Comments on “On Being a Twin: How the View May Differ for Each of the Pair,” by Lilly Dimitrovsky, M.D.

Dr. Dimitrovsky writes in a clinical vein on the importance of twins, a special instance of siblings, regarding their development, personality, and interpersonal patterns (Journal, this issue). More specifically, she hypothesizes that there are variations in development, personality, and interpersonal patterns within twin pairs. She also hypothesizes that each of a pair of twins has some awareness of these differences, and differentially feels comfort–discomfort, dependent–responsible, or satisfaction–dissatisfaction.

Her data are the psychological test results and clinical data for each of a pair of 7 ¹/₂-year-old fraternal boy twins, one “healthy” and the other with a history of “seizure disorder.” They were the only children of an upper middle-class family; the mother was in analysis, and the parents' difficult marriage was becoming more harmonious. Over the course of a year's counseling and remedial work, the neurologically impaired twin began reading and doing better intellectually and academically, and the other twin felt less damaged and impaired. Dimitrovsky saw her hypotheses confirmed in this one clinical instance.

A. Adler, back at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote of the theoretical importance and of the clinical relevance of siblings in therapeutic work. Sullivan and the interpersonalists have written about siblings, particularly in the juvenile and adolescent stages of development. Family therapists, in the last few decades, have also clearly seen the importance of siblings. It is the Freudian psychoanalysts, including the self psychologists, who have not attended to the importance of siblings. None of the above, however, have paid much attention to the unique twin relationship with this we-self, complementarity of personality attributes, and symbiotic ties. The undersigned, a fraternal twin and psychoanalyst, had personal analyses with three different analysts over many years, 1953-1964. None of these psychoanalysts paid more than scant attention