Siblinghood and the Formation of Fraternal Psychic Zones

Becoming-Sister in Yehoshua Kenaz’s “Henrik’s Secret” and Its Clinical Contexts

Abstract

This reading invites the discovery of new layers in both a literary text and a therapeutic vignette, through Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming (devenir). This key concept involves a unique and unmediated type of connection and the creation of something new, emphasizing the loss of the whole, molar subject as we know it. It can be understood as a form of symbiosis that generates metamorphosis—becoming-other.
This article presents a specific and original development of the concept of becoming-sister. A close textual analysis of Yehoshua Kenaz’s short story “Henrik’s Secret” is conducted, alongside an examination of a therapeutic situation described by psychoanalyst Michael Eigen, tracing processes of becoming-sister in both texts. The article demonstrates how the literary text sheds new light on the therapeutic vignette and enriches engagement with the psychoanalytic lacuna concerning sibling relations.
Becoming-sister constitutes fraternal psychic zones that are critical for mental development, integrating the personal with the political. The reading discusses the unique conditions for its emergence at both the thematic and linguistic levels. Additionally, becoming-sister disrupts common Oedipal structures as well as gender binaries, thereby unsettling ideological and hegemonic hierarchies and enabling new experiences on both the psychic and political levels.