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Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia

Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia
By Pamela Spiro Wagner, Carolyn Spiro

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This book was reviewed in NAMI Advocate. Visit www.nami.org/advocate.

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Growing up in the fifties, Carolyn Spiro was always in the shadow of her more intellectually dominant and social outgoing twin, Pamela. But as the twins approached adolescence, Pamela began to succumb to schizophrenia, hearing disembodied voices and eventually suffering many breakdowns and hospitalizations.

Divided Minds is a dual memoir of identical twins, one of whom faces a life sentence of schizophrenia, and the other who becomes a psychiatrist, after entering the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister. Told in the alternating voices of the sisters, Divided Minds is a heartbreaking account of the far reaches of madness, as well as the depths of ambivalence and love between twins. It is a true and unusually frank story of identical twins with very different identities and wildly different experiences of the world around them.
Pamela Spiro Wagner is a writer and poet living in Wethersfield, Connecticut. She is the winner of the 1993 Connecticut Mental Health Media Award, a two-time first-prize winner of the Tunxis Poetry Review, and the winner of the 2002 BBC International Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, Tikkun, Trinity Review, Midwest Poetry Review, and LA Weekly.

Carolyn S. Spiro, M.D., is a private-practice psychiatrist and writer living in Wilton, Connecticut.
Growing up in the fifties, Carolyn Spiro was always in the shadow of her more intellectually dominant and socially outgoing twin, Pamela. But as the twins approached adolescence, Pamela began to suffer the initial symptoms of schizophrenia, hearing disembodied voices that haunted her for years, the symptoms culminating during her freshman year of college at Brown University, where she had her first major breakdown and hospitalization. Pamela's illness allowed Carolyn to enter the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister. Exceeding everyone's expectations, Carolyn graduated from Harvard Medical School and forged a successful career in psychiatry.

Despite Pamela's estrangement from the rest of her family, the sisters remained very close, "bonded with the twin glue," calling each other several times a week, and visiting as frequently as possible. Carolyn continued to believe in the humanity of her sister, not merely in her illness, and Pamela responded.

Told in the alternating voices of the sisters, Divided Minds is an account of the far reaches of madness as well as the depths of ambivalence and love between twins. It is a true and unusually frank story of identical twins with very different identities and wildly different experiences of the world around them. It is one of the most compelling histories of two such siblings in the canon of writing on mental illness.
"[Divided Minds is] the product of months of painstakingly peeling back layers to write honestly about sisterhood, illness and love . . . The book provides detailed memories of the sisters, and it is fascinating to see how they both remember the same event . . . This is not meant to be a book about history, but a book of memory between sisters who cling to one another through the fog. Their sisterhood is especially obvious when the women try to explain themselves, in print, to one another. What sister hasn't wanted that chance?"—Susan Campbell, The Hartford Courant
"[Divided Minds is] the product of months of painstakingly peeling back layers to write honestly about sisterhood, illness and love . . . The book provides detailed memories of the sisters, and it is fascinating to see how they both remember the same event . . . This is not meant to be a book about history, but a book of memory between sisters who cling to one another through the fog. Their sisterhood is especially obvious when the women try to explain themselves, in print, to one another. What sister hasn't wanted that chance?"—Susan Campbell, The Hartford Courant
 
"[A] riveting memoir . . . Divided Minds does a remarkable job of interpreting [a] hellish realm."—People
 
"A vividly honest account . . . While Pamela becomes mysteriously moody and depressed, Carolyn blossoms in school and as a dancer . . . The book has remarkable details of Pamela's life, from her bizarre delusions to the twin's dual attempts to stay extremely thin in high school."—Joy Victory, The Journal News
 
"Joint memoir by a pair of identical twins, one a writer and award-winning poet with an incurable mental disease and the other a practicing psychiatrist. When the Spiro girls were young, Pamela was considered the more creative, brilliant one, but by 1963, when they were in sixth grade, the first inklings of her future disorder appeared: on hearing of President Kennedy's assassination, she believed that she was to blame. With gripping detail, she describes her descent into mental chaos, revealing the frightening nature of schizophrenia and her confusion and helplessness when under its spell. By early adolescence she becomes withdrawn, and by the time she is a freshman at Brown she is tortured by chaotic thoughts, is hearing voices and fears that people are planning to harm her. After overdosing on Sominex, she is taken by Carolyn to the college infirmary, the first of the countless stays in hospitals and sessions with psychiatrists that will mark the rest of her life. The sisters' relationship is an ambiguous one: after that first semester at Brown, they talk on the phone for hours every week, but they never go home to visit their parents at the same time. Pamela's illness permits Carolyn to shine but it does not end their sibling rivalry. Both enter medical school after college, but while Carolyn is studying at Harvard Medical School, Pam is at the University of Connecticut, the only school that would admit her. Within a year, she's back in a mental hospital, catatonic and hearing commanding voices. The sisters alternate in the telling, but this is clearly Pamela's book, for without her schizophrenia, there would be no story. It is she that is the powerful storyteller at its center, she that alters the Spiro family dynamic, she that suffers and makes demands, embarrasses and frustrates. With the rest of her family uncomfortable around Pamela, Carolyn struggles to be her sister, not her psychiatrist, yet being a psychiatrist makes all the difference in the caretaker relationship that develops over time. The combination of first-person narratives provides an unusually well-rounded portrait of schizophrenia."—Kirkus Reviews
 
"For many, the idea of being one of identical twins—and possibly the possessor of telepathic communicative powers—sends chills up the spine. Add certifiable schizophrenia to the potent emotional state of identical twinship, and the potential for nightmare magnifies. In their disturbingly powerful memoir, however, the Spiro sisters reveal all this as the stuff of their everyday reality. Explosive encounters with one another, other family members, friends, and medical professionals are recounted with jarring straightforwardness. Alternating recollections about being half of a pair of youngsters growing up in the 1960s highlight the sisters' individual personalities while they relate sisterly connections, competitiveness, and co-option. When Pamela's illness emerged at the beginning of adolescence and subsequently spiraled out of her control, it became a virtual separate entity that t

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #41205 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-08-08
  • Released on: 2006-08-08
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 336 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This harrowing but arresting memoir—written in alternating voices by identical twins, now in their 50s—reveals how devastating schizophrenia is to both the victim and those who love her. The condition, which afflicts Pamela (an award-winning poet), can be controlled with drugs and psychiatry, but never cured. When the twins were young, Pamela always outshone Carolyn. But in junior high, Pamela was beset by fears and began a lifelong pattern of cutting and burning herself. After the two entered Brown University, Pamela's decline into paranoia accelerated until she attempted suicide. During the ensuing years of Pamela's frequent breakdowns and hospitalizations, Carolyn became a psychiatrist, married and had two children. Empathetic and concerned, Carolyn nonetheless conveys her overwhelming frustration. and occasional alienation from her sister, when she is unable to help. Pamela's schizophrenia caused their father to sever his relationship with her. Remarkably descriptive, Pamela's account details how it feels to hear voices and to suspect evil in everyone. Though she struggles with her medications, Pamela remains a committed poet and is now reconciled with her father and close to her twin. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
For many, the idea of being one of identical twins--and possibly the possessor of telepathic communicative powers--sends chills up the spine. Add certifiable schizophrenia to the potent emotional state of identical twinship, and the potential for nightmare magnifies. In their disturbingly powerful memoir, however, the Spiro sisters reveal all this as the stuff of their everyday reality. Explosive encounters with one another, other family members, friends, and medical professionals are recounted with jarring straightforwardness. Alternating recollections about being half of a pair of youngsters growing up in the 1960s highlight the sisters' individual personalities while they relate sisterly connections, competitiveness, and co-option. When Pamela's illness emerged at the beginning of adolescence and subsequently spiraled out of her control, it became a virtual separate entity that taxed the limits of the sisters' relationship and continues to test their endurance. This memoir probably afforded its authors great therapeutic value, but readers struggling with schizophrenic family members may find it too graphic. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"This harrowing but arresting memoir - written in alternating voices by identical twins - reveals how devastating schizophrenia is to both the victim and those who love her." - Publishers Weekly starred review."

Customer Reviews

Good book, but might have been a little more two-sided 3
While the book is fairly well written, it was a little bit disjointed and one-sided. I thought there could be a better balance of the points of view of the two sisters.

As the mother of a schizophrenic, I am always looking for different views from both sides of the disease - from the afflicted as well as the family members who are also affected by this terrible condition

It would have been more informative and enlightening to hear more from the sister who was not schizophrenic, to hear more of her point of view and how she coped with her sister's affliction. There seemed not to be very much on that side of the coin.

Although I realize that this book obviously is not meant to be a text book and was most likely written to be simply an interesting observational read, I think a little more information and a clearer timeline would have been better. I would not recommend this book to people looking for better clues to understand a schizophrenic family person's thoughts and perceptions when in psychotic "mode".

Check this book out of the library if you want an afternoon's interesting read. Or buy it, but not for an in-depth look into a schizophrenic's mind. It simply does not fit that bill or answer that need if you are looking for that, as I always am.

I learned much about mental illness - Amazing first hand account4
I feel like I know much more about schizophrenia after reading this book, mainly from the parts of the book written by the twin sister who has that diagnosis, Pamela Spiro Wagner. She is an amazing writer, and is able to bring the reader into her often hellish world. She sounds like a brilliant person, and it is so sad that the disease has robbed her of so much, but astonishing all she has still been able to do.

The book doesn't quite do as well for me in showing how being a twin affect either sister. I don't think Carolyn is ready to reveal much about her life, which I can understand, and for many parts of their lives they were very seperate. Their lives did take very different paths, but I don't feel like I know much at all about Carolyn's path, or perhaps she is just not as compelling an author as her sister. It's not her field, after all, as it is Pamela's.

I also wish there was a little more perspective and information on schizophrenia in general here, and more about how it specifically affected this family. It sounded like Pamela started being affected quite young---I had always thought it usually hit more like college age, but she seems to start showing signs around 6th grade. It seems hard to believe it took so long for her to be diagnosed, also, and I wish I knew more about why this took so long---was hers a unique case with unusual features?

With all that said, I still do highly recommend this book. I know I feel I understand much more about the plight of the mentally ill in our society after my reading of this fine book.

NAMI recommends5
August 23, 2005 www.nami.org The Nation's Voice on Mental Illness

Traditionally, twin studies have been important statistically for understanding genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, but a new book, authored by twins, provides a unique exposition of the illness.

Divided Minds: Twins Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia is a memoir by Pamela Spiro Wagner, now in her 50s, who began hearing voices in 6th grade. Her chapters alternate with ones by her sister, Carolyn Spiro, M.D., a psychiatrist, who even with her medical training, did not recognize her sister's illness for years. Neither did their father, a professor at Yale Medical School.

They also are scheduled to speak at NAMI state conferences in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in October, as well as to NAMI Westchester County, N.Y.

This is not the first time Pamela has shared her perspective as a person living with mental illness. As part of Mental Illness Awareness Week in 1993, NAMI Connecticut and others honored her with a media award for an article she published in the local newspaper, entitled "Mentally Ill People Deserve Equal Health Insurance Coverage." It also was carried on the newspaper's national wire service.

"NAMI is probably the most active and helpful group around and the award I won...remains one of my proudest moments," Pamela says. "I had barely heard of NAMI before that time, but I knew then I'd have to find out more. What I learned was that NAMI has single-handedly worked to curb stigma and fear of psychiatric patients, and to treat families and friends as allies in the struggle."

"A few decades ago biological brain diseases like depression, bipolar disorder, OCD and schizophrenia were still taboo subjects," Carolyn adds. "NAMI has helped bring them into household conversation. The Alliance has done extraordinary work in combating stigma and prejudice by educating the public about these illnesses."

Today, Pamela is an accomplished writer and poet. She was the winner of the 2002 BBC International Poetry Award, and her work has appeared in the Midwest Poetry Review, Tikkun and the Trinity Review. Although hospitalized several times for what was diagnosed as depression, Pamela graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1975. She made it through two years of medical school -- her rivalry with Carolyn playing out even as her life came apart. They walked different paths, but remained intertwined.

In the 1980s, one psychiatrist finally gets the diagnosis right -- telling Pamela that her struggle is with schizophrenia. For the first time, she is able to "tell another person everything: about the voices and the Strangeness, about my experience of the other dimensions and alternate reality."

"I know I'm evil," Pamela told the doctor. "I'm Hitler's spawn, that's what the voices say. I think I may have killed JFK. I know that Gray Crinkled Paper is the secret to the universe and I know no one understands."

"Pammy psychotic?" Carolyn recalls reacting. "Oh, come off it...No way! Schizophrenia happens to other people. I'm a psychiatrist for God's sake...I know schizophrenia and I know my sister doesn't have it...Don't say anything I don't want to hear."

NAMI families will identify with the push and pull of emotions between the sisters, and the tumultuous events in their lives. The illness affects both of them. At the same time, their relationship is as ordinary as that between any siblings. Following a divorce, Carolyn recalls that Pamela was unable to attend her wedding because she was hospitalized. "Oh, Pammy, would you have sensed the way you used to that I was taking the wrong road? Once upon a time you thought what I thought and felt what I felt. What happened to us?"

"Divided Minds is an important contribution to our understanding of the experience of severe mental illness for families. It is rare in the literature of psychotic illness to have the experience of hallucinations, delusions, and the struggle for health and acceptance so beautifully written by the ill family member," said Virginia Holman, author of Rescuing Patty Hearst, a memoir of her mother's untreated schizophrenia, which won a NAMI National literary award in 2003.

"Pam Wagner shows her valor on every page."

The book deserves to be publicized broadly, beyond the mental health community, to educate others about the realities of mental illness and its human dimensions. In 2005, Pam's and Carolyn's journey has not ended and they are not naïve about difficulties that still lie ahead.

"I can never really know the hell in which Pammy lives," Carolyn writes. "When I hang up the phone, hell disappears. But she knows nothing else. Hell is her life."

For her part, Pamela closes with the observation: "Life has a will of its own...I can live only the now, happy to be well for the time being, and alive -- not overly attached to the possibilities of tomorrow."

To inquire about possible speaking engagements, NAMI leaders and others may contact Diane Lewis at Common Sense