Section Hub · People
Researchers, institutions, subjects.
The study had a small group of architects, two cooperating institutions, and a much larger set of unwilling participants. This section names them, sets out what is known about each, and links to dedicated entries where the public record is detailed enough to support one.
The names below are organized by their role in what happened, not in order of importance. The subjects are last not because they matter least, but because they are the people the study was done to, and because their stories belong to them — what is recorded here is only what they have already chosen to make public.
Researchers
Peter B. Neubauer
Austrian-born psychoanalyst (1913–2008) who directed the Child Development Center and led the twin separation study from its founding through its quiet conclusion in 1980.
Viola W. Bernard
Columbia psychiatrist (1907–1998), consulting psychiatrist to Louise Wise Services, and longtime advocate for the separate-placement policy that made the study possible.
Institutions
Child Development Center
The Manhattan-based research and clinical arm of the Jewish Board of Guardians (later the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services), where the study was conducted.
Louise Wise Services
The Jewish adoption agency that placed the subject children, separated identical siblings as a matter of policy, and supplied the study with its subjects. Closed in 2004.
The Jewish Board
The Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services: institutional successor to the Child Development Center, where the study was conducted, and one of the bodies with standing to advocate for opening the Yale archive.
Spence-Chapin
The New York adoption agency that has held the Louise Wise Services adoption records since the agency’s 2004 closure. The practical first stop for adoptees seeking confirmation of their adoption history.
Subjects who have come forward
A non-exhaustive list of people who have publicly identified themselves as subjects of the study. Many more are believed to exist; some have died without learning they were studied. Entries link only to material the people listed have themselves placed on the public record.
Bobby Shafran, Eddy Galland, David Kellman
The triplets whose 1980 reunion became the most public exposure of the study. Subjects of the 2018 documentary Three Identical Strangers.
Paula Bernstein & Elyse Schein
Twin sisters reunited as adults in 2003. Co-authors of Identical Strangers, the 2007 memoir that broke open public discussion of the study’s subjects.
Doug Rausch & Howard Burack
Twin brothers separated at birth, reunited as adults, and central to The Twinning Reaction (2017), the first documentary to address the study at length.