Twin loss: implications for counselors working with surviving twins.(Practice & Theory)

Fascination with the twin bond has gripped cultures all over the world for millennia (Bryan, 1983). Although only approximately 3% of the total general population are twins, those who are twins have imbued twin relationships with expectations of extreme closeness, magical understanding, private languages, individual's fantasies of having another self(Bank & Kahn, 1982; Center for Disease Control [CDC], 2000). In 2000, the number of surviving individuals resulting from multiple births was 125 million worldwide.

Equal fascination with the severing of this mystically strong…