“In the Hall of Mirrors”

Abstract

This chapter explores the challenges that twins encounter developing their life-journeys in the psychologically perplexing singleton-dominated non-twin-world. This chapter explores how, to twins carving-out their life-journeys in the non-twin-world, this environment represents a distorting “Hall of Mirrors.” It explains how this environment’s metaphorical mirrors comprise singletons’ attitudes to, expectations of, and prejudices against twins. Chapter 8 then explores how dwelling in this “Hall of Mirrors” warps twins’ sense of self, their proper role within the co-twin relationship, and their appropriate niches within wider society. Next, it explains how the existence of widespread singleton anti-twin prejudice renders all twins potential members of a uniquely gestationally based, binarily defined, largely invisible, geographically dispersed, non-self-aware, and non-self-identifying minority group. The chapter then explores how, as not-yet-members of this extraordinary minority, twins paradoxically experience the psychological harm caused by singleton prejudice yet fail to benefit from the belongingness potentially spawned by their minority-ness. It asserts that this paradoxical reality, when combined with twin-identity, explains why twins find it challenging developing their life-journeys within the non-twin-world. These dynamics explain why twins experience disappointing social interactions, chronic twin-loneliness, and barely understood psychological confusion. The chapter finishes by interpreting various twin voices that shed light on these themes.