Alone in the Mirror by Barbara Klein

Author:Barbara Klein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136343759
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Summary of Life Stories

The twins whose case stories were presented all received similar types of limited psychological parenting. They were split into the good and bad twins without enough attention to their actual personality or who they really were as a child. Sociological and cultural parenting differences were quite varied. Some twins came from well-to-do families, while others came from working-class or middle-class families. All the cases reviewed suggest that the strength and tenacity of the twin attachment for both positive healthy reasons as well as negative reasons created psychological damage that needed to be repaired.

All split identity twins felt relieved to be separated from each other in adolescence and into adulthood. The twins whom I discuss who were still in their 30s and 40s were too young to reconnect with acceptance and forgiveness. The older twin pairs’ motivation and capacity to rekindle and restore a relationship with each other after experiencing serious emotional rifts varied depending on the quality of sharing as children. When a great deal of communication and play had been encouraged by parents in childhood, there was more likelihood that their closeness could be rekindled. When the twin relationship was built on outward appearance and they did not really need each other for emotional closeness, after getting over their disappointment with each other they went their own separate ways. In all instances, psychotherapy was very helpful because it affirmed what was unique about each individual. It is difficult to determine which approach was more effective by just reviewing the life stories, because there were different presenting problems and different psychological circumstances to overcome.

An important distinction from other patterns of twinship became apparent when reviewing split identity twins’ psychotherapeutic issues. Because they are treated rigidly and unrealistically as children, split identity twins are far more likely to idealize and then devalue their therapist than twins with individual identities. In other words, there is a strong tendency for twins with this type of childhood to give the therapist way too much power and importance and then to resent them for their limitations. If therapists are not aware of this particular idiosyncrasy in the transference, they will most likely run into this therapeutic impasse. While it is possible to go beyond this impasse, it is better to avoid it by keeping in mind the need of the split identity twin to overvalue the words of their therapist as well as to become mercilessly enraged with him or her.

In my experiences speaking with and working with split identity twins, ambivalence is very common in the teenage years and into adulthood. Resentment is inevitable, understandable, and normal given the favoritism they experienced as children. Separation and individuation are imperative for the psychological well-being of the bad twin, who will suffer from anxiety and clinical depression if he or she does not look at and reinvent his or her identity. Self-destructive behavior and suicide is also common when childhood experiences have been abusive and there are other developmental problems such as autism or mental deficiency.

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