Birth Order

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How does Sigmund Freud fit Alfred Adler's birth order theory?

-- elaine (brisbane.e@dreyfus.com), March 07, 2002

Answers

There are nice analyses of Freud's birth order and sibling position in the following two books on genograms, which include

McGoldrick, M., & Gerson, R. (1985). Genograms in family assessment. New York: W. W. Norton. Genograms of the Freud family are scattered throughout the book.

McGoldrick, M., Gerson, R., & Shellenberger, S. (1999). Genograms: Assessment and interventions (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. An entire chapter traces the life cycle of the Freud and Bernays families.

Family therapists tend to focus more on total "sibling position" (gender and birth order) than Adler might have, but I think you'll find these analyses useful. You'll find that Freud had a rather complex position in the family.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), March 07, 2002.


Elaine - that's a fascinating question to which one can only make speculative response.

Freud was the first-born child to his mother, a position that may have contributed to his intellectual power and to his courageous independence of thought.

He did have 2 older brothers who were the children of his father's first wife, however, and one might speculate that those brothers perhaps envied his position of favor with the mother, while also forming a bond that excluded him.

This might explain Freud's strong but ambivalent attachment to Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, and his fury towards them whenever they seemed to exclude him by challenging his theories.

Since Freud's older brothers had each other and since the 6 younger siblings no doubt did too, one might also speculate that Freud's position in his family was one of isolation, a position that was often re-created in his adult life, and which may account for the profound (but justified) disdain he so often expressed towards all the physicians of lesser intellect who forced a kind of professional exile on him by constantly rejecting and ridiculing his work.

Strange as it may seem, the same type of intellectually-inferior individuals continue to ridicule and exile him in the present, and one might further speculate that their own family-positions connect to Freud's historical scenario :-)

-- visualize me (visualizeme@webtv.net), March 09, 2002.


the birth order theory is completely erroneous. Freud had a better, more specific theory about how your childhood affects your personlity.

-- lola (mickeychi@hotmail.com), May 27, 2004.

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