We learn that her psychiatrist is able to assess her mental state during a given visit by just how much eye contact Spiro Wagner is willing to make, and that voices only she can hear lead her to harm herself and that she deeply fears harming.Used Good (1 available) Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. We learn, too, that Spiro Wagner believes she is evil, believes that her eye contact can and has caused others harm, that the world itself is menacing, riddled with threat and follow-through.

Details Abstract: Growing up in the fifties, Carolyn Spiro was always in the shadow of her more intellectually dominant and socially outgoing twin, Pamela.

Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Here is what we learn: the poems in this collection were written over a twenty-five year period by an intelligent woman who has, since the onset of mental illness in adolescence, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia as well as narcolepsy, and whose brain has suffered 'erosions' from Lyme disease spirochetes-these plus the many side-effects of treatment (electroconvulsive therapies, psychoactive drugs), the various and potholed byways of serious mental disturbance. Divided minds : twin sisters and their journey through schizophrenia Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia at.

O'Malley, the poet's psychiatrist, who also provides commentaries throughout on the poems themselves. Pamela Spiro Wagner is a wonderful writer, she captures what it is like to experience schizophrenic episodes and hospital stay after hospital stay. It is a true and unusually frank story of identical twins with very different identities and wildly different experiences of the world around them. This is a hybrid collection by design, document as well as art: there is a forward by the poet Baron Wormser, in addition to the enlightening Introduction by Dr. 'Divided Minds' is a heartbreaking account of the far reaches of madness as well as the depths of ambivalence and love between twins. We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders, however, is constructed to compel its readers to make use of the background information that accompanies the poems, to enter the work informed. The poem is the poem and the life is the life, the mandate asserts, and assumptions about the twain meeting are made only by beginners and the generally naive. A riveting true story of sisters who were identical, until the voices began Growing up in the fifties, Carolyn Spiro was always in the shadow of her more intellectually dominant and socially. Pamela Spiro Wagner's surprising collection of poems defies the common fiat that a reader must not assume the speaker of a poem is the author.

Divided Minds by Pamela Spiro Wagner