative Studies organized a conference in Sydney with the
title Allies & Enemies: The Role of Real and Metaphorical Siblings in Our Psychological World.
Probably the most profound insight from that conference was how, as therapists or consultants, we
actually move continuously between the vertical and the horizontal or lateral dynamic in relation-
ships with our clients. We are all familiar with the vertical (oedipal) paradigm in consulting and
psychotherapy. The background for the dominance of the oedipal is extensively described by Lamb
Corresponding Author:
Servaas van Beekum, 158 Wellington Street, Bondi Beach 2026, Australia.
Email: servaas@acissydney.com.au
Transactional Analysis Journal
2013, Vol. 43(4) 347-351
International Transactional Analysis
Association, 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0362153713518174
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and Sutton-Smith (1982), Mitchell (2003), Coles (2003, 2006), Sanders (2004), Lewin and Sharp
(2009), and van Beekum (2009, 2013).
Twenty-five years ago, the Transactional Analysis Journal (Friedlander & Bonds-White, 1988)
devoted a theme issue to TA and Children, with contributions from Clarkson and Fish, Shmukler
and Friedman, Massey, and Campos, among others. They reflected the zeitgeist in which all issues in
child therapy or even systems therapy are considered part of the vertical orientation. Extended fam-
ilies are extended in the vertical (grandparents), hardly ever in the horizontal. The concept of sibling
is missing in that theme issue of the TAJ. One of the articles for which Cornell (1988) won the 2010
Eric Berne Memorial Award challenged the focus on the vertical intrapsychic dimension of script
theory, later elaborated by Summers and Tudor (2000) and van Beekum (2009).
Since then, the horizontal dimension has been gaining ground.
Those who study children are, of course, adults. As psychotherapists and consultants we study the
Child in our clients by observing and engaging with it. One of the unintended side effects of this may
be that, unwillingly and unconsciously, the vertical parent-child relationship is replicated in our
mode of research. Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis practice this form of research, which has
become the template for most consulting work as well as for teaching, coaching, and counseling.
We explore a mode of research in which the transference onto the therapist/consultant of the clients
unresolved issues about his or her parents is a central avenue of investigation. As part of that, we
have developed skills, insights, and resilience for being on the receiving end of the clients transfer-
ence. Consultants and psychotherapists, on the one side, and clients, on the other, (unconsciously)
act in their roles in this well-defined vertical paradigm. As therapists/consultants we take up our role
with our clients from early on in the process, for which interpretations into the vertical oedipal frame
match remarkably well. The original Freudian one-person psychology model (Stark, 1999; Tudor,
2011) applies this quite one-dimensionally to the clients transference, reenacted in the here and now
of the relationship. A two-person relational psychology model extends this research to the consul-
tants countertransference toward the client, in which unresolved issues of the consultant, reenacted
in the here and now of the sessions, play a role as well.
We need to expand these transference paradigms in two directions. The first is to include and
inquire about those transferences that stem from our clients sibling relationships, something
I argued for in an earlier publication (van Beekum, 2009). The client may project a brother or sister
onto the consultant or psychotherapist, not only a parent. As professionals in our role, however, we
may have difficulty accepting and researching sibling transference from our clients. Not only are we
not prepared and trained for it, we also may unconsciously resist the experience of the injury of being
demoted from a parent to a sibling in the clients transference.
The second direction we need to expand into is for the psychotherapist or consultant to reflect
on whether our countertransference comes from our own sibling background and is not, a priori,
a figment of a parent-child relationship. This may be particularly hard when we fear that sibling-
related countertransference is forbidden ground or seen as unprofessional.
Most consultants and therapists are not trained for expansion in either of these directions. In her
analysis of Byatts (1993) tale of intersecting hysterias entitled The Chinese Lobster, Dent (2009)
pointed out the difficulty for clinicians of accessing the horizontal axis and how poorly trained
we are for that possibility. Mitchell (2009) added, This, I believe, is because in our training we have
rarely met with an understanding of lateral transferencesthese are seen to happen only elsewhere,
such as in our jealousy of those coming after us, siblings in the waiting room (p. 170).
We are groomed to interpret the dynamic in the consulting room in terms of a vertical paradigm
and it suits us: The vertical feeds our hidden wishes to be important. When the potential of horizontal
sibling transference is experienced, shown, or even named by the client, we quickly bring it back to
the safe and known territory of the vertical, labeling the clients interpretation as defensive resis-
tance or a game. But, perhaps the client is right, and it is not a form of resistance or an invitation
348 Transactional Analysis Journal 43(4)
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to a power game when the client does not recognize parent transference or is angry with the consul-
tant as a reflection of transference related to a sibling, not a parent. Equally, there is a challenge for
the consultant or therapist to work with the sibling links in their own countertransferences. When my
client bores me, it may reenact my boring siblings, not my boring parents.
This change of paradigm has an impact on psychotherapists, consultants, and analysts. To work
with sibling transference interpretations is probably one of the greater challenges in our professions
today. Bank and Kahn (1982) suggested that the neutral stance that predominates in more analyti-
cally oriented therapies often stimulates a parent-child dependency. Sensale (2009) made the link
with humanistic psychologies when she argued that an approach that veers towards the humanistic,
person-centered point on the spectrum may more readily facilitate the emergence of a sibling trans-
ference (para. 25). Therefore, transactional analysis, with its analytic and humanistic roots, is in an
interesting place with regard to these dynamics.
Consulting to groups can more easily include attention to sibling dynamics than one-on-one
psychotherapy. Sibling-fueled transference exists in a group (a team, an organization) among the
participants often long before the consultant steps in. The challenge is to open up to the sibling level
of the group imago. The consultant works both as a potential peer (i.e., joining in) and as a potential
parent (i.e., holding the siblings).
Case Study
For more than 25 years, I have offered transactional analysis training in combination with group
relations theory. My preferred approach is relational transactional analysis because it focuses
actively on unconscious process on both the individual and the group level. Group relations theory,
despite its Kleinian roots, is actually, in its methodology, very relational, which fits with this
approach well. Those who enter the training course are interested to learn experientially first and
conceptually second about unconscious process in groups and organizations and appreciate the inte-
gration with relational transactional analysis. The trainees are a mixture of senior managers, human
relations (HR) executives, learning and development staff, team leaders, and free-floating consul-
tants, coaches, and psychotherapists.
In each of the annual 20 days of training, one full hour is spent on the study of the unconscious
elements of process in the training group itself, from a here-and-now, experiential perspective.
When trainees are participants in this experience, I operate as a consultant to their process. After the
hour, we spend about 30 minutes reflecting on the process from a theoretical perspective. This is
where experience is integrated with theory.
After reading Mitchells (2003) book, I found my way of consulting to the group process sessions
changing. I started to pick up more lateral issues in the group, issues among the group members
themselves, instead of focusing on vertical issues related to me as the consultant.
This came, however, with a sense of loss. Although I had expected that, I was not prepared for the
intensity of the feeling. Vertical issues are inclusive of me as a consultant in projected positions of
power and authority, which goes with a sense of importance that potentially feeds into my narcis-
sism. Vertical issues are also familiar because I am well trained to work with transferential issues
related to my authority, good or bad, present or absent, supportive or abusive. When a client group
works with those themes, I am part of the picture. I am rather central in their search for understand-
ing, in their rejection of me, or in their struggle to work with me in my role as a consultant to their
process.
In contrast, horizontal issues often do not actively include me as the consultant. The work is, first
of all, between group members, with me as a containing consultant in the background. To leave the
dynamic with the group, supporting them in working with it and not taking it back to myself as the
van Beekum 349
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consultant, forced me into an inescapable learning curve. I often felt left out and not important in the
group, which are unfamiliar feelings for me in a consulting role.
In one of my latest training groups there were eight participants representing large- and small-size
family backgrounds and carrying eldest, middle, youngest, and single children histories. The
dynamic over the year of training started with peer issues related to professional competency, envy,
and rivalry and turned increasingly into sibling strife and sibling love. On a personal level, it repre-
sented awareness growing curves for all involved; on a group level it showed how group members
could take responsibility for part of the collective group dynamic by joining in emotions and actions
that were carried by one or two members of the group. The work was often painful and triggered a
sense of shame about the exposure. Because this was not a counseling group but a group learning
about group process, the depth of learning was not in terms of counseling individuals through their
pain but in taking personal responsibility for what was expressed by any group member who acted as
a mouthpiece for the group. As a consultant, my role was mainly to contain that process and keep it
on track where it belonged: among them.
The loss I experienced was the loss of being on top of the vertical and being projected on as the
central father figure who could be either hated, fought, and killed off or loved, admired, and
embraced. And everything in between. Instead, my presence was often felt as bland. At times I had
the image of being like a grandparent sitting knitting in the corner while the kids worked out their
issues. It was a loss of status, a loss of importance, and a loss of self-indulgence in that dynamic. My
contributions were more about them and not so much about them and me. I felt more humble and
there were moments when I started to experience admiration and sometimes gratitude at witnessing
such profound work among the trainees. And while my sense of pride to see them come through was
growing, I realized that there was still a good deal of vertical dynamic in the room, picked up and
experienced by me as my silent internal parental pride about how well they were doing. At the same
time, I was also envious. Being left out, I wanted to be part of them, I wanted to share their dynamic.
I realized that I was watching something that was healing for me as it touched my own history of
not-well-worked-out issues between me and my real-life siblings.
The complexity of these experiences increased my awareness of the many layers of containment.
One of them is just witnessing and sitting with the groups process, which provided the environment
the training group needed to feel safe enough to experiment with each other.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biography
Servaas van Beekum, drs., Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst, has a background in
analytic, humanistic, and systemic modalities. He is a past president of both EATA and the ITAA and
a founder of Group Relations Nederland (1992) and Group Relations Australia (2005), both of
which promote the study of unconscious process in groups and organizations. He works globally
as a psychodynamic consultant, trainer, and supervisor and is the author of more than 20 articles.
Servaas lives in Sydney, where he is the director of the consulting training arm of the Australian
Centre for Integrative Studies (ACIS) (www.acissydney.com.au). He can be reached at 158 Welling-
ton Street, Bondi Beach 2026, Australia; email: servaas@acissydney.com.au.
van Beekum 351
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