Includes bibliographical and index

An exploration of the intricacy, friction, and love in the bonds between sisters. Relationships between women are often freighted with a rocky mix of emotions--devotion and disregard, affection and loathing, admiration and envy--leading to anguish and confusion on the playground, in the home, and in the boardroom. A woman's experience negotiating her layered feelings toward a sister shapes her psychology as forcefully as do her relationships with her parents. By exploring sisterhoods, Terri Apter reveals their key role in understanding all relationships among women. In a series of interviews, Apter considers the many aspects of the sister relationship from birth through adulthood. The need to fight to differentiate oneself from a sister, as well as the protectiveness one feels for that same person, is explained by reference to extensive psychological and biological evidence.