Psychotherapists feel gratified and delighted when a patient’s conflicts are eventually transmuted via successful treatment. Like novelists, psychotherapists relish in their patients’ happy endings, especially if the therapeutic experience involved unearthing painful traumatic events that had interfered with the patients’ happiness and self-love. Naturally, this is not always the outcome, despite our best efforts. Regardless of our predilections, we have to stay within our patient’s self-imposed limitations and goals. I worked for a few years with a delightful young man, […]

One often reads about how a daughter physically resembles her mother. However, unconsciously turning one’s son or daughter into the twin you wish you had is a uniquely complex dynamic. This situation occurred with a female identical twin in her seventies (“Mary”) who contacted me a few years after her sister had unexpectedly passed away. She hoped to find some understanding and compassion about her complicated feelings regarding her twin. She described how their estrangement had widened over the years. […]

Many twins lack an understanding about growing up as a twin until external life circumstances jolt them into a new awareness. I was speaking to an identical female twin in her midtwenties, whom I will call Abby, who repeatedly told me that she would never measure up to her sister. She seemed to feel as if this was an inevitable and unavoidable fait accompli. She concluded there was little she could do about it other than try not to get […]

Last month I was invited to speak at a mothers-of-twins annual convention. It turned out to be a different experience than I had anticipated because this gathering primarily included parents of adult twins, rather than young ones. I was excited and inspired by this unexpected shift as I treasure talking about adult twin development. However, more importantly, what emerged for me at this conference was learning about the ties many of these women have forged with one another for more […]

A few years ago, I went out to lunch with an acquaintance and her adolescent identical twin boys. One of the boys accidentally knocked something off the table. What struck me about that incident was his twin’s reaction. Rather than expressing a more typical sibling response, such as calling his brother a name or making fun of him, the bystander twin was thoroughly humiliated and ashamed. He reacted as if both were responsible for the accident. In many of my […]