Separated twins shed light on identity issues Though they share same DNA, the 2 women have vast differences

Paula Bernstein, left, and Elyse Schein are identical twins who were separated at birth and reunited 35 years later. They have written a book about their lives, Identical Strangers. Paula Bernstein, left, and Elyse Schein are identical twins who were separated at birth and reunited 35 years later. They have written a book about their lives, Identical Strangers. Photo: BRUCE GILBERT, MCCLATCHY Photo: BRUCE GILBERT, MCCLATCHY Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Separated twins shed light on identity issues 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

PHILADELPHIA — When identical twins Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein finally met for the first time at age 35, they both said the same thing. It wasn't so much like seeing a mirror image but like finding someone who'd lived a different life in your body.

Both women had the same delicate wrists and rounded hips, the same allergy to sulfa drugs. Both had studied film theory in college and had made a short film. But Paula was married with a baby, favored lightened, feminine curls and drank cosmopolitans. Her sister lived alone, colored her hair a sultry dark brunet and preferred scotch.

The two had been put up for adoption and separated in infancy as part of a 1960s experiment.

Identical twins offer a tantalizing window into the power of inheritance, and current twin studies continue to shake up our understanding of mental health, personality, the influence of parenting, and the meaning of identity.

Power of genetics

One thing that has become clear in recent decades is that unless parents are abusive or neglectful, they have much less power to damage their children than previously thought.

"When I was a student, mothers were considered the cause of schizophrenia," said psychologist Thomas Bouchard, head of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research. The prevailing theory on autism was that it was caused by cold "refrigerator mothers," he said.

It was easy to ignore genetics in the 1950s and 1960s, Bouchard said, because the field had been tarnished by the Nazis.

Today, the pendulum has swung the other way. Although identical twins share 100 percent of their DNA, he said, they differ much more than most people would expect. As Schein and Bernstein found, twins are genetic clones, but they are not copies.

Schein was the first to find out she was a twin. She always knew she was adopted, and when she turned 33 she decided to seek information about her birth mother. She was living in Paris and working as a filmmaker.

'A zillion questions'

She found only that her biological mother was Jewish, had been 28 when she gave birth, and had not tried to find her daughter.

Schein thought that was all she would discover when, some months later, she received a certified letter from an adoption agency. It said that she was the younger of twin girls and that her mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

"I had a zillion questions," she said. Was she an identical or fraternal twin? Why were they separated? Had the other twin stayed with the birth mother?

"I knew I had to find her."

She flew to New York, where she had been born, and started searching through public records. Eventually a social worker connected to the adoption agency found her lost twin. Paula lived in Brooklyn with her husband and young child.

The social worker explained to Schein that the pair had been separated as part of an experiment, but said that she did not know the details.

The social worker called Paula Bernstein to tell her about her sister. Bernstein's reaction was similar to her twin's. "I had a zillion questions," she said. Foremost among them: Why were they separated?

They talked on the phone first. When they met several days later, they found they looked alike but were not perfectly identical.

They both had studied and liked French, both had edited their school newspapers, both struggled with acne and depression.

Their continued search for answers led them to Viola Bernard, a renowned New York psychiatrist who believed that identical twins would better forge individual identities if separated.

She had persuaded the adoption agency to send twins to different homes.

They also uncovered Peter Neubauer, a prominent psychiatrist at New York University, who studied the separated twins to compare the forces of nature with nurture.

Bernard had died, but Neubauer, who was in his 90s, met with the twins in his Upper East Side apartment.

They say he revealed nothing about the study or what was learned.

The results are sealed until 2066, thanks to ethical problems that became clear later.

Study wouldn't fly now

The twins did find that the study had included five pairs of twins and one set of triplets, and that Schein and Bernstein were dropped early on because one reportedly had grown faster than the other.

The adoptive families were told that their children would be part of a child-development study. They were never told that they had adopted separated twins.

Neither Schein nor Bernstein expressed bitterness toward the researchers, calling their actions well-intentioned but misguided.

Minnesota's Bouchard said such a study would be unthinkable now, but ethical standards were different in the mid-20th century.

Bouchard himself believes that twins reared apart could yield scientific insights, though for his studies he chose only those separated through twists of fate — never deliberate intervention.

One of the biggest surprises to come from that work is that twins reared apart aren't any more different than those reared together, suggesting their differences are not forged by family dynamics but by other, subtler factors.

What if roles reversed?

Schein said she wondered what would have happened had she and Bernstein each been adopted into the other's family. "Would she be me and would I be her?"

Bouchard's studies would suggest not.

Sensing her inherent difference, she said she wondered whether Bernstein's parents were relieved that they got the "good," married twin and not the "bad," bohemian one.

But each twin said she would not wish for the life of the other. They were different people, after all.