MEDITATION ON THE TWINS
by Mike Roth
Community Building in Britain Newsletter, No. 96, Autumn 2005, pp. 6-8.Three years ago, I participated in some improvisatory theatre workshops, along with one of my fellow sufferers in the Facilitator Training Group. The teacher was trying to make us familiar with something he called “The Twin Effect”. This is what I want to explore now, because of the relevance I think it has to Community Building. The Twin Effect, in a nutshell, is the human being’s tendency to have a completely different character in reserve, whilst presenting ourselves seemingly wholeheartedly on the surface. Thus, I may be interacting in one particular way, but you may discover that I have another perspective actively in play which may or may not agree with the first one. You may find this other aspect suddenly jumps out on you, and you wonder where it came from.
This is not the same thing as the well-known “wearing a mask to hide my true self”. With the twin effect, there isn't a distinction between a mask and a true self—rather, rival aspects which both have claims to be regarded as “true selves”.
I believe this is an extremely widespread phenomenon, and is at the base of a great deal of normal pseudo-community and chaos. It also accounts for the feeling one gets with certain people, that you keep thinking you know where you’re going with them, but suddenly it seems as if there is “someone else” actively playing tricks in the background, or suddenly clobbering you when you least expect it.
We all have different arrangements with ourselves–and each of us has our preferred ways of managing the Twin Effect. So for instance, some of us simply assume that our Twin is the other person we are interacting with. A person who does this will fight, play or love with great gusto, but if you are their partner in the action you find you can only be in the fight, play, or love with them if you conform closely to what they expect. If you deviate from the part they have given you to play, you may find them blanking you, or carrying on as if you hadn’t spoken, or putting you radically and strangely in the wrong. Alternatively, you may find that you have been suddenly switched from Enemy to Lover to Friend or back again, and you won’t know the reason why.
In some intimate relationships, couples may switch in the blink of an eye, between being true lovers, and being enemies; each of them recognizes their Twin Lover in the other, and they recognize their Twin Enemy. What is lacking is any frame of reference which could integrate these two into a unified world.Other ways that different people handle the twin effect are to regularly switch moods in quite drastic ways: ways that incorporate quite different views of the world and of your family and friends, depending on which mood you are in. (I do this a lot!) Another one, is to belong to different “sub-groups” in life and develop quite different and incompatible personalities in each sub-group. In the Community Building world I have noticed a version of this as free-flowing gossip and criticism amongst one’s cronies, whilst appearing to maintain “acceptance” and “emptiness” when sitting in the circle. Yet another life-strategy is to have contradictory definitions of the situation running at the same time–e.g., some Christian groups will celebrate the holy days together with full display of love, acceptance and humility, whilst at the same time their longstanding enmities and power struggles continue to play out under the surface.
As I said, I think these Twin Effects have a lot to tell us about what goes on in the circle of Community Building. What is more, I think they give rise to subtle barriers which often defeat our efforts to find ways through. I think this may be why I have struggled over the years, and failed to find ways to resolve the seemingly irresolvable and strange conflicts which bedevil certain of my relationships. Yet still I feel that a genuine intention to build community should offer hopes of resolving this. What would be essential, is that bridges are built with both twins, rather than having one staying hidden and out of play, only to pop up later on. Also, that these different aspects of our selves may have genuine problems in understanding what each other really wants. One hears a lot of talk about “sabotage” but maybe a lot of this is one twin tripping the other up, through failure to understand what each other one is really trying to do.
My sense is that when two or more parties are actively misunderstanding one another, a traditional Community Building emphasis on individual work to reach a state of “emptiness” can be in danger of missing the point. What is needed, is a way to interpret the various different points of view and intentions to one another. This is inter-personal rather than individual work. It is good that in Community Building we have a group commitment to “hearing all the voices”, but to move beyond paying lip-service to this, we might need to develop a more active facilitation style than we have been used to. I’m not talking about trained or professional style facilitation; it is rather that, as multiple participants in life, we are in a position to help competing parties to get out of each other’s way and make it easier for all the voices to have their say. I think that the key here is: that both twins’ voices need to be clearly heard. Then maybe an extra door will be found to have opened for the work of reconciliation.
Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (blog)