Imaginary friends

They have been talking about imaginary friends on the radio, and saying it's normal to have one.
Listen here


Dr. Karen Majors 
Community Psychology Service, Barking and Dagenham

It used to be thought that children with imaginary friends were in the minority. It has sometimes been assumed that children had imaginary friends because they were lonely and lacked real friends. Perhaps this is why some parents and others may show concern when a child has an imaginary friend, particularly once they have started school, and older children and adolescents tend to keep their imaginary friends a secret. Imaginary companions or friends have certainly been a misunderstood phenomenon. There has been surprisingly little research about imaginary friends. Consequently there has been little information about how many children have imaginary friends, what the imaginary friends are like and why children have them. Recent research has been providing some surprising answers to some of these questions. Firstly, there is now clear evidence that imaginary friends are a common feature in childhood development. Did you have an imaginary friend?  Was your imaginary friend your lost twin?  Is he or she still there, sharing your life? I wonder if this researcher has thought about this reason for having an imaginary friend?  I would guess not. ( Just realised that 60% of the people who completed my research questionnaire in 2008/9 had an imaginary friend.)

What should we call ourselves?

The debate begins again... in 2003 I argued with a lot of people  over how to find a short hand term for

"The sole survivors of a twin or multiple pregnancy."

What a mouthful! So I came up with the term "wombtwin"  to describe the twin who never made it to birth alive. Thus a "wombtwin survivor" was the twin who lived.

In 2009 I was advised to change the term into two words, Womb Twin, to make it clearer what it means. I took that advice. I like lots of advice and I need your advice today.

And now the debate comes again, and a public consultation has begun.  You will find a one- week poll at the top of the sidebar, please do vote and let's see what everyone thinks. If you voted " none of the above" then please give your personal suggestion as a comment to this post. Thanks!!!

The fraternal twin pair: is it what it seems?

There is a golden rule in determining zygosity; that if there is one placenta and two babies, then we have identical twins. If the babies grow up to look a bit different from each other, the idea of their being identical still seems to remain.

On the other hand, if we have two placentas, do we have fraternal twins? A percentage of identical twins do develop separate placentas, so we cannot use the number of placentas as a certain guide. At an individual level, pairs of twins can seek out an expert to prove their zygosity by looking directly at their genes.

A further complication is the “vanishing twin” pregnancy. A pair of fraternal twins may be a triplet set, reduced to twins in the earliest stages of pregnancy and not picked up by ultrasound. If the lost triplet was of the opposite sex and an identical pair survived, then the transfer of gender-related hormones, which is known to occur between fraternal twins, may obscure the results if this twin pair takes part in research. Equally, if the lost triplet was one of an identical pair, then the surviving fraternal twins will not simply be the result of a double ovulation but instead will be a reduced triplet pregnancy, resulting in one surviving identical twin and another who is genetically unrelated. When one considers the complexities of naturally reduced triplet sets, then the placenta rule, which is after all no more than a rule of thumb, becomes far too unreliable.

Peter Neubauer & Viola Bernard separated twin study

Viola W Bernard, 1907-1998, a social psychologist, left the world 128.5 cubic feet of papers in 378 boxes, 5 oversize boxes and 3 folders. [what a hoarder!!]

In box no 74 there are papers on a study of twins deliberately reared apart.

5.4: Child Development Center (CDC): Twin Study [Twins Reared Apart], 1953-1997
(3 boxes; 1 cubic foot). Most files CLOSED until January 1, 2021.
Correspondence, mostly with Louise Wise Services, one of the three sponsoring institutions of the study; meeting minutes; progress reports; financial and fundraising records; scientific publications; and newspaper clippings. The primary records of the project were donated by the Child Development Center to Yale University, where they will be opened to researchers in 2020. The bulk of this series is likewise closed until that date.

Bernard was co-investigator with Peter Neubauer in this longitudinal prospective research project about identical twins placed as infants in separate adoptive homes and reared apart. Bernard wrote in 1963 that the study "provides a natural laboratory situation for studying certain questions with respect to the nature-nurture issue and of family dynamic interactions in relation to personality development." The study later aroused controversy, chiefly because the adoptive parents and adoptees were not informed about the twinship, in keeping with the practice of the day.

But now the separated twins are complaining. Listen here

This not just because they weren't told. This is an identity issue. Twins reared apart must be told they they are twins; lone twins who lose their twin at birth must be told that they were once one of a twin pair: wombtwin survivors need to know that they were once part of a twin pair. It's the same problem. Its "who am I?"

Surviving twins who suffer with "low self esteem", with "a weak ego" or a "poor sense of self" simply need to know the truth of who they are. Then they can feel strong and whole again. Identical twins need that most. They were once a single entity: they are the fertilized ovum, which divided into two. They spend their lives wishing to be reunited. Unless they can be together as a pair they cannot feel whole. Its perfectly obvious to anyone who works with twins. Identical twins have special needs, and these needs must be respected if there is to be ethical practice in working with them.

Wombtwin survivors know how painful twin loss can be: to deliberately separate identical twins and to choose to bar them from access to their twin is unethical, and nothing short of child abuse.

I have recently had some extraordinary examples of body memory, and how the body can tell a story of what is locked in there.

The first was a tall Canadian woman K who was wandering around at a conference looking lost, saying. "I don't know where I should be." I felt at once that this was as much a psychological statement as a physical one, and I suggested that K should be with me, and we could talk. We went to a private place and she told me how she felt cold down her left side and how she had consulted doctors and had tests but the coldness continued. When I asked her how it felt, K began to weep, and sobbed for some time with what seemed like real grief. The image of half of her being dead and the other half grieving for the dead half was so strong that I suggested that she may be a twin. This was one of the many "Ahaha!" moments that make my work with wombtwin survivors so extraordinary. Within a few more minutes we were both laughing and the atmosphere lifted. We parted then, after just half an hour. The next day I asked K how she felt: she said "joy" and she was "warm all over".

The next example was not so much coldness as facial numbness, and "pins and needles" all down the left side. I asked this person to question this body memory. She sat and stroked her left arm and wept. She spoke about competition, weakness and dying. She then stood and demonstrated this with her whole body, which leaned all to one side as she spoke about heaviness, weakness competition and death.

This was the clearest body memory of a dying identical twin that I had ever seen. Her doctors were baffled simply because they did not know what to see or how to look. A chiropractor would have reacted differently, I feel, but then it seems the entire medical profession has a lot to learn about the physical effects of being a wombtwin survivor and how the body of the survivor can carry a persistent memory of the dead twin.