Double Trouble

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Some identical twins behave so similarly that, to a casual observer,
they seem to share one identity, one personality.

by Paul Sieveking

CHAPLIN TWINS OF YORK

Incredible though it may seem, identical twins who reared completely apart often exhibit more similarities of behaviour than those who grow up together. But when they reach their early teens most twins begin to develop a desire to be individuals, even if this is expressed only by dressing differently. Some, however, fail to do this, and grow up as if they were one person.

One of the most striking examples of this phenomenon became known in 1980 when the 38-year-old Chaplin twins, Greta and Freda, were brought before magistrates in York, England, charged with behaving in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace.
They had, it was asserted, been harassing Mr Ken Iveson, once a neighbour of theirs, for 15 years: following him about, waiting for him outside the glassworks where he was employed as a lorry driver, shouting abuse at him and even hitting him with their hand-bags. This extraordinarv fixation, however, was not the reason that psychiatrists, social workers and journalists were so fascinated by the case - for the twins spoke in what appeared to be precise synchronisation.

They exhibit other signs that seem to indicate that they are effectively one person. They are so alike in the wav they think. speak. move and dress that children, believing them to be witches, have thrown stones at them in the street and adults have spat in their faces. They are a familiar sight in York - and are generally given a wide berth.

They wear identical grey coats, but as one originally came with green buttons and one with grey, they cut off two buttons each, and now both coats have two green and two grey. When given two different pairs of gloves they simply took one from each pair. Similarly a gift of two different coloured bars of soap caused them real anguish. Thcv burst into tears, then solved the problem by cutting the bars in half and sharing them. When Greta got a prescription for bronchitis, Freda demanded the same medicine.


SPEAKING AS ONE

The twins eat in unison, slowly raising forks and spoons together, finishing up one item of food before starting on the next. But most uncanily, they speak the same words at the same time, especially when excited or under stress; careful listening, however, reveals that the words of one come out a split second later than those of the other.

They also exhibit 'mirror-imaging', which is characteristically found in monozygotic twins. In typical cases one twin is right-handed. the other left-handed; the whorls of the hair grow clock-wise in one and anti-clockwise in the other; the left thumbprint of one almost matches the richt thumbprint of the other, or similar wrinkles appear on opposite ears. Photographs of twins are most similar if one negative is flipped to produce a reversed image.

The Chaplins dress in mirror image of each other, although a casual observer would say they dress identically, and eccentrically, in their long skirts, clashing colours and headscarves. When Greta wears a bracelet on her left wrist, Freda wears one on her right, and if one breaks a shoelace, thc other pulls a lace out of her opposite shoe.


Although the twins are difficult and unpredictable to interview, some journalists have managed to talk to them. Sue Heal from Woman's Own elicited this telling statement from them: We're so close that we're really one person. We know exactly what each other is thinking because we're just one brain.' Sue Heal remarked, "You go gently for fear they'll disappear and leave you thinking you dreamed them up, like some-thing from Alice in Wonderland. She must have gained their confidence, however, because she did find out that they wear different underclothes.

And they do argue, sometimes hitting each other lightly with their identical hand-bags, then sitting sulking together for hours. If they believe they are the same person then how can an argument happen?
A closer examination of their history shows that their extraordinary togetherness was actively fostered by their parents, especially by their mother, who dressed them identically and allowed them no friends. They were not mentally abnormal and attended a secondary school near their York home. Teachers and fellow pupils remember them as neat, clean and quiet - and although among the slowest students they could read and write as well as the others in their class. The deputy headmaster of the school has no doubts about what turned them into the disturbed adults they are todav: Jt was clear that they had a doting mother who never allowed them any separate identity. . . . The other kids just saw them as a bit quaint. I don't think they were acutely isolated then or maladjusted.' They had not, at that point, begun to speak simultaneously.

Clearly their mother's attitude towards them had triggered off a pattern of abnormal behaviour, perhaps aided by their biological affinity. Both parents seem to have been uncommunicative and friendless and Mrs Chaplin is said to be obsessively houseproud. This emphasis on cleanliness may explain why the twins' only apparent pleasure is bathing together, grooming each other, washing each others long hair. They are said to use an average of bars of soap and three large bottles of shampoo each week.

The unfortunate Ken Iveson had grown up next door to the Chaplins; he married when the twins were two years old, but continued to live at his parents' home with his wife and children. Neither he nor his parents had ever set foot inside their neighbours' house; they were never asked in and never saw anyone else pay social calls. Iveson would pass the rime of day with the girls, who, isolated from the outside world, obviously took this as some kind of romantic encouragement. They rapidly became a nuisance and eventually, after 15 years, Iveson could take no more of it. Their case came to court.

The twins' parents had, it transpired, forced them to leave home. When asked about this, Freda and Greta reply as one: "Something must have happened. Yes yes yes. Something strange. Must have happened.'

Mr and Mrs Chaplin refuse to talk to the press, and exactly why the twins left is not known. They now live in a hostel for the mentally handicapped.

Curiously. the local psychiatrists, called in by the court as expert witnesses, were baffled by the twins' case, describing it vaguely as 'a personality disorder'. Yet their behaviour towards Iveson matches the textbook symptoms of erotormania, a form of schizophrenia that has been recognised as a clinical condition since the mid 1960s. Dr Morgan Enoch, of the Maudsley mental hospital in south London, has discovered that if one identical twin is schizophrenic then the other is also likely to suffer from the disease.

But does erotomania or any form of schizophrenia - entirely explain the Chaplins' behaviour, especially their strange way of speaking? In their case there seem to be many highly influential factors - genetic, environmental, social - that have made them the objects of sympathy and derision that they are today.

Perhaps the Chaplins' peculiarity of speech is just one aspect of the way twins communicate with one another. Better known is ideoglossia, the phenomenon in which two individuals, most often twin children, develop between them a unique and private language complete with highly original vocabulary and syntax.

It is, however, commonly confused with a sub-category, twin speech - a private collection of distorted words and idioms used. it is estimated, by 40 per cent of all twins because they feel isolated, or secretive, or both. Most twins tend to give it up at the age of three, although twin Robert A. Nelson wrote to the New York Times in 1932 that 'It is a matter of record in my family that when my brother and I first started to talk, and until we were well past six, we conversed with each other in a strange tongue of our own.' The only other person who could understand their particular speech was their brother who was eight years older.



THE KENNEDY TWINS OF GEORGIA

Identical twins Grace and Virginia were born in 1970 in Columbus, Georgia, USA, to Tom Kennedy and his German-born wile Christine. The day after the girls were born, Grace suddenly raised her head and stared at her father. Virginia did the same thing the next day. These strangely precocious acts, labelled convulsive seizures by doctors, continued periodically for six months, in spite of treatment. At 17 months they apparently developed ideoglossia, beginning to speak rapidly in a language of their own -their only concession to English being 'mommy' and 'daddy'. They called each other Poto and Cabenga.

When the twins were two years old, the family moved to California, but there were very few other children in the neighbourhood for Grace and Virginia to play with. They were left to themselves or entrusted to their maternal grandmother, Paula Kunert, a stern disciplinarian who still spoke only her native German.

In 1977 the speech therapists at the Children's Hospital in San Diego, Califor-nia, began to study the twins, taping their conversation in the hope of learning some-thing about the mysteries of developing language. Is it, they wondered, predomin-antly a product of genetic programming or a learned response to the world around them? A typical conversation between the girls would run:
~Cenebene manita.'
~Nomemee.'
~Eebedeebeda. Dis din qui naba.'
~Neveda. Ca Baedabada.'

When the study began the twins spoke no English, but gradually the therapists coaxed some out of them - which they spoke with a curious high-speed delivery. Anne Koenecke even tried to talk to them in their own language but they just looked at her as if she were crazy. 'Snap aduk, Cabenga, chase die-dipana,' said 'Poto' masterfully. Having apparently issued a command she and 'Cabenga' instantly began to play with a doll's house.

Analysis of the tapes showed that their communication was something less than true ideoglossia. Many of the apparently new words turned out to be mispronounced words and phrases from German and English jammed together and said at high speed. However, a few words, such as 'nu-nukid' and 'pulana', remain unidentified. As the twins grew older they suddenly began to speak English - but they remain silent about the meaning of their once private language.