Identical Strangers

Last updated
Identical Strangers
AuthorElyse Schein, Paula Bernstein
GenreMemoir
Publisher Random House
Publication date
2007

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited is a 2007 memoir written by identical twins Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein and published by Random House. [1] The authors, born in New York City in 1968 to Leda Witt, daughter of Nathan Witt, were separated as infants, in part, to participate in a "nature versus nurture" twin study. [2] They were adopted by separate families in the New York area who were unaware that each girl had a twin sister. [3] Soon after the twins reunited for the first time in 2004 at the age of 35, they began writing the book. Of the 13 or more children involved in the study, three sets of twins and one set of triplets have discovered one another. One or two sets of twins may still not know they have an identical twin. [4] [5]

Contents

Twins study

Viola Bernard, a prominent New York City psychiatrist, had persuaded Louise Wise Services, an adoption agency, to send twins to different homes without telling the adoptive parents that they were adopting a child who had a twin. Then, researchers sponsored by the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services secretly compared their progress. Bernard believed that identical twins would better forge individual identities if separated. By the time the twins started to investigate their adoptions, Bernard had already died, but the twins found New York University psychiatrist Peter Neubauer who had studied them. [5] [6] [7]

The twins study they were involved with was never completed. [8] The practice of separating twins at birth ended in the state of New York in 1980, shortly after Neubauer's study ceased. [9] Neubauer reportedly had Yale University lock away and seal the study records until 2065. [10] He realized that public opinion would be so against the research that he decided not to publish it. As of 2007, the sisters and other twins had not persuaded Yale or the Jewish Board to release the records. [5] [6] [7] [9] By 2018, some 10,000 pages had been released but were heavily redacted and inconclusive. [11]

The Neubauer study differed from most twins studies in that it followed the twins from infancy. [5] However, the debate about whether nature or nurture has a greater impact on human development continues. The documentary Three Identical Strangers , which told the story of three male triplets who were also part of the study and found one another at age 19, noted that although much was made of superficial similarities among the three, their personalities were significantly different because they were raised by parents with profoundly different personalities and child-rearing practices. In addition, no one can accurately assess to what degree each infant in the study was shaped by the trauma of separation after several months together as infants. [12] Some researchers believe that children's differences are forged less by their families than by genetics and chance. [6] [13] Contrasting neuroscience research of the last three or four decades supports the claim that minds are formed through relationships, especially in the first 1000 days of a child's life. [14]

In an interview with NPR to promote the publication of "Identical Strangers," Bernstein said, "Twins really do force us to question what is it that makes each of us who we are. Since meeting Elyse, it is undeniable that genetics play a huge role — probably more than 50 percent." [15]

Documentary films

Two documentaries about this study have been released, The Twinning Reaction (2017) [16] and Three Identical Strangers (2018), [12] [17] along with the television episode Secret Siblings (2018). [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the relative influence on human beings of their genetic inheritance (nature) and the environmental conditions of their development (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English has been in use since at least the Elizabethan period and goes back to medieval French. The complementary combination of the two concepts is an ancient concept. Nature is what people think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception e.g. the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twin</span> One of two offspring produced by the same pregnancy

Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy. Twins can be either monozygotic ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two embryos, or dizygotic, meaning that each twin develops from a separate egg and each egg is fertilized by its own sperm cell. Since identical twins develop from one zygote, they will share the same sex, while fraternal twins may or may not. In very rare cases twins can have the same mother and different fathers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multiple birth</span> End of a multiple pregnancy where two or more offspring are born

A multiple birth is the culmination of one multiple pregnancy, wherein the mother gives birth to two or more babies. A term most applicable to vertebrate species, multiple births occur in most kinds of mammals, with varying frequencies. Such births are often named according to the number of offspring, as in twins and triplets. In non-humans, the whole group may also be referred to as a litter, and multiple births may be more common than single births. Multiple births in humans are the exception and can be exceptionally rare in the largest mammals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conjoined twins</span> Medical condition

Conjoined twins, popularly referred to as Siamese twins, are twins joined in utero. It is a very rare phenomenon, estimated to occur in anywhere between one in 49,000 births to one in 189,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence in Southwest Asia and Africa. Approximately half are stillborn, and an additional one-third die within 24 hours. Most live births are female, with a ratio of 3:1.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sibling</span> One of two or more individuals having at least one parent in common

A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the other person. A male sibling is a brother, and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child.

Judith Rich Harris was an American psychology researcher and the author of The Nurture Assumption, a book criticizing the belief that parents are the most important factor in child development, and presenting evidence which contradicts that belief. Harris was a resident of Middletown Township, New Jersey.

Incest between twins or "twincest" is a subclass of sibling incest and includes both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

<i>The Nurture Assumption</i> 1998 book by Judith Rich Harris

The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do is a 1998 book by the psychologist Judith Rich Harris. Originally published 1998 by the Free Press, which published a revised edition in 2009. The book was a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uterus didelphys</span> Birth defect in which two uteri form

Uterus didelphys represents a uterine malformation where the uterus is present as a paired organ when the embryogenetic fusion of the Müllerian ducts fails to occur. As a result, there is a double uterus with two separate cervices, and possibly a double vagina as well. Each uterus has a single horn linked to the ipsilateral fallopian tube that faces its ovary.

<i>The Parent Trap</i> (film series) American family comedy film franchise

The Parent Trap is an American family-comedy film-series, including the original theatrical film, three made-for-television sequel movies, and a theatrical legacy sequel/soft-remake. Based on the 1949 novel Lisa and Lottie by Erich Kästner, the plot centers around identical twin sisters, who were separated at birth and rediscover each other while attending summer camp. The pair trade places upon returning home, and devise a plan to bring their family back together.

Babies are occasionally switched at birth or soon thereafter, leading to the babies being unknowingly raised by parents who are not their biological parents. The occurrence has historically rarely been discovered in real life, but since the availability of genealogical testing of DNA has been discovered more frequently. The phenomenon has been common as a plot device in fiction since the 18th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Segal</span> American psychologist (born 1951)

Nancy L. Segal is an American evolutionary psychologist and behavioral geneticist, specializing in the study of twins. She is the Professor of Developmental Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton. Segal was a recipient of the 2005 James Shields Award for Lifetime Contributions to Twin Research from the Behavior Genetics Association and International Society for Twin Studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter B. Neubauer</span> American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (1913-2008)

Peter Bela Neubauer was an Austrian-born American child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services</span> American nonprofit organization

The Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services is one of the United States' largest nonprofit mental health and social service agencies, and New York State's largest social services nonprofit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secure attachment</span> Attachment style within attachment theory

Secure attachment is classified by children who show some distress when their caregiver leaves but are able to compose themselves quickly when the caregiver returns. Children with secure attachment feel protected by their caregivers, and they know that they can depend on them to return. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed a theory known as attachment theory after inadvertently studying children who were patients in a hospital at which they were working. Attachment theory explains how the parent-child relationship emerges and provides influence on subsequent behaviors and relationships. Stemming from this theory, there are four main types of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent attachment, avoidant attachment and disorganized attachment.

The concept of nurture kinship in the anthropological study of human social relationships (kinship) highlights the extent to which such relationships are brought into being through the performance of various acts of nurture between individuals. Additionally the concept highlights ethnographic findings that, in a wide swath of human societies, people understand, conceptualize and symbolize their relationships predominantly in terms of giving, receiving and sharing nurture. The concept stands in contrast to the earlier anthropological concepts of human kinship relations being fundamentally based on "blood ties", some other form of shared substance, or a proxy for these, and the accompanying notion that people universally understand their social relationships predominantly in these terms.

Niche picking is a psychological theory that people choose environments that complement their heredity. For example, extroverts may deliberately engage with others like themselves. Niche picking is a component of gene-environment correlation.

<i>The Blood Sisters</i> (TV series) 2018 Philippine television drama series

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<i>Three Identical Strangers</i> 2018 documentary film directed by Tim Wardle

Three Identical Strangers is a 2018 documentary film, directed by Tim Wardle, about the lives of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, a set of identical-triplet brothers adopted as infants by separate families. Combining archival footage, re-enacted scenes, and present-day interviews, it recounts how the brothers discovered one another by chance in New York in 1980 at age 19, their public and private lives in the years that followed, and their eventual discovery that their adoption had been part of an undisclosed scientific "nature versus nurture" study of the development of genetically identical siblings raised in differing socioeconomic circumstances.

References

  1. ↑ Elyse Schein; Paula Bernstein. "Identical Strangers". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 28 July 2024.
  2. ↑ France, Louise (2007-12-02). "Separated at birth". The Observer. ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  3. ↑ "The identical twins who discovered their secret sibling". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  4. ↑ Flaim, Denise (25 November 2007). "Lost and Found: Twin sister separated at birth are reunited and work toward a new relationship". Journal Times.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Bernstein, Paula; Schein, Elyse (25 October 2007). "'Identical Strangers' Explore Nature Vs. Nurture". All Things Considered (Interview). Interviewed by Joe Richman. NPR . Retrieved 19 January 2019. Audio also.
  6. 1 2 3 Flam, Faye (7 December 2007). "Studying twins and identity: 1960s child-development experiment is unthinkable now". Philadelphia Inquirer– via Monterey County Herald.
  7. 1 2 Bradley, Lisa (9 December 2007). "SCIENCE: When Paula met Elyse". Sunday Star Times.
  8. ↑ Rieger, Robin (29 November 2007). "Twins Reunited After Experiment Speak Out". CBS 3 . Archived from the original on 1 December 2007. Retrieved 10 December 2007.
  9. 1 2 Spillius, Alex (29 October 2007). "Identical twins reunited after 35 years". Telegraph. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  10. ↑ McCormack, William (1 October 2018). "Records from controversial twin study sealed at Yale until 2066". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
  11. ↑ Ryan, Patrick (26 June 2018). "Three Identical Strangers': How triplets separated at birth became the craziest doc of 2018". USA Today . Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  12. 1 2 Nevins, Jake (28 June 2018). "Three Identical Strangers: the bizarre tale of triplets separated at birth". The Guardian . Retrieved 5 March 2019.
  13. ↑ Segal, Nancy (1999). Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior. Dutton.
  14. ↑ Shonkoff & Phillips (2000) From Neurons to Neighborhoods
  15. ↑ Richman, Joe (October 25, 2007). "'Identical Strangers' Explore Nature Vs. Nurture".{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ↑ The Twinning Reaction: Official Site Archived 2020-11-22 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  17. ↑ Three Identical Strangers: Official Trailer. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  18. ↑ "Secret Siblings". 20/20 . 9 March 2018. ABC News.
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