In the 1950s and 60s, psychological experiments were carried out, from which today are shivering. For example, in the United States, three twin brothers were separated in infancy. Scientists wanted to find out how much upbringing affects a person's character. 19 years later, the brothers, who grew up in different families, learned the truth and met (they even made a film about them). We tell their story.
The boys found out about each other by accident
When 19-year-old Robert Saffron came to college for the first time, those around him acted strangely. He was greeted and congratulated on his return as an old acquaintance. One of his new friends, Michael Domnitz, suspected something was wrong. He asked Robert directly: is he a native child in his family? When I heard a negative answer, he exclaimed: "You have a twin brother!"
Domnitz was friends with a sophomore named Edward Galland, who, like Robert, was adopted as a child. He called him on the phone. Robert was stunned: in the receiver he heard exactly the same voice as himself.
On the same day, they met at Edward's house, where he lived with foster parents. When he opened the door, Robert was shocked a second time. He seemed to see himself in the mirror. “Everything around at that moment seemed to cease to exist, it was only me and Eddie,” Robert recalls now.
Edward Galland and Robert Saffron.
A few months later, another college student, David Kellman, saw the story of the twin reunion on the news and recognized himself in photographs. He found the phone number of Edward's parents and called them. "Oh my God, yes they crawl out of all the cracks!" - in their hearts said his adoptive mother after this conversation.
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None of the adoptive parents knew that their son had brothers. They were separated to conduct a psychological experiment that lasted nearly two decades.
How it all started
The triplet was born in July 1961. Their mother was a teenager. When the brothers met her many years later, they had the impression that she "got pregnant at prom out of stupidity." They did not communicate anymore.
The brothers were separated when they were six months old. At that time, a group of researchers led by a renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Neubauer, was looking for an adoption agency to help them conduct a special experiment. Studying twins and triplets who would be raised in different families, scientists wanted to find out how the environment affects the formation of character, which traits are inherited, and which people acquire during life. In other words, what determines our behavior: nature or nurture.
Several adoption agencies have flatly refused to help Neubauer's group. They believed that scientists themselves do not understand what they are doing, and that it is by no means possible to separate twins or triplets during adoption. However, Eliza Weiss's agency, dealing with the fate of the twins, agreed to this model of adoption.
They did not think much about the ethical side of the experiment: in the 1950s and 60s, psychologists repeatedly conducted experiments that are now considered inhumane. For example, the Stanford Prison Experiment: psychologists built a prison in the basement of the university and put volunteers there. They recreated the prison environment to test how this would affect the personalities of the participants in the experiment.
David Kellman, Edward Galland and Robert Saffron, 1980.
Another example is Stanley Milgram's experiment at Yale University. During the experiment, one participant played the role of a teacher, the other as a student. If the latter was wrong, the teacher must shock him. The more errors, the stronger the electric shock was. That he really did it was watched over by an observer whom the teacher had to obey. So Milgram tested how much people succumb to someone else's authority.
Twins under supervision
At the adoption agency, the expectant parents of the twins were told that psychologists had already begun to observe the child and would really not want to interrupt the process. The psychological accompaniment itself was described as "the most common." Later, the parents claimed that they had been given to understand: if they did not agree, they would not receive the child.
The exact number of children who were separated for the experiment is still unknown. Some sources say that from five to 20 triplets and twins could be given to different families.
David Kellman's father was a simple man, he owned a vegetable tent. Edward Galland was middle-class. He failed to build a relationship with his adoptive father: they had too different views on how a man should be. Robert Saffron lived in a wealthy family and suffered from a lack of attention from his father, who was often away.
The researchers regularly visited the children with foster families. In the first two years after adoption, they came at least four times a year and at least once a year as the boys got older, says Three Identical Strangers director Tim Wardle.
Meetings with researchers were always held at home. The children were offered tests that tested their cognitive abilities, such as drawing or putting together mosaics. Moreover, they were always recorded on camera. The research officially lasted ten years. From some of the reports that were made available to the film crew, it is clear that surveillance continued after.
Even as infants, the brothers developed behavioral problems. Foster parents said the children banged their heads on the crib bars when they were upset. Two brothers, Kellman and Galland, were treated in a mental hospital before college. Saffron received a suspended sentence.
“Those who studied us saw that something was wrong, but they didn’t help us in any way. This is what makes us so angry,”says Kellman.
We wanted to be the same
At first, the life of the brothers after the reunion became like a continuous holiday. Tall, notable young people have appeared in television programs and movies with Madonna. They began to rent an apartment together.
One night, they bumped into Annie Leibovitz, a photographer who had photographed celebrities such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono. She asked the brothers to let her spend some time with them and to film them. She took them to hot spots. “People had hair in every color possible, and piercings were everywhere imaginable. We felt like virgins in a brothel! - they shared later.
Once on the street, they were noticed by director Susan Seidelman. In 1985, the brothers appeared in an episode of her film Desperately Seeking Susan. In it, Madonna jumps out of the convertible and heads to the apartment. Lounging by the porch, three identical young men look at her with a smile. On the set, the brothers, however, were uncomfortable: "The whole team looked at us as if we were punks."
Still from Desperately Seeking Susan featuring the brothers and Madonna.
The appearance of brothers could paralyze traffic on the streets. Especially if they did this: two walked, and the third sat on their shoulders. “It was as if we fell in love with each other. They spoke like this: “Do you like it? And I like it too!"
“We wanted to be the same and love the same things,” Kellman recalls. But at times the brothers began to communicate more in pairs, and each understood that he did not want to be the third odd.
“According to them, it is difficult to keep three children in one house. When they said that, my dad almost attacked them and said that without further ado, he would have taken everyone,”says Kellman. The agency did not say a word about the experiment.
They left the meeting angry and lost. Saffron's father forgot an umbrella in his office. When he returned, he saw that the service employees were opening champagne and congratulating each other, as if they had just survived at gunpoint. The parents wanted to take legal action, but not a single law firm took up the case. Other families are trying to adopt children through the same agency, and the proceedings could get in the way, lawyers said.
Secretly until 2065
The Neubauer study, in which the brothers participated, has not yet been published in its entirety. The scientist handed it over to the archives, the papers are kept at Yale University, and access to them is limited until 2065. He announced some of the results of the experiment in the book "The Trace of Nature: the Genetic Foundations of Personality" in 1990 and in an article in 1986. Psychologists believe that they have significantly expanded the understanding of the influence of nature and nurture on humans. But in the movie Three Identical Strangers, none of these publications are mentioned.
Another inaccuracy of the picture is the opinion that the researchers neglected the children who participated in the experiment. In fact, the researchers volunteered after hours to provide therapy for the adopted children.
Psychiatrist Peter Neubauer, who led the group, is also credited with the decision to separate twins and triplets. He allegedly offered not to inform the parents that the child they are adopting has brothers or sisters.
It was actually Dr. Viola Bernard's initiative. At Louise Weiss's agency, she was a psychiatric consultant. This approach has been practiced since the late 1950s, that is, several years before the experiment began. The adoption process itself was very closed at the time.
However, it was only during the filming of the film that the brothers managed to get them to have access to documents and videos of the experiments. It took nine months. They received nearly ten thousand pages of reports - though heavily edited.
Materials about the researchers' visits to children and the results of the tests they conducted were not there. But there were several videos. On them, little brothers collect mosaics, write tests or playfully glance at the person behind the camera.
Not just Robert, David and Edward
Two of the brothers are now alive, Robert Saffron and David Kellman. The third, Edward Galland, suffered from bipolar disorder and committed suicide in 1995. He is survived by his wife and daughter.
Of all the three, it seemed that Galland needed brothers the most. They replaced his family (with his father, he did not improve the relationship). Moved at least three times to live closer to them. Before dying, he settled across the street from David Kellman. Their daughters are close friends.
Robert Saffron and David Kellman.
After his suicide, Saffron and Kellman became distant from each other. However, the tension between the brothers appeared even at the moment when Robert left the business, which the three of them ran: the brothers owned a restaurant. They began to communicate closer only during the filming of the film. Today Robert and David live and work in different cities.
After the release of the film Three Identical Strangers, other people who had been adopted in childhood through Louise Weiss's agency began looking for each other. For example, a woman named Michelle Mordoff used a genetic test to find her twin sister three weeks later.
Author: Anna Efimova