LAST YEAR, WHEN Jean-Claude Figenwald, a 33-year-old Parisian photographer, heard about the huge twins festival held every August in Twinsburg, Ohio, he was so excited about the prospect of meeting some of the 3,000 sets of identical twins who attend and photographing them in their hometowns that he persuaded his photo agency to send him to the States for several weeks.
Figenwald is not alone in his fascination with identical twins, who not only have virtually the same face but share similar personality quirks, preferences, IQs and, often, even fingerprints.
The ties between identical twins are overwhelmingly the most deeply intimate that humanity has to offer. Recent research suggests that these bonds may actually be encoded in their chromosomes.
”In a way, all of us are seeking the kind of relationship identical twins share. These twins truly know what it`s like to say something to someone who understands exactly what they mean without explanation,” says Dr. Nancy Segal, assistant director of the University of Minnesota`s Center for Twin and Adoption Research.
Or, as Julie Chick, a 20-year-old identical twin and a junior at Santa Monica College in California, puts it: ”My sister, Jeanie, is like my Olympian best friend. We think the same way. We just know everything about each other.”
Unlike fraternal twins, who develop from two fertilized eggs in the womb, identical twins arise from the division of a single fertilized egg, making them genetic duplicates.
It also makes them ideal subjects for controversial, landmark research that is re-examining the age-old question of nature versus nurture. Preliminary results from the 10-year study being conducted by the Minnesota center challenge the popular notion that all of us-not just twins-begin life as formless lumps of clay that are then molded by our circumstances.
The study instead strongly suggests that we`re all born with a genetic blueprint that influences such traits as leadership, sociability, aggression and even the tendency to be moved to tears by a sad movie.
”We think of each pair of identical twins as one piece of music played by two different musicians,” explains the center`s director, Dr. Thomas Bouchard, a University of Minnesota psychology professor. ”The music can be played fantastically, or it may not run right. But you`ll always be able to recognize the piece. That`s because nature writes the score. Environment is responsible for the playing technique.”
At the center, pairs of identical twins who were separated at birth and raised in different environments undergo a week`s worth of exhaustive physical and psychological tests. Before they`re done, they answer a whopping 150,000 questions.
So far, every one of the 60 pairs of identicals tested has displayed an uncanny number of precisely the same behaviors and personality traits. In fact, they have more in common than the 40 sets of fraternal twins raised together who`ve also been tested by the center.
Take Oskar Stohr and his identical twin, Jack Yufe. Born in Trinidad, Stohr was raised by his grandmother in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during Word War II and attended a Nazi-run school. Yufe was raised by his father, a Jew, in the Caribbean. Yet, says Bouchard, the two showed ”unsettling similarities in their temperament and way of doing things.” Both men read magazines back to front, wore short mustaches, flushed the toilet before urinating, stretched rubber bands around their wrists and shared the bizarre habit of sneezing explosively in public to get attention.
When Dorothy and Bridget, another pair of identical twins reared separately, arrived at the center, each wore three rings on one hand and four on the other. One sister had named her son Andrew Richard, while the other named her son Richard Andrew.
In still another case, a pair of female identicals exhibited the same phobias of heights, enclosed places and water.
”If someone would have told me about obtaining this kind of data, I wouldn`t have believed them,” Bouchard says. ”At first, we were all in shock.”
Until very recently, theories about inherited proclivities and limitations were condemned by those who worried that they might be used to rationalize discrimination. Tying illnesses such as schizophrenia and alcoholism to genetics was acceptable, but daring to suggest that every child might not be born capable of achieving everything was strictly taboo.
Taken out of context, Bouchard`s findings concerning the genetic roots of some psychological traits and behaviors may seem to smack of the infamous Nazi experiments in eugenics. But, he says, nothing could be farther from the truth. ”What we inherit are propensities toward personality traits,” he explains. ”Just because something`s genetically influenced doesn`t mean it`s chiseled in stone. Environment also plays a key role. If I see a child who has problems with aggression, I don`t curse genetics, I recommend a therapist.
”I tell parents to look at their children as guests. You should recognize that your kids are born with certain tendencies. It`s your job to identify and bolster the good ones and teach them how to control the bad ones.”
Bouchard notes that you can`t predict how children will turn out by looking at their parents. ”We inherit half of our genes from our mother and father,” he explains. ”But each of us represents an entirely new genetic configuration.”
This means that George Bernard Shaw probably was right to refuse a well- known starlet`s invitation to father her child, supposedly telling her that the baby would probably have his beauty and her brains.
Every one of us has 23 pairs of chromosomes that contain thousands of genes. We share half of them with all humanity. The remaining half is uniquely ours-unless we have an identical twin.
Bouchard and his research team are not the first to be intrigued by identical twins. These twins have fascinated humankind throughout history, ever since astrologers gave the name Gemini to the mythical twins Castor and Pollux. Studying twins was virtually the only way for scientists to explore human genetics before modern tools were invented that could isolate and examine single chromosomes and genes.
THE SETS OF IDENTICAL TWINS Figenwald photographed grew up together and often continued living together as adults. Interviewing them was often like talking to one person. They finished each other`s sentences, laughed simultaneously and spoke with the same cadence.
”We have a unique bond that others sometimes can`t understand,” says Larry Aucker, 28. Both cabinetmakers in Kreamer, Pa., Larry and his identical twin brother, Barry, dress alike, drive the same baby-blue Corvette models and hope to marry twins.
”We didn`t think we were so close until we went to different colleges,” says Sheryl Nygren, 23, a 4th-grade teacher who lives with her identical twin, Shayna, a business student, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. ”It was hard to get close to my sorority sisters. I realized that none of them was as perfect (a friend) as my sister. We just burned up the long-distance telephone lines.”
Perhaps the best-known identical twins photographed by Figenwald are LaVona and LaVelda Richmond Rowe, 57, who in 1976 married identical twins Arthur and Alwin Richmond. Until Arthur`s death close to four years ago, the four of them shared the same roof, the same checking account and the same lives. In adulthood, each set of twins even continued to dress alike.
”We`d dated singletons when we were younger, but we always fell for the same guy,” LaVelda says. ”So we made a pact to marry twins. We knew they were the only ones who could understand our bond and not try to break us up. We believe we`re individuals because we`ve fought society`s pressure to separate.”
Center researcher Segal, who is studying the emotional aspects of living as a twin, says that many identical siblings feel slightly out of sync with the rest of the world. Many say that twins festivals and conventions are the only occasions that allow them to feel truly relaxed and understood.
Although their numbers are climbing slightly, both kinds of twins remain relatively rare, occurring in approximately 1 in 80 births. Two-thirds of twin births are fraternal; the rest are identical.
Science is just beginning to explain why twinning occurs. In the case of fraternal twins, older mothers seem more likely to produce two eggs at a time, almost as if the body senses that its reproductive viability is coming to an end. Fertility drugs also account for a mother`s production of multiple eggs. But no one knows exactly why a single zygote, or fertilized egg, divides to form identical twins.
If the zygote divides within the first week of conception, twins develop who are alike in every way. If division occurs in the second week, the twins may develop into mirror images of each other with oppositely located birth marks, hair whorls that grow in opposite directions and a tendency for one to be a lefty and the other to be right-handed. If the division occurs after the second week, it may not be complete and result in conjoined, or Siamese twins. Twins have been known to enjoy extraordinary closeness in life. Now research is showing that when a twin loses a twin, the survivor suffers equally extraordinary pain, Segal says.
Alwin Richmond, LaVelda`s husband, says he`s just beginning to control his grief over the loss of his twin to brain cancer almost four years ago.
”Imagine trying to forget someone who was literally part of you,” he says softly. ”Every time I look in the mirror, I see his face.”
