good twin/evil twin

http://www.crazyontap.com/topic.php?TopicId=12813&Posts=10

> so I doubt that birth order

yeah that was part of my point. it's not just birth order any difference can become stretched (though if parents refer to one as "the Elder" and "the Younger" too often, they make is an issue themselves).

I also should stress that neediness can be a virtue when it's called being persuasive. Getting someone to carry you to your goal (the rock) is a viable strategy. One used pride to get her father's affection, the other pity. These are both viable strategies. Marketing and the lovely arts of persuasion are underappreciated by us programmer types.

Thirdly, it's probably not a big deal. These kinds of roles can be limited to within family dynamics if the children have lots of outside the family experiences. The twins will most likely behave very similarly when they are apart and away from their parents. They have to find new roles under those circumstances, and the slight differences between them will be swamped out by the difference between either twin and the rest of the world.

I imagine the good twin/evil twin archetype came about because twins were reared too closely together. :) They found their niches and specialized into extremes. Their center of mass is normal, but each twin is far out on their end of the seesaw.