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 compelling 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. Not only women with sisters will be enlightened by this original book: "The Sister Knot" sheds light on all relationships between women.