Twinship

Twinship is a word that has many meanings in medicine and psychology. Most basically it is the condition of being twins. In psychology, particularly psychoanalysis, the term "twinship" or "alter ego transference," according to Dr. John Kohut (an eminent psychiatrist), is used to refer to a narcissistic transference. This narcissistic transference expresses the need of the analysand (the patient or client) to depend on the analyst with the narcissistic assumption that the analyst shares common traits with the analysand.