The Silent Twins

[TMA_1]

I was just casually reading about a phenomenon called "twin talk", and I came across a topic on wikipedia about the case of June and Jennifer Gibbons.

The story concerning the disturbed lives of these twins is fascinating. Their development through

seeming family dysfunction and negligence, as well as outside abuse, had helped to shape the neuroses that had already existed inside each others lives. All of the hardships seemed to bind the twins in such an unnatural, and unhealthy way, and it would continue for years. In their teens, they would eventually become involved with two servicemen from America, who it seemed used and abused both the twins, and finally became enamored with the violence and crime they wrote so much about in their diaries. The petty crimes they would commit is what finally got both of them institutionalized, in what sounds like a fairly terrible high security psychiatric hospital.

As I alluded to before. The relationship these twins had, spawned a life of writing, that both twins would indulge in. It started when they both received diaries. Within a short period of time, they were writing hundreds of pages, then thousands upon thousands. They would write novels, plays, melodramas, short stories, just to name a few creative styles of expression. These stories flew into the strangest, and loftiest forms of fantasy, while all the while interjected with topics influenced by the events that occurred in their day to day lives. These topics, twisted into their surreal stories of love, hatred, virginity, crime, family, and the relationships they both got themselves into with the two american service men.

There is so much more, have not even gotten into what would eventually happen to both twins later on in their life. Sorry for all the writing, it is just such a fascinating story. The crazy thing is I have only read 7 or 8 web pages on the twins. I want to see if I can get the book titled "The Silent Twins", it sounds really interesting.

I posted two links at the bottom of this thread. One is a wiki link that gives a general biography of their lives.

Another is a short assessment of the twin's lives and the book "The Silent Twins", by Oliver Sacks. He is a very brilliant neurologist. He has written many books for the layperson that contain some very novel case studies concerning patients with various kinds of brain injuries

and anomalies. I highly suggest anybody out there interested in these topics to read his stuff. It all really interesting! I would personally suggest starting with his book "An Anthropologist On Mars".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_and_Jennifer_Gibbons

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/19/books/bound-together-in-fantasy-and-crime.html?&pagewanted=4