Nowhere,
Thank-you for sharing your great insights.

Actually, I was the oldest (of six). My sister that I mentioned is 2 1/2 years younger than I am, and I continually felt that I was being held back to wait for her to catch up with me, and that she was holding me back to get ahead. We look very different from each other. I have light hair and am 5' 1", and she has dark hair, darker coloring in general, and is 5' 5". I don't know if one of us is prettier than the other. There are pictures of both of us on my website. When we were young, people often thought that we were twins, as she caught up to me in size fairly early. Our temperments are different also. I was always more independent, while she never questioned authority, and was just like our mother, and since she never questioned things and thought just like mom did, she was trusted more and given more freedom and power. I was no rebel - I just wanted to think for myself, but that wasn't acceptable. When I describe her, people are usually surprised that I am the oldest.

I did a lot of searching for just one person who could understand me and who would not think I was bad for having the feelings that I did.

This all fits pretty well with Alfred Adler's personality theory. Although I don't think as much of his theory in general compared to some of the others (most of it is gross oversimplification), he had some thoughts on birth order that fit my family. He thought that second and other middle children were most likely to be successful in life, as oldest, youngest, and only children are too likely to be either pampered or neglected by the parents, which are the two causes of psychopathology in his theory. Your comments on raising childrent to be aggressive, labeling aggression with more socially acceptable terms ties right in with Adler also. He felt that social cooperation was the key to being well adjusted. Aggressiveness is a trait that I go out of my way to avoid. One common theme every time I have been in therapy has been that they try to get me to be more assertive and I don't want to because I can't tell where assertiveness ends and turns into aggressiveness.

Thanks again! You really have wonderful insight.

<font color=blue>Life is filled with tragedy; if you let it overwhelm you, you cannot enjoy life's innocent pleasures. -Robert Heinlein</font color=blue>