The interview that follows was conducted for the purpose of revealing the facts about the so-called Neubauer Twin Study, for much has been grossly distorted in the media and in recent films. Dr. Peter Neubauer, Director of the Child Development Center in New York City from 1951 to 1984, undertook with colleagues a prospective study of twins reared apart, a study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health. The study has stimulated a number of highly complex questions ranging from the psychological impact of separating multiples put up for adoption to the ethics of research involving adoptive families who knew virtually nothing of the study in which they were participating. At issue as well is how one views today the practices of a bygone era: Do we consider them in accordance with the standards maintained at the time or with the standards developed many years later (the study was conducted in the 1950s and '60s; the Institutional Review Board was established in 1974, the Belmont Report in 1978)?1
None of these controversial questions prompted this interview, however, as significant as they are. Rather, I wished to set the record straight and bring to light the truth about the study as well as about Dr. Neubauer, a highly respected child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, the John Turner Lecturer at Columbia University, Clinical Professor at the Downstate Medical Center, the President and Founding Member of the Association of Child Psychoanalysis, long-time co-editor of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and the author of numerous publications. Dr. Neubauer had been unjustly vilified in the film Three Identical Strangers, a film that achieved its considerable dramatic and commercial success by ignoring facts, employing 2019 practices and conventions to denounce good faith actions taken over a half-century ago, and falsely maligning a widely admired leader of the profession. The thesis of the film is that, in 1961, Dr. Neubauer inhumanely separated
identical triplets who had been given up for adoption in order to enable him to conduct a study of their separate development. Additional villainy attributed to him is that he did not tell the adoptive parents that the babies were triplets. Whether the film's falsification was willful or attributable to ignorance, the accusations are without factual basis, for the triplets were separated for adoption for reasons having nothing to do with Dr. Neubauer's study. Years before Dr. Neubauer's involvement, the Louise Wise adoption agency, under the guidance of its chief psychiatric consultant, Dr. Viola Bernard, was separating identical twins for adoption in the belief that this was in the best interest of the twins. The film's proposition that the study was a heartless scheme undertaken at the expense of the children's well-being to enable a scientific study is but a fabrication. And it is shocking that the film either willfully conceals, or is shamefully ignorant of, Dr. Bernard's role. Moreover, the laws and practices of adoption have changed dramatically in the last half-century. In the 1960s, it was conventional, if not also required by law, that adopting families not be told the facts of the children's biological families. This also was believed at the time to benefit the children. Adopting parents signed consent forms which explicitly acknowledged and agreed that they would not be told the facts of the birth family. But, again, it is the study itself that is the primary subject of the interview.
I had access to material that was virtually unknown to exist by anyone other than the source of that access, the Project Director of the study. She was willing to grant but a single interview, an interview with me. What she recounted in response to my questions was illuminating. But then there was this: Placing the interview—though it contained much significant information both new and corrective—proved in itself unexpectedly complicated necessitating, as a result, consideration of a question I had not anticipated when the desire to make known the truth about the study took form: What, if anything, is to be done when one or more answers by an interviewee are deemed by potential publishers to be ethically unacceptable?
Surely, asking an individual to modify a response in order to render it more palatable to a journal editor, and perhaps even to some portion of the public at large, is nothing short of censorship. Yet the replies of two editors were immediate and unambiguous: The seeming lack of regret expressed by the researcher—though she, like the others on the team,
had not been in any way responsible for the separation of the siblings—made publication in those journals impossible. The next response was more stunning still: The interview failed not only to speak sufficiently to the “trauma,” but to the “evil of these circumstances.” But here's the rub: The interviewee was of the opinion that no evil had been wrought, certainly not by the research team that came on board with their study only after the separation of the twins/triplets took place. In fact, she believed then and continues to believe today that such separation is better for multiples for reasons touched upon in the interview. One can certainly cite evidence for both sides and this has been done. As to the trauma, she was extremely sensitive to the pain that some study subjects endured later in life when they learned of the existence of their sibling(s) and of the study. Yet, once again, neither that nor the separation was intended to be the primary issue at hand. The focus of the interview was to be the study itself, not the policy that was put in place by others before it was begun, not the anguish suffered decades later with the reuniting of some siblings. The question that rapidly presented itself as editors were approached was whether readers should or should not be informed of the truth about such a study—how it was conducted, for what purpose, and what happened with regard to the results—when beliefs of the interviewee are incongruent with those of the editor or other reviewers.
Child development subsequent to the no-longer practiced policy of twin separation, its benefit or harm to such siblings, produces profoundly emotional responses in many a clinical theorist. And, though only a small part of the interview, it was enough to cause more than one editor to shy from publication. An interviewee who believes in the value of such separation was clearly not to be heard from. But it cannot be over-stated: the policy on such separation had nothing to do with the research team, a fact hardly of negligible significance and one that needs to be made known. Censorship, moreover, in itself is unethical. Is it justifiable to withhold publication based on what an editor determines an acceptable belief on the part of an interviewee? When might that be legitimate? When not? What became apparent was that the interview —never conceived as one about controversy—became the subject of controversy itself.
Above all, however, is the notion that this interview focuses in large part on the existence of an unknown manuscript. Is it unethical to make the existence of that draft known when it is not available to the study subjects
or researchers? So say some. The subjects would feel much better if they knew such a manuscript existed, that the study did have real results. So say others. One could make the argument that it would depend upon the individual, that it is not a case of one size fitting all. One could also make the argument that there may be both responses in a single study subject. Only with the publication of the interview by a courageous journal publisher/editor will we come to know.
“It's true, every word of it.” So we are told near the start of the 2018 documentary Three Identical Twins, directed by Tim Wardle. But is it? (Natasha Josephowitz's credit in the film as Peter Neubauer's “research assistant” though she has said she knew nothing about the study and learned about it only by “hearsay,” by virtue of being “in the office,”2 already throws into question the film's status as a documentary. And a so-called “documentary” in which the principals are paid for their “life rights” raises additional questions.3) “There's no study, no anything.” So we hear in The Twinning Reaction, another documentary, this one directed in 2017 by Lori Shinseki. Just how accurate is that? The films themselves and the media coverage of what is commonly referred to as the Neubauer Twin Study have displayed the pain—the deep sense of loss and regret, the anguish—suffered by those separated from their sibling(s), from other offspring produced by the same pregnancy. But there is another dimension to this pain as well: “What they feel is most egregious is not just the separation, but that no good has come of it,” Wardle told a television interviewer referring to subjects of the study. And, he further commented, “It would make it much easier for them if there were answers or definite information that had been found as a result of tearing these lives apart.”4 The truth? There is.
In 1986, Samuel Abrams, M.D. published a paper entitled “Disposition and the Environment.”5 In 1990, Peter Neubauer, M.D. published a book called Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality.6 In 1994 Abrams and Neubauer together published “Hartmann's Vision: Identical Twins and Developmental Organizations.”7 And in 1996, Neubauer and Christa Balzert, Ph.D. published “Genetik und Psychotherapie.”8 All four publications were drawn from results of the study. In addition, several presentations devoted to the study outcomes have taken place. To
Dr. Balzert agreed to be interviewed for the purpose of correcting flagrant misrepresentations and errors that have been floated by the media since the 1980s and particularly since the release of the two highly spectacularized films. As mentioned above, she made it eminently clear that this was to be the only interview on the Twin Study she would give and that the manuscript draft would not be made available for reasons that become evident in what follows. The interview took place (following two preliminary discussions) in New York City on April 25th, 2019.
Lois Oppenheim: At the center of the media coverage of the Twin Study is the Louise Wise Services, the adoption agency in New York that primarily placed Jewish babies from early in the 20th century to 2004 (when it closed and turned over all of its voluntary adoption records to the Spence-Chapin agency). Also at the center is Dr. Peter Neubauer who saw in these adoptions what he considered an extraordinary opportunity. What was the purpose of the study undertaken by Neubauer, the Director of the Child Development Center, a division of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services?10
Christa Balzert: In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s it was the adoption agency's policy to place twins separately. This created the unique opportunity for the prospective comparison of the development of genetically identical children growing up in different environments, in contrast to the existing retrospective twin studies. We expected to learn how the unique dynamics of each of the otherwise comparable middle-class adoptive families affect the developmental progression of children with identical genetic blueprints.
L.O.: There is much disagreement over the actual number of subjects in the study. How many were there?
C.B.: Originally, there were four sets of twins and one set of triplets. One set of twins dropped out early, and so did one of the triplets.
L.O.: Before we get to the manuscript itself, how would you describe the role of Dr. Neubauer in the separation of the twins? Contrary to what is distinctly claimed in one of the films, in much of the media hype, and elsewhere as well, it is my understanding that he did not separate the children and that Dr. Viola Bernard, the psychiatric consultant to the agency, did. In other words, Neubauer developed his study after that policy was in place. Is that correct?
C.B.: That is correct. It is my understanding that Viola Bernard, based on the assumption that it would be advantageous to the development of the individual, recommended separating twins at adoption.
L.O.: Do you feel that Dr. Bernard had any undue influence on Dr. Neubauer?
C.B.: As colleagues they did exchange ideas, but there was no “undue” influence.
L.O.: The focus of the study was nature vs. nurture. What specific aspects of that long-standing conundrum were you, the team, most interested in? Can you summarize that?
C.B.: We never thought of nature vs. nurture, but rather of their interplay. Many areas of interest emerged in the course of the study but, as child psychoanalysts and psychologists, our main focus became how disposition, as determined by genetic and epigenetic givens (nature), interacts with external stimuli (nurture) to create experiences that ultimately form the mind of the individual.
L.O.: The manuscript (or draft, such as it is) outlines four primary goals of the study: Refining aspects of the relationship between nature and nurture; exploring issues relevant to adoption for the purpose of distinguishing what in the environment promotes and what inhibits development; increasing understanding of the etiology and progression of psychopathology and examining the notions of abnormality and normality (i.e., the usefulness of considering psychopathology in terms of adjustment vs. deviation from developmental standards); and establishing
ways of studying the emergence and growth of what we call ‘mind’. Do you feel there was achievement in all four areas?
C.B.: Yes, I believe so.
L.O.: What is your thinking on the notion of the so-called “twinning reaction,” the idea that a particular kind of bonding takes place between such siblings? Many years ago, Susan Farber described “twinning” as an “exceedingly complex and idiosyncratic interaction” in which there is “close identification with and exaggerated independence of the other.”11 Not long after, Muriel Chaves Winestine wrote of the “mutual interidentification,” the “part fusion of the self representation and the object representation of the other member of the pair.” Do you believe, given the more recent research in this area, that there is such a phenomenon? It has been said that that “mutual interidentification” can occur in non-twin siblings and even non-siblings. If this is true, what does that say about the validity of the “twinning reaction”?
C.B.: The term “twinning” does not exclusively refer to the special relationship between twins. It is used to describe a number of different situations, ranging from a specific form of transference in the analytic relationship to interidentification or “psychic twinning,” as Ronald Britton called it,14 whether with imaginary companions, non-twin siblings, admired figures or best friend. Of course, one has to assume that this reaction is more pronounced and powerful between twins, who normally find themselves from birth on in constant presence of an other who is at the same developmental stage. Seeing one's every reaction reflected may create a sense of comfort and security, but also make it difficult to recognize oneself as a separate individual and to develop a distinct sense of self.15 I suspect that the children in the Neubauer study showed “twinning reactions” while together, but that no specific attachment to the cotwin had been formed at the time of their adoption around six months of age. In their review of the literature and their own study of twin relationships from an attachment-theoretical perspective, Caroline Tancredy and R. Chris Fraley conclude that twins “during the first couple of years of life …appear to be relatively uninterested in the presence of the cotwin.”16
C.B.: This is one of the most glaring misconceptions about the study.
Our research did not involve any experimentation. Our method was natural observation. The data were collected during home visits (more frequent in the first year of life; later on, twice a year) where standard tests, child observation, parent interviews, and filming of play situations were conducted.
L.O.: So it was pure observation.
C.B.: Yes, this was an observational study. No manipulation of elements was involved, as would be the case in an experimental study.
L.O.: The essential disparities between psychoanalytic thinking and attachment theory have long been recognized. More recently, however, some have noted what Peter Fonagy and Mary Target describe as “a move toward greater interest in attachment theory by psychoanalysis,” a move they refer to as “striking.” Would it be correct to say, given the purely observational nature of the study, that if that move—said to result from greater recognition of embodied cognition in the development of mind, from the view of the brain as “more continuous with the mind, which is seen as ever reflecting its bodily origin”19 —had occurred earlier, historically speaking, the study would have not been different in any way?
C.B.: Attachment theory was not at all a focus of the study. And it therefore doesn't appear in the manuscript. Had the shift you refer to taken place prior to the study, I don't think it would have significantly altered it. I might have thought somewhat differently about our work had the more recent thinking on attachment been known at that time, but I don't think it would have altered anything for Neubauer or Abrams.
C.B.: We had strong and mixed reactions and had many discussions about it. The anger at having been deprived of the experience growing up with their twin and being misled by the adoption agency and the researchers was difficult for us to contemplate and deal with. We had to reevaluate our original approach in the light of the changed rules about informed consent. Yet there was also curiosity and excitement to find out about the young adults whom we had known so well as children twelve years earlier. How did their later development confirm or disprove our observations and predictions? How did they feel about having been part of the research project? Beyond these considerations we were concerned how the sensationalized reports and misrepresentations of the role of the agency and the study could affect other adoptees.
L.O.: Did any of the three of you feel any regret at that point?
C.B.: Although there was a good deal of media coverage critical of the study and negative feelings expressed by the reunited siblings, none of us felt regret.
L.O.: In your paper, “Genetic Findings and Their Impact on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Development,” one reads that the team was more impressed with the likenesses than the dissimilarities between particular siblings, “with the fundamental similarities … found in spite of significant differences in environmental offerings.” You state, “These
similarities may be related to three dispositional leanings which the research team catalogued … within the first three months: inner-directness, problems in effectively engaging persons or things, and a limitation in integrative capacity.” Can you say more about those three areas in terms of the study?
C.B.: We were impressed with striking intra-twin (children of the same set) similarities, in spite of differences in the parents' attitudes and child-rearing practices. At the same time, we noticed from early on inter-twin (children of different sets) similarities. In each set one twin tended to have more difficulty integrating experiences, to be more inner-directed and thing-oriented, the other more outer-directed and person-oriented. We came to speculate that this, along with other possible factors, correlates with higher birth weight, birth order, and laterality (right-left brain dominance) as evidenced, with one exception, by the fact that in each set one child was right-handed, the other left-handed.
L.O.: That's fascinating! In the same paper, you also say that “Focusing primarily on the developmental dimension, [the research team] found a high concordance of the emergence of phase sequences as well as phase dominance” and you then go on to discuss the persistence of certain phase expressions and, in certain subjects, “evidence of reorganization into new hierarchies and of appropriate self and object differentiation.” That goes back to what you were just referring to, but do you think that if you were observing the same children today, you would be looking through the same developmental lens? Might any subsequent theorizing on developmental organization (or its vicissitudes) alter your view of the subjects or your approach to the study if you were undertaking it today?
L.O.: And do you think Neubauer and Abrams would be on the same page with you about that?
C.B.: I can't be sure, but I think so. I know that, as the study progressed,
we were impressed with new observations and formulated new hypotheses. At the same time, however, I don't think there would be any real substantive difference in the study, certainly not in its overall purpose or our approach.
L.O: Had the manuscript been published, it would likely have forestalled the accusations of secrecy, the embellishment of the idea of secret experimentation, and the extraordinary villainizing of Peter Neubauer. But it wasn't. Wright is of the opinion,20 and his expression of this has subsequently snowballed to an astonishing degree, that the draft was never published because of the findings, because of the determination that genes play a far greater role in development and pathology than expected. To clarify once and for all: Why was the manuscript not ever published?
C.B.: We intended to publish our findings all along, but felt constrained by clinical considerations and reasons of confidentiality. At that time most of the families were not aware that their children were multiples. It was to be expected that the publication of any kind of study would easily become sensationalized, as present events show, and come to the attention of the adoptive families without clinical assistance. We also struggled with how best to present our findings. Data based on natural observation do not easily lend themselves to traditional statistical methods. In the first draft, we presented the findings in the form of hypotheses with different levels of certainty.
L.O. The existence of the draft was not even known to the Jewish Board of Guardians, with which the Child Development Center had merged, presumably because it was written not only well after the study ended, but after all materials related to the work had been donated to Yale University where they remain sealed until 2065. Is that accurate?
C.B.: Far from ignoring its importance as a facilitating or interfering factor, the unique nature of the study allowed for a better understanding of the interplay between environment and inherent equipment (for example, the pull forward, disharmonies in emerging faculties, and engagement in the overall progression) in the process of “becoming mind.” We could see how a child's constitutional givens will, to a certain extent, determine what can be extracted from the environment to become formative mental experience.
L.O.: Very generally speaking, were you aware of some of the children in the study being symptomatic at a very early age?
C.B.: It depends what you mean by “symptomatic.” We certainly saw variations of different kinds and severity in the children's developmental progression, but nothing that would count as a “symptom” requiring intervention.
L.O.: Were you concerned about the mental health of the children at the time?
C.B.: During our home visits we looked for signs of potential pathology and discussed this during our regular team meetings. It was understood that the parents would be notified should there ever be reason for concern and intervention.
L.O.: So if you had found something very serious in one twin you would have gone to the family of the other twin, but you didn't ever have to do that?
C.B.: We would have notified the parents of the other twin if a problem appeared to have a genetic basis.
L.O.: Did any of you ever relate any area of potential concern to the separation itself from an identical other? My emphasis here is on separation as opposed to rearing apart.
C.B.: We did not attribute any emerging problems to the early separation, but rather to unevenness in development. For instance, we understood the prolonged and intense clinginess of one pair of twins to their mothers to be the result of their lack of developmental pull forward, not as the result of separation.
L.O.: To the broad categories in which clinicians are trained—ego function, object relations, trauma, and the like—you, Abrams, and Neubauer uncovered an invaluable category to add: disposition. How therapy can remediate disturbances in the undeniable interaction between nature and nurture, modify interference by disposition in the pull toward maturation, might well have been significantly altered by the discovery of the very strong role played by disposition had it not been determined, despite the write-up of the study and the desire to publish it, that confidentiality of the subjects had to override all else. In other words, the findings of the study might well have served all those who influence—be they educators, therapists, or parents—the maturational process. But the struggle with how to put the manuscript in print without breaching the most pressing ethical issue of confidentially prevented its publication. Do you have any regrets about that? Any thoughts about what might have helped scores of children had you published the draft? It is clear that so much learning
took place on the part of the team. So much could have been done with that had the issue of confidentiality not played a part, which of course it rightly did. Confidentiality is the most important consideration and you could only do as you did, refrain from publishing the manuscript however much you wanted to. But does that remain problematic for you?
C.B.: It was not a new idea that environment in interaction with “disposition” affects a child's development. What our study showed more clearly was the extent to which dispositional factors determine the developmental process, especially in specific areas. Taking these findings into consideration could inform the approach of professionals working with children, help parents to understand and accept their child's dispositional limits, and alert therapists to how a child's disposition contributes to the presenting problem. For those reasons, I regret that we felt we could not publish our findings.
L.O.: While there is much science related to twinship that we don't yet understand—the role of the sharing of amniotic fluid in attachment, the significance of non-shared intrauterine experiences, the potential implications of differences in the size of the placenta or umbilical cords, the placement of the fetuses in the womb—more is known now of the preand post-natal epigenetic variables, of differences in gene activity and their expression.22 And adoption today in the State of New York is not what it was in the 1950s and 1960s when those adoptions took place. Given the scientific and legal changes, would you do the study today?
See and (2019). “Three Identical Strangers and The Twinning Reaction: Clarifying History and Lessons for Today From Peter Neubauer's Twins Study.” JAMA, Vol. 322, No. 1, pp. 10-12.
Joseph, J. “‘Three Identical Strangers’ and the Nature-Nurture Debate,”
Jacobs, M. “In ‘Three Identical Strangers,’ A Saga About Triplets Grows More Twisted By The Minute,”
Metrofocus 01/11/2019.
(1986). “Disposition and the Environment.” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 41: 41-60. Yale University Press.
(1990). Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality (co-authored with Alexander Neubauer), N.Y.: Columbia University Press.
and (1994). “Hartmann's Vision: Identical Twins and Developmental Organizations.” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 49: 49-59. Yale University Press.
and (). In (1996), and , eds. Wien: .
Dr. Neubauer died in 2008, Dr. Abrams in 2016.
At the time, the organization was known as The Jewish Board of Guardians.
, (1981). Identical Twins Reared Apart: A Reanalysis. New York: Basic Books, Inc. p. 5.
, (1969), Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, vol. 8, issue 3, p. 437.
See, for example, and (1961). Simultaneous Analysis of an Identical Twin Pair and the Twinning Reaction. Psychoanalytic Q., 30: 319-320
(2013), Commentary on Three Papers by Wilfred R. Bion. Psychoanal. Q. 82 (2), p. 315.
See , (1969), Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, vol. 8, issue 3, p. 437.
Metrofocus 01/11/2019.
Lerner, B.H. “‘Three Identical Strangers’: The high cost of experimentation without ethics,” .
and (2007). “The Rooting of the Mind in the Body: New Links Between Attachment Theory and Psychoanalytic Thought,” JAPA 55 (2), pp. 415 & 445.
See, for example, “Twins, Genes, and Destiny: Lawrence Wright Meets Three Identical Strangers,” The Austin Chronicle, July 23, 2018, .
, , , “Becoming Mind: Identical Twins Reared Apart,” unpublished draft, p. 30.
See Jeffrey Craig's remarks in Hayasaki, Erika. “Identical Twins Hint at How Environments Change Gene Expression.” May 15, 2018.
, and , & (1981). Personality development in identical twins: The first decade of life. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, , .
cite but two, “Genetic Findings and Their Impact on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Development” was written by Dr. Balzert and presented at the Institute for Child, Adolescent and Family Studies in New York and Neubauer and Balzert co-presented “Genetics and Psychotherapy” in a meeting of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis. And then there is this: An approximately 200-page manuscript bearing the title Becoming Mind: Identical Twins Reared Apart. Written by Neubauer, Abrams, and Balzert,9 it remains an unpublished, incomplete draft.
L.O.: Identical siblings separated at birth not uncommonly refer to the
feeling that, for as long as they can remember, they had the sense that something was not quite right, that something was missing. Parents of some of the separated twins in the study have commented that they “knew” their child was lacking something, but they didn't know what it was. Do you believe there is a possibility of such “knowing,” that such a sensation (for lack of a better word) is plausible, either with regard to children or parents, or does that thinking seem too magical to you?
C.B.: I think this is one of the things one never will know for sure. There are strong opinions and feelings about the separation of multiples. The pain and sense of being deprived of an essential experience and the resulting anger which some of the reunited twins expressed affected us deeply and led to discussions about the adoption agency's policy. Still, I don't believe that “knowing” of and suffering from the early separation is plausible, since it is not likely that a strong attachment was present at that point. The feeling that something was not quite right, which some of the parents and adult twins describe, may have been retroactively attributed to the separation while actually being the result of problems in the children's development or even of feelings about adopted versus biological offspring.
L.O.: One word that is thrown around a lot is “experimentation.” The analogy to Nazi-like experimenting, particularly with regard to Neubauer (an Austrian refugee who came to the U.S. to escape the war), is particularly disturbing. We have heard or read it in various interviews and the analogy is even made in at least one of the films. Director Tim Wardle refers to journalist Lawrence Wright's having “discovered that there was a science experiment going on and that these boys had been separated on purpose for this experiment.”17 And, again, the first of the two films I referred to earlier was billed as a “feature-length documentary film about a tragically failed human research experiment from the 1960s.” The Washington Post published a piece on CNN's airing of the film in which the reporter wrote of the Twin Study as “just one of many unethical studies in the 1950s and 1960s that used subjects as means to an end” and of “the unethical experiment” that was so damaging.18 Was there any sort of experimentation—any kind of experimentation whatsoever—involved in this study, either on the children or on the families?
L.O.: Do you think the observing of the siblings, the testing and filming of them at various stages of development, might have had an impact on them, hypothetically speaking?
C.B.: Any experience has an impact. I imagine that for some families the visit may have been a welcome event, with the children receiving special attention and the mothers having an opportunity to discuss some of their concerns. For others it may have felt more like an intrusion. I don't recall that any of that was ever articulated to us.
L.O.: It has also been claimed that the selection of the families was related to the design of the study in one way or another. Is there any truth to this?
C.B.: The selection of the families had nothing to do with the design of the study. As I understood it, it was the agency's policy to place the children in families of similar middle-class background with no known unusual circumstances, like chronic illness, unemployment, and so on, and one older (preferably adopted) sibling present. So, again, the placement of the children had nothing to do with the study.
L.O.: Did you, Neubauer, and Abrams discuss among yourselves your own reactions to some of the siblings having discovered each other? How did you all feel after some of the study participants learned they had identical siblings?
C.B.: I suppose that, as analysts, we would look for the same developmental landmarks today, but perhaps include other aspects; more specifically, for instance, separation/individuation and attachment type and history.
C.B.: Yes.
L.O.: What do you feel are the most important parts of the draft?
C.B.: We were interested in nature/nurture and adoptive issues, the study of possible psychopathology, and the growth of the mind. The growth of the mind, however, became our main focus, which accounts for the working title of the unpublished manuscript: “Becoming Mind.”
Observing the development of separated twins created the opportunity to understand better the environmental role in the formation of psychological meaning, the minds of children with identical genetic make-up.
L.O.: Certainly one of the most interesting findings of the study is that, unlike in other studies, there was a clear indication that, as it was written, “a more accommodating or attuned environment does not necessarily lead to a more coherent internalization of self and object representation nor to a greater adaptedness beyond the contained family setting.” In other words, the assumption that an “attuned environment inevitably yields a greater degree of structuralization and adaptedness” is not upheld by the study outcomes.21 That has been floated as a primary reason for there not being the kind of comprehensive publication one would expect from such a study; in other words, that genes play a stronger role not only than one might anticipate, but than one—namely, psychoanalysts—would have wanted to discover. In fact, however, what you are really saying, as I understand it, is that constitution and environment are integrated in more complex ways than had previously been acknowledged; that it's neither this nor that, but the way that an individual's developmental disposition is facilitated by or interfered with by all that makes up the environment. How did that lead to the choice of the title “Becoming Mind” as opposed to, say, “Becoming Oneself”?
C.B.: If started today, the study would not exist in its present form as the policy regarding the separation of twins no longer exists. However, a practical consideration regarding separation remains, given the difficulty of finding adoptive homes for multiples and the strain on the caregiver. Personally, I might have more questions about the design of the study than I had then, having learned of the negative feelings expressed by some of the twins. But I still do believe that engaging the world as a singleton is advantageous to the development of a clear sense of self.
L.O.: You speak of the benefit to autonomy and individuation that a child reared alone has over one reared as a singleton. But you also mention the change in policy, the fact that “the separation of twins no longer exists.” Why do you think the policy changed? Aren't there certain implications
inherent in that change of policy that would contradict your belief?
C.B.: I cannot speak to the reasons why the adoption agency changed its policy in the early sixties. It may have been the result of re-evaluating the clinical reasons behind it, new rules about informed consent, or even negative reactions from the public. All these reasons deserve consideration, but I still feel that growing up with a twin creates a challenge for the separation/individuation process and self representation (see, for example, Farber and E. D. Dibble and D.J. Cohn23),24 which has to be weighed against the positive effects of growing up with an identical other.
L.O.: In view of all the misrepresentation and misinformation that has come from the media hype, is there anything you would like to emphasize as in particular need of clarification?
C.B.: I want to emphasize again that separation of the twins was part of the adoption agency's placement policy and independent of the study. There was no “experimentation” or manipulation for the sake of data collection involved. The method of the study was natural observation, which included standard developmental tests, child observation, brief videos of child play, and parent interviews, all in the children's familiar environment. The families were not aware of the existence of a twin. At the time of the study, no rules regarding informed consent existed and it was assumed that such knowledge could interfere with the bonding process. It was understood, however, that disregarding the design of the study, the families would be told of the twinship and intervention offered should a genetically linked problem become evident.
L.O.: There was not a way to publish the manuscript draft without the risks inherent in the breach of confidentiality, as you have made clear, but I do think the study exceedingly important, especially for the primary conclusion it reached:
The environment's competence can only be comprehended in terms of the specific inherent capacities and limitations of children; this attends to the reciprocal interaction between the components of the equation rather than either in isolation. This also shifts the focus of attention away from ‘nature vs nurture’ to the process of becoming mind and to the necessary experiential products.
Page 186This recognition of the mutual interdependence of disposition and the environment seems to provide a more felicitous framework for understanding the process of becoming mind than does any approach that isolates the one from the other or sees one as more ‘causative’ than the other.25
However paradoxical, separated twins are often more alike than twins growing up together, which indicates that the genetic disposition shows more clearly when the twinning reaction is avoided.
“Becoming Mind: Identical Twins Reared Apart,” p. 183.