Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn S. Spiro, M.D.

() So there is no argument that severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, have genetic bases. Why then, in this case of identical twins, is one twin debilitated by the disease while the other twin grows up to become a well-respected psychiatrist?

In the early part of the book, it gives the idea that the twins may have, in fact, been feeling similar symptoms. However, Pamela's got worse while Carolyn's dissipated completely. This gives us insight into the role of environment and reactions thereto that can help trigger or harvest any predispositions to illness. It also, like the mental disorder memoirs I read before it, keeps with a theme of isolation. The disease is related to the individual disconnecting from all the people around them. They soon lose the ability to feel any sort of human connection, or trust.

It is both sad and rewarding to read. Pamela, the twin diagnosed as schizophrenic, has intelligence and potential. When she was younger, she was more highly appraised and hoped for than Carolyn, her sister. Also, while in and out of mental institutions, she won incredibly high awards for her poetry. She is a talented woman inflicted with horrendous schizophrenia. She carries the guilt of JFK's death; she thinks she's his murderer. There is even a point where she lights herself on fire. But, "Even in my most evil moments, moments when I feel that I need to destroy myself to save the world, I am still trying to preserve others." (pg. 314 - Pamela)

"You keep patients from isolating, because isolation is what has made them sick and, if allowed to continue, isolating will make problems more difficult." (pg.138 - Pamela's doctor)
"I stare into the bright fire and try to open up for the first time. Although I talk in riddles as usual, whenever I clam up, not wanting to bore him, he urges me on. [...] Carefully, I pull away, not because I recoil at the contact but because I'm certain he'd never touch me voluntarily or without disgust if awake. [...] I'm left to wonder what his liking me means. I know he hugged me on impulse and I also understand he will come quickly to regret it. Nevertheless, even the sneers of the voices can't deprive me completely of the bubbly, euphoric feeling in my chest." (pg 156 - Pamela)
"She sounds like she cares and believes what she says. I don't respond, but I'm listening. Something's different - for the first time someone actually wants me to talk about things and doesn't seem prepared to discount or dismiss me as crazy. And so, for the first time in my life, I finally tell another person everything: about the voices and the Strangeness, about my experience of the other dimensions and alternate reality, about Gray Crinkled Paper." (pg. 201-202 - Pamela)
"I am so lonely for human company that I collect stray people as indiscriminatingly as I collect cats. I barely know them, but they seem so needy that I invite them to stay with me, no questions asked. I just want to help. I don't think about who they are or where they came from, even though Lynnie tells me I need to protect myself before I offer the shirt off my back to any thief or con artist. She doesn't understand it makes me feel good when I'm able to rescue people more desperate than I. After all, any one of them could be Jesus Christ. [...] Most of these encounters end badly, though I don't understand why." (pg. 227-228 - Pamela)
"It's like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Am I going crazy? Are they trying to drive me crazy? But no one explains it to me, I can't even ask if I've passed the test or finished the experiment, because that would only bring denials by the very same nurses and aides and doctors who have it set up. Worse, they'd use my questions as an excuse to give me more drugs or impose stricter monitoring. [...] Somebody has tampered with reality, and since I don't know who, no one can be excluded. To be on the safe side I have to assume that everyone is the enemy." (pg. 261 - Pamela)
"I thought I was used to her. I thought I'd gotten used to what schizophrenia, medication, and the years of not taking care of herself had done to her. I thought I was accustomed to the incessant movement of her hands, the sometimes violent rocking of her body. I thought I was used to her chain-smoking and the peculiar self-absorbed habits of her solitary life. [...] It's hard to believe this is the twin sister I kept on a pedestal for years, Pammy the brilliant, creative one, the smarter, more special version of me. It is still impossible to reconcile my memories of her with the person schizophrenia has so wrecked." (pg. 268-269 - Carolyn)