Hemingway was preoccupied with images of controlling and dangerous women. His mother had these qualities as evidenced by her trying to raise Ernest as a female twin of his older sister Marcelline. The theme of twinning appears throughout his work and provides a Joycean subtext in his novel A Farewell to Arms. Using his work and recent biographical data the following issues are explored: that Hemingway's vulnerable male characters often formed part of their bisexuality from identifications with a dangerous phallic mother; that these bisexual identifications often utilized fantasies of mirroring and twinning with this early mother; that this twinning utilized a fantasy of being close to and identical to this early mother that warded off fantasies of dangerous merger with her; and, Hemingway's creative process drew upon his bisexuality by using an interplay of his male and female identifications.