It is one of the most compelling histories of two such siblings in the canon of writing on mental illness. It is a true and unusually frank story of identical twins with very different identities and wildly different experiences of the world around them. The Mindful Way Through Depression by Mark Williams, et.al. Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So, a memoir by Mark Vonnegut. 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. Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn S. Carolyn continued to believe in the humanity of her sister, not merely in her illness, and Pamela responded. Exceeding everyone's expectations, Carolyn graduated from Harvard Medical School and forged a successful career in psychiatry.ĭespite 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. Pamela's illness allowed Carolyn to enter the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister. But as the twins approached adolescence, Pamela began to suffer the initial symptoms of schizophrenia, hearing disembodied voices that haunted her for years and culminated during her freshman year of college at Brown University where she had her first major breakdown and hospitalization. Growing up in the fifties, Carolyn Spiro was always in the shadow of her more intellectually dominant and socially outgoing twin, Pamela. A riveting true story of sisters who were identical, until the voices began
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