Twins in Society: Identity and status.
Presented to Psychotherapy Sussex, July 13, 2024
Why is it important for us to talk about/ think about twins?
- Twins are more prevalent in society than previously – 1/40 vs 1/80. Some African communities have a particularly high prevalence of twin births and the rate is variable in different societies. In central Africa, the rate is 1/18, and amongst the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria, 1/25.
- Twins are fundamentally different from singletons in their development – a twin is not just a singleton with a twin add-on, but the fact of being born a twin, shapes their development in a way unique to that twin, and it is different from singleton development. The psychic processes are the same, but there is an additional primary object in the picture (the twin) and it affects the development of both infants as I will discuss.
- Twins and our viaew of them tell us a great deal about ourselves and our identity. We project our own inner conflicts onto twins using processes that create our fascination with twins?
While listening to Today programme on Radio 4 (7 Dec 2022), Justin Webb and Mishal Hussein each said they have twin children and commented, “To be a twin, it’s kind of a privilege, even if you are not identical.” This immediately raised a question for me: why is it considered to be a privilege to be a twin, and what is at the basis of our fascination with so-called Identical twins?
Various themes play into this:
- Idealisation of idea of twinship (this is linked with longing, loneliness and the psychic twin of infancy – explored later.)
- The Uncanny – a theme much played upon in literature. (The idea of a double generates fear, and this is the obverse of the idealisation of twins). An article in the Observer 11th June 2023 by Eva Wiseman looked at doubles being a harbinger of impending death. (This has been written about by Freud, Rank and many others, as well as being the subject of many films).
We need to consider the extent to which the concept of a “twin” is a social construct, a biological construct, and a psychic construct. How do all these factors affect twin development and how do twins get to be who they are? As I hope to show, all these factors are relevant in the development of twins and in how we view them.
For twins, the other twin will always be a presence, a shadow, whether alive or dead, estranged or friendly, and they may be problematically entwined with each other.
Both Internal and external dynamics affect twins developmentally:
I will begin with external factors. Then look at internal personal dynamics and the interplay between these and the external ones.
Societal views of twins seem to embrace two sides of a coin:
- Idealisation of twins. The birth of twins generates fascination with the idea of twins, and they may be afforded god-like status, or presumed to be linked with the gods.
- The other side of the coin, the opposite of idealisation is denigration of twins– we observe cultural practices where twins are killed at birth as they are regarded as the bringers of bad luck (again a link with the uncanny, the double).
The excitement about, and idealisation of, the twin relationship is based on our feelings of intrigue about the existence of twins and what they represent of our own internal longings. The frenzy generated by the media, and in some cases used by the famous or infamous twins themselves, indicates the perceived intensity and magic of the twin bond in some twin pairs.
I will look briefly at some of the aspects of the idealisation and the denigration of twins in various cultures (I have written more fully about this and there is a great deal of literature on cultural views and practices in relation to twins.)
Until we developed sufficient understanding of the processes that lay behind the birth of twins, in the last hundred or so years, the arrival of twin babies would have been regarded with fear and awe. On the one hand we observe the celebration of the birth of twins and what appear to be the rather poetic and charming rituals and beliefs surrounding the birth of twins; and on the other, there is the dark side, where the twins, and sometimes also the mother of the twins, are banished to another area, or one or both twins, and occasionally also the mother, are killed in a ritualistic fashion.
In societies where twins are regarded as equivocal or inauspicious, their birth is ascribed to malign intervention by the gods. It is feared that they will bring ill-fortune/ill-health upon the family or society. Special rituals are performed to purify the parents and twins, and the society, in order to eliminate the corruption and to enable the community to re-enter the lost harmony with the upper world of the gods.
Even when twins are seen as a blessing, proper precautions must be strictly observed to honour and protect the twins and the community. This will include specific rituals and offerings to thank the gods. The twins will be treated with special reverence throughout their lives.
Thus the beliefs about twins and practices in relation to them vary from horror and the murder of the twins, to the other extreme, the elevation of the twins to god-like status. Both the idealization, and the accompanying celebratory or cleansing rituals, and the murder relating to twin births, are based on the belief that the twins possess super-natural powers, either beneficial or malign. Where a special social significance is attributed to twins, the associated practices are often integral to the social and cultural systems in the belief system of those people. These practices go as far back as pre-historic times, and at an ancient burial site in Thailand there is evidence that newborn twins were interred in a manner distinct from other infant burials.
The myths and legends about twins are used to create a coherent narrative about the apparently strange, unnerving and exciting phenomenon of twins, to try to deal with their supposed magical powers and the threat they are felt to pose to society. The sense of the uncanny at the birth of twins, and the projections of our internal psychic processes onto the twins, engender a narrative to explain the occurrence of twins and to help us contain our anxieties about them. So, we create myths to explain and contain our anxieties about the birth of twins.
For some societies, when a twin dies at birth or later, it is common to find that mourning is prohibited, sometimes until the other twin has died and they are re-united in death, and particular death rituals must be performed. We are all familiar with the ere Ibeji of the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria. These are carved wooden memorials to the dead twin. They are created to maintain the point of access to the spirit of the dead twin. They are regularly bathed, fed their favourite foods, dressed and adorned, by the mother of the twins. Their elaborate hairstyles and beaded jewellery mark their honoured status. When one twin dies, a single sculpture is commissioned and cared for by the mother and later by the surviving twin. If both infants die, a sculptor creates two images. (‘ere’ means sacred image, ‘ibi’, means born and ‘eji’ means two).
Even when the twin birth is considered to be fortunate for the parents, it is thought to put the community in general in peril and is an ill omen, which must be bought off by gifts and ceremonies. Until those ceremonies are completed, the twins and their parents are, as a rule, secluded from interaction with the world. Occasionally a twin birth is seen as a joy and frankly welcomed, as amongst the Herero of Namibia (formerly South West Africa).
The treatment of the birth of twins in various different cultural situations throughout the world offers an insight into our perceptions of twins and what they represent for the different communities. I now want to look at our fascination with twins and how this is linked with our unconscious phantasies about ourselves, and the impact this has on intimate relationships.
Internal dynamics and the development of the twin relationship:
We all have a deep inner longing to be known, and this generates a sense of essential loneliness. Our view of twins and the development of twins is deeply affected by this. I will start by exploring loneliness.
The phantasy twin as a solution to loneliness: Longing for a twin/soul-mate
In the last paper she wrote before she her death, Melanie Klein (1963) wrote about essential loneliness – of the loneliness engendered by the longing for understanding, a longing to be known. She defined it as a ‘yearning’, a ‘ubiquitous yearning for an unattainable perfect internal state’, a state of inner peace that comes from fully understanding other people and being fully understood by other people. She referred to this longing as “essential loneliness”.
Klein explores the common unconscious infantile phantasy of having a twin as a solution to essential loneliness – a twin that could integrate our split-off projections and create an idealised internal object.
The phantasy twin of infancy is created from a number of processes. In earliest infancy, the attuned mother unconsciously understands the non-verbal communications from her infant. The infant feels held in her gaze, as if mother is an extension or twin of himself. The at-oneness with mother waxes and wanes, and it generates a longing to be known like this again, to recapture the perfect soulmate who will understand and love us unconditionally. The longed-for twin-self is a narcissistic object, created by the infant in his own image. It offers an idea of being perfectly known stemming from those early days with mother’s unconscious understanding.
For twins, this phantasy twin of infancy has special relevance. Where there actually is a twin, the task of differentiation of self from mother and from the other twin becomes more difficult, especially in identifying what belongs to whom. When the twins look alike, as in MZ twins, they may be confused with each other. A woman who had experienced this said to me bitterly, that as a child, “I could not even have my own face”. While it is possible for twins to develop into mature adults with a sense of individuality and a capacity for mature relating to others, the task is more difficult than it is for singletons.
However, the state of being perfectly known is not attainable for any of us. On our journey through our lives, we all yearn to be accompanied emotionally and psychologically; we yearn to be seen, to be recognised and understood. But attaining this is illusory, though we fleetingly experience a level of acceptance and understanding that engenders hope for more. This is a fundamental condition of life. The longing for understanding is ubiquitous and will remain ultimately unfulfilled. Schreiber (2023) describes this as “existential loneliness”. “Normally our psyche protects us from having any kind of insight into this unavoidable, existential loneliness; normally we live in the fantasy that we are, indeed, understood and that other people really understand us. The pain of loneliness lies in the collapse of this fantasy, in the failure of the fiction that we are not alone in this world, in the fact that, in the light of this failure, we realize that it is nothing but a fiction.”
There is another issue that is important in our development of our identity. The longing to be known, the difficulty in expressing who we are, is accompanied by a fear of being known, and this is a central dynamic as we negotiate relationships, both intimate and more distant. While we long to be known we are also concerned about the privacy of the self. Our attempts to communicate to be understood are multi-layered. Language can never fully represent what we are trying to express. We struggle to say in words what can only ever remain unconscious. We offer a representation, a reflection, an intimation of what is brewing in the deeper layers of the self, but it is always an approximation. There is also the unconscious communication that is a central part of any discourse: what we communicate about ourselves and our state of mind through projection, body language, facial expression, and all the other “clues” to unconscious activity that are unwittingly expressed.
The painter, Edward Hopper wonderfully captured this sense of essential and personal loneliness in his work. His paintings show figures, whether alone in a room or in a bar with others, which seem isolated, lost in their own worlds, unreachable. They stare out of a window, or into the distance. Edvard Munch, too, painted people in isolation, even if in a crowd.
Hopper also demonstrated the fear of un-manageable intrusion into our private world that accompanies the longing for closeness – the conflicting experience of making contact, and the fear of invasion of personal space, is graphically captured by Hopper’s arrangements in his studio. He shared a large studio with his wife who was also an artist. But he painted a line across the studio floor to mark out his own space, a line his wife was not allowed to cross except with his permission.
Twins seem to represent perfect at-oneness, without discord or judgement.
Yinka Shonibar, a Nigerian artist, engages in the idealization of twins with his beautiful work entitled “Twins riding the butterfly”.
But the reality of being a twin is, of course, very different. The otherness of the other twin is both a safety net against absorption into another with the accompanying loss of self, and at the same time a threat and frustration in relation to the longing to be perfectly known. The thin-skinned relationship between the twins enables the belief (for the twins and those around them) that the twinship will alleviate the essential loneliness of each of them, while the thick emotional skin around the pair will isolate them from a feared intrusion, as well as from the needed external mature containment/understanding.
The idea that twins share perfect understanding with each other is an illusion, as I hope to show later with some brief clinical vignettes from my work with twins.
Twins and Developmental frames: Traditionally we tend to view the creation of a self through a series of developmental frames:
- Containing dyad with mother
- Structural organising triad with mother and father
- Siblings in lateral and peer mode, the family group
- Social group offering a wider societal and ethical circle
For twins, the developmental process is immediately disrupted – they are born as a dyad into a group of three/four (or more).
But perhaps the idea of moving through a set of developmental sequences in a linear fashion does not stand up in reality. I think it is more helpful to consider that we have developmental input from multiple sources all the time, each source having particular characteristics. The various sources of input that contribute to the most formative developmental experiences of the self will evolve around both innate (genetic and epigenetic) developmental tendencies and the multifaceted nature of external developmental input. Each source of input will have its own value, dynamic, function and tension.
Importantly, I would add to this heady mix the earliest somatic experiences, laying as they do, the foundation of deep, indelible, sensate, proto-mental, non-verbal memories, closely linked with the sense of the self, and inexpressible by ordinary conscious means of communication. As Freud: (1926d) noted, “There is much more continuity between intra-uterine life and earliest experience than the impressive caesura of the act of birth allows us to believe” p 138.
As we encounter the various developmental modalities, we create a sense of self and otherness in relation to each of them. We find commonality and difference to help us establish who we are in each setting. Perelberg, 2005: (On Narcissism) wrote that the “…encounter with the other is a precondition for the formation of the self.”
I found the following example helpful: “Christopher Knight, the man who walked away from society when he was 20, living in the forests and valleys of Maine for 27 years, said that “solitude increased my perception. But here’s the tricky thing: when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant.” This obliteration of identity wasn’t, he said, a bad thing. “My desires dropped away. I didn’t long for anything. I didn’t even have a name. To put it romantically, I was completely free.” “(Guardian 28/04/21)
I will now look in more detail at some factors that affect development in twins in particular.
Genes alone do not decide who we become and much research using twin studies has misused or ignored this fact, pitting genes against environment as developmental triggers. Furthermore, the environment is never the same for any two individuals, including twins. Environment is not a stable measurable structure. Each person, whether an MZ or DZ twin, sibling, mother, father or live-in grandmother, has their own particular very personal environment within the family. The relationships between each member of the family with every other member is personal, dynamic, and while there are elements of the environment that are shared, their meaning will differ for each member of the family.
Our genes are regulated by epigenetic mechanisms that may include many environmental factors in our lives. These may be hormonal, chemical, as well as other environmental factors. Epigenetic factors sit “on top” of each gene cluster and turn them on or off. Whereas genes are inherited from the parents, the epigenetic factors are not – all information contained in them is wiped clean for every individual at conception and develops according to the circumstances and environment of that particular individual. As a result, every individual, while inheriting potential from the parents via the inherited genes, is a unique person, and their development will be unique throughout their lives. As a result, each twin in a pair is a unique individual with a particular personality and experience of life. But they do share a deep and particular bond.
Adam Rutherford, Geneticist sums it up perfectly: “We are a symphony of nature and nurture” – he captures the complexity vs the oversimplification of whether it is nature or nurture.
An understanding of the twinning processes and the early experiences of twins is central to understanding their particular development and how this will impact on all their relationships, including the transference relationship with a psychotherapist.
Twinning dynamics
What is usually the first question an onlooker asks when confronted with two people, particularly babies, of the same age?
“Are they identical?”
The root of the question and our fascination with twins lies both with our idealised phantasy twin of infancy, and the question of identity – our own identity. If two babies are born at the same time, more or less, to the same mother and father, into the same household and family, what paths are open to them?
And what paths are open to us?
What if I had made a different decision about …..? What would have happened? Who would I be now?
We believe twins offer us another look at this.
The intrapsychic processes twins must face in their development are not unique to them, but are made more difficult by the fact of the actual existence of another baby right from the start. It is as if the psychic splitting processes have become embodied: there is another, same age individual who may act as a receptacle for the baby’s projections and this other being is not a mature container able to deal with the projections in a helpful way, in the way a good parent is. As an ordinary part of development, encompassing splitting, projective and introjective mechanisms, each twin will create a psychic twin, comprising the early twinning experiences with both the breast/mother (the phantasy twin of infancy), and the twinning processes with the other twin. This complex psychic twin is pivotal in the identity of each twin.
Just to clarify:
I am talking about three different twins:
- The Phantasy twin of infancy, created within the experience with an attuned mother in order to hope to recapture the at-oneness between them
- The Actual twin and the twinning processes (projective and introjective) between the twins
- The Psychic twin comprised of the narcissistic phantasy twin of infancy, and the internalised twinning processes with the other twin.
The complex Psychic Twin is an essential part of the identity of each twin and will be active in all interpersonal interactions.
The Development of the Psychic twin:
Projective processes may lead each twin to see the other twin as the embodiment of the phantasy twin, and the other twin may then be treated as an extension of the self. As they work through the various developmental processes, each twin will have to manage both the twinning processes and the development of a sense of self and otherness. As a result, there will be both narcissistic and an object-related aspects of each twin relationship, and the predominance of one or the other will determine the emotional health of each of the individual twins. So, for twins, the twinning processes, starting in utero and extending through early developmental life, create an added dimension to developmental experience of each twin, and is unique to twin development.
In utero and soon after birth, twins will experience somatic stimuli generated by the other twin – pushing, stroking, kicking, and general movement and sound. While the twins are in a state of sleep, in utero, until birth, these experiences will create memory traces that are recorded at a proto-mental, preverbal and visceral level. In addition, they share experiences in growing up together, with the disruption of the usual of dyadic/triadic relationships. They always have to share mother and father and all will have the other twin in mind at all times.
Through all this, twins have to negotiate a personal and private space within the twin relationship. The twinning processes between all twins intensify the relationship between them. As a result, there will be a distinct tension for each twin as they move towards individuation/developing separateness, and a pull back to an enmeshed twinship that may become intractable and at times toxic/parasitic.
The nature of the projective and introjective identifications between the twins would be affected by the current nature of the twin relationship. In the early stages where there are likely to be a predominance of narcissistic object relations, the identifications between them would be influenced by the unconscious proto-mental experiences and processes, and both the projections and introjections would tend to be of a narcissistic kind – intrusive rather than communicative. As such, the aim would be either to get rid the hated aspects of the self or experience into the other twin, or to appropriate the desirable qualities of the other. Where a twin can relate to the other twin in a more mature way, the projective and introjective processes would be concerned more with communication between them. As they mature, we see the valency of discovery, as opposed to the valency of control of earlier development.
As a result of the twinning processes, the twin relationship is closer and more entangled at a deep psychic level than other sibling relationships. Splitting and projection between the twins creates a primitive enmeshed matrix. It offers more opportunity for the narcissistic elements to proliferate from influences both within the twins themselves, and in the perception of the self, and from others, family, group and society. These processes will create an indelible core at the heart of the twin relationship.
Twinning as a narcissistic state of mind:
It is important to recognise and distinguish two aspects of the twin relationship. There are the ‘special’ aspects of the relationship between twins like the healthy unparalleled closeness and companionship between them. But this is interlaced with the more narcissistic elements of the twinship originating from the psychic splitting processes that may result in the twins clinging to the twin relationship at the expense of individuation.
The psychic twin is an integral part of the sense of identity for each twin. It is important for each twin that the idealised phantasy twin of infancy is recognised for what it is and is relinquished, rather than seen as being embedded in the other twin via twinning processes. If this can be achieved, the infant twin can mourn the loss of the idealised phantasy twin and develop towards a companionable type of relationship with the other twin, one in which separateness and individuality in the twin pair can be achieved. This will involve the change and loss of aspects of the internal psychic twin, as well as of the projected twin phantasy. Where this process fails, this may lead to an enmeshed twinship in which each twin feels dependent on the other twin not only for identity, but even for psychic survival. In this sort of twinship the twins feel trapped, suffocated in a deadly tangle.
Mourning the lost phantasy twin involves living with the pain of loss in order to do genuine psychological work with it. The loss can then be symbolized through a process of “dreaming”.
Dreaming and Dream-work
Bion proposed that the work of dreaming creates the unconscious and conscious mind. Dream work creates the apparatus for thinking (alpha-function). The work of dreaming is to translate the raw sense impressions into unconscious elements of experience that can be linked, and this generates unconscious dream states in which psychological work can be done and understanding gained – a personal narrative of the experience. (Ogden (2005)
This contrasts with Freud’s conceptualisation of dreams and dream work: [Ferro (2019) quotes Bion:] “But Freud meant by dream-work that unconscious material, which would otherwise be perfectly comprehensible, was transformed into a dream, and the dream-work needed to be undone to make the now incomprehensible dream comprehensible. I mean that the conscious material has to be subjected to dream-work to render it for storing, selection, and suitable for transformation from paranoid-schizoid position to depressive position, and that unconscious pre-verbal material has to be subjected to reciprocal dream-work for the same purpose (Bion 1992, p 43).”
Where there has been insufficient dream-work, for whatever reason, mourning the lost phantasy twin of infancy, and evading the pain of loss, leads to a psychotic state of mind where reality is not acknowledged. Ogden suggests that, if the object is not relinquished and mourned, the internal objects remain in a fused state in which “…pathological bonds of love mixed with hate are among the strongest ties that bind internal objects to one another in a state of mutual captivity” (Ogden, 2005, p 43/4), leaving the person unable to “dream” himself into existence as an individual. For twins this would leave the twins trapped in a narcissistic bubble, bound by bonds of un-boundaried love and hate.
When a twin loses the other twin, whether through distance, development or death, the experience of loss may leave a devastating sense of loneliness that is visceral, persistent and extreme. It is not the loss of the other twin per se that is the precipitant of this powerful loneliness. Rather it as if a part of the self has been lost. (Here we can see a link with the ere ibeji of Nigeria). This loss would be the compounded various elements: the loss of phantasy twin of infancy, the projected aspects of the self which were lodged in the other twin as the embodiment of the phantasy twin, the close narcissistic connections with the other twin, and the loss of a lifelong companion. The experience of devastating loss may become encapsulated and will feel persistent, unreachable and leave the remaining twin in a lifelong state of non-being.
The narcissistic entanglement in which some twins are caught, is a psychic retreat (Steiner, 1993). It provides apparent shelter from a hostile invasive world, but traps the twins in a bound immature state of mind. It is vital for twins to have space to be individuals within the twin relationship, and neither lose themselves in the twinship, nor deny its importance to them. Emerging from the psychic retreat will be a painful process.
The narcissistic aspects of the twin relationship, including the deep sensate bond between them, the early projective ad introjective processes, and the idealisation of the twinning processes, will also affect the processes of horizontal differentiation that is necessary in order to establish a unique personal identity, and for each to find their place in the world. Idealisation of the twin relationship exists internally in each twin and between the twins, as well as in the perceptions of their parents, other siblings and society. Twins may have to work harder for each to establish a rich individual personal identity. Where they do not sufficiently achieve this, this will affect all their relationships in both vertical (parental) and lateral (sibling, peer, marital partner, etc.) dimensions.
References:
Bion W R (1992) Cogitations, Karnac, London and New York
Ferro, A (2019): Psychoanalysis and Dreams: Bion, the Field and the Viscera of the Mind. Routledge
Freud S (1926d): Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety SE 20, 77-178, London. Hogarth Press 1959
Klein, M (1963). “On the sense of loneliness.” in Envy and Gratitude and Other Works. pp. 300-313. The Hogarth press, London, 1980.
Ogden T H (2005) This Art of Psychoanalysis. Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries. Routledge, London and New York, (p 43/4)
Perelberg, R (2005). “On Narcissism” in Freud. A Modern Reader, 72 – 90, Whurr Publishers, London
Schreiber, D: Alone, Reaktion Books, London, 2023
Steiner, J. (1993) Psychic Retreats. Pathological Organisations in Psychotic, Neurotic and Borderline Patients. Routledge: London and New York
Copyright: Vivienne Lewin