Who Killed the Real You? Identity, Doppelgängers, and the Art of Being Two People
We all wear masks. They might be made of glittering social expectation, stitched together with the delicate threads of our own insecurities, or perhaps polished with the fine layer of sophistication we wear for the world to see. These masks, so often unseen, are the very things that define us. At least, they define the version of us that others see. But the mask can also be a slow poison, one that, over time, wears away at the authenticity beneath, eroding the real you until you find yourself standing in front of a mirror, unsure of who is staring back. The doppelgänger, that eerie and seductive mirror image of our own identity, slips effortlessly from fiction into our daily lives, leaving us questioning whether we are playing a role or living the truth.
There’s a point in everyone’s life when they look into a mirror and wonder, “Who is that staring back at me?” Is it the person you’ve become, or is it the mask you’ve so carefully constructed over the years to meet the world’s expectations? The dissonance between the two — between who you truly are and who you are forced to be — can feel like a quiet tragedy unfolding. It’s the same feeling you get when you stand on the balcony of an upscale bar in a city you’ve never lived in, wearing a coat you don’t quite like, yet somehow feeling a deep sense of being far removed from yourself. It's as though the real you is slipping further away, obscured by the contours of your own mask.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1990-1991) dir. David Lynch
The Masks We Wear
The idea of the “real you” has always been, if not a comforting lie, then a dubious one. From childhood, we learn to adorn ourselves with masks as easily as we put on our clothes. At first, it's the innocent, slightly wobbly smile we flash to our parents, an attempt to garner approval. Later, it’s the stiff upper lip we perfect in the face of challenges, a mask worn to keep our vulnerabilities locked away. By adolescence, the masks become more deliberate — perhaps a touch of sarcasm to shield the softness underneath or a dab of charm to draw attention away from our inner chaos. Over time, these masks accumulate, layer upon layer, until the original face, the one we started with, is buried so deep beneath the performance that we no longer even recognise it.
And yet, it is these masks that we wear with such familiarity that they begin to shape us. What happens when you wear a mask for so long that it becomes impossible to remember who you were before it? This is the very essence of our identity crisis: we lose touch with the self we once knew, replacing it with a series of facades, each more polished and refined than the last. The problem, however, is that in the process, we forget the real “you” altogether, and all that's left is a mosaic of roles and images we’ve constructed to navigate a world that demands them. In the end, the question becomes less about who we are and more about who we've become, and even that can feel elusive, as though the very definition of our existence has slipped out of our grasp.
In high society, a world where sophistication dances like a ghost through the corridors of private clubs and glittering cocktail parties. Here, the mask is not simply an adornment; it is a requirement. It is a carefully measured elegance, a blend of decorum and restraint, worn not only to project success but to hide the fragility of our true selves. The mask allows us to fit in, to navigate the intricate ballet of social expectations, but it also keeps us distant from anyone who might dare to look too closely. Behind the pristine suits, polished shoes, and the smiles exchanged over glasses of champagne, there lies a sense of profound alienation. The persona we adopt is often more about keeping the world at arm's length than it is about sharing who we truly are. It is a shield — one that offers a sense of safety but simultaneously locks us away in a room of our own making. And when the lights dim, when the masks are laid aside, are we any closer to knowing ourselves, or have we simply become so wrapped in the performance of being that the actor no longer knows where the role ends and they begin?
But if high society’s masks are designed to preserve our place within established norms, the digital age has given birth to an entirely different form of mask: the online avatar. In this brave new world, the mask is not just a social tool but a hyper-curated version of ourselves — one that exists entirely in the realm of fiction. On social media, we are no longer bound by the constraints of reality or even by the texture of our lives. We craft our own stories, mould our own images, and in doing so, we create a version of ourselves that is often more aspirational than actual. Every post is an edit, every caption an artful construction. We show our highlights, our best angles, our most flattering moments, while the mundane, messy bits remain hidden, cloaked in a haze of digital silence. In a world where likes and follows have become the currency of validation, we begin to perform for an audience that doesn’t know the real us, and perhaps, in the process, we forget who that real person even is.
In the pursuit of attention and affirmation, we become the architects of our own identities, each post a brushstroke in the painting of our online selves. We slip on our digital mask as easily as we would a perfectly tailored suit, and in doing so, we blur the line between who we are and who we want others to think we are. The façade becomes so finely crafted that, like an expertly photoshopped image, it feels more real than the organic, unpolished version lurking just out of sight. And yet, the more we curate, the more we become prisoners of the very image we’ve created. The mask, once liberating in its ability to shape how we’re seen, starts to feel more like a cage, and the question looms large: when the mask slips — when we stand exposed in the quiet light of reality — who are we then? Who are we without the filters, without the curated captions, without the façade?
It is this very question that haunts us in the stillness, in the moments when we’re alone with our thoughts, when the digital glow fades, and we are forced to confront the person behind the mask. Without the constant performance, without the validation of others, what remains? Who are we, really, when we are no longer performing to meet the expectations of the world? Is the real us so far removed from the mask we wear that we’ve forgotten what lies beneath? Or have we, in fact, become the mask itself?
The masks we wear — whether in high society, behind a screen, or in the quiet corners of our own minds — are not just disguises; they are a form of survival. We wear them to protect ourselves, to shield our vulnerabilities from a world that often seems too harsh to accept them. But there’s a price for this protection. As we build our identities around these masks, we run the risk of losing ourselves in the process. The more we wear the masks, the more we lose sight of the person who first put them on. And in the end, perhaps the greatest question of all is not how to remove the mask, but whether we still have the courage to look into the mirror without it — and ask ourselves, who are we really, without the artifice?
The Duality of Jekyll and Hyde
Few literary works have encapsulated the tension between good and evil, self and other, as poignantly as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The novel’s central conflict — the clash between the moral, upstanding Dr Jekyll and the violent, uncontrollable Mr Hyde — provides a dramatic exploration of the human psyche’s capacity to fracture, to split, to wear multiple, contradictory faces. The question of duality in the novel isn’t just a philosophical one — it’s a reflection of something inherent in every one of us. It is a mirror to our lives, our personalities, our hidden desires, and our untold secrets. It speaks to the fact that we are not one singular identity, but rather a tapestry of identities, some nurtured and some hidden, each pulling at us from different directions.
In Stevenson’s work, the split between Jekyll and Hyde isn’t merely a matter of two conflicting identities within the same body; it’s a tragic illustration of the human need to separate the “acceptable” from the “unacceptable,” the “civilised” from the “savage.” Dr Jekyll, the highly regarded doctor, is a man driven by a desire for respectability and societal approval. He strives to live within the constraints of Victorian propriety, to be the very image of good and virtuous behaviour. Yet, this insatiable hunger for moral perfection creates a repression so intense that it drives him to extreme measures in order to reconcile the parts of himself he deems unacceptable. In his mind, the best way to preserve his honour is to push aside the darker instincts that lurk within him, to bury them completely and live a life free from their influence.
It is here, in this desperate attempt to compartmentalise the self, that Jekyll unwittingly brings his own downfall. His desire to separate his good from his dark side results in the creation of Hyde, a persona so entirely unrestrained and brutal that it becomes a reflection of his own hidden impulses. The potion he creates, which enables him to switch between these two versions of himself, is not just a metaphor for escapism — it’s an attempt to impose control on something that cannot, in fact, be controlled. By creating a chemical separation between his two selves, Jekyll deludes himself into thinking that he can somehow manage the chaos within. However, the very act of splitting himself in two creates an irreversible instability. In trying to push his darkness away, Jekyll has created a monster that is both outside of him and yet entirely within him. The further he descends into his experiments, the more he loses control — not only over his transformations, but over the very nature of his identity.
What is most tragic about Jekyll’s plight is the realisation that, in seeking to control his duality, he has only made it worse. He cannot escape from Hyde, no matter how hard he tries. His darker impulses, once neatly buried, are now let loose, and they are free to take on a life of their own. Jekyll's split personalities — his polished, respectable self and his monstrous, uninhibited alter ego — cannot coexist in harmony. The two identities are locked in a cycle of transformation, with neither able to permanently dominate the other. And in the end, the division destroys him. Hyde’s actions — murderous, violent, and utterly unrestrained — come to define Jekyll’s existence, even though Jekyll remains the one who is trapped inside his own mind. He is caught in the paradox of trying to repress the darker aspects of himself while simultaneously giving them a voice through his alter ego. In the tragic denouement of the story, Jekyll’s desperate attempts to rein in Hyde lead to his own destruction: a death that is the direct result of his attempts to separate, control, and ultimately deny his dual nature.
This conflict between Jekyll and Hyde, between the moral self and the shadow self, is not just a product of Victorian anxieties over class and respectability; it is, in fact, a timeless reflection of the human condition. We all have a Jekyll and Hyde, don’t we? We all wear masks, hiding parts of ourselves that we find inconvenient, unsightly, or unworthy of public display. And yet, those parts of ourselves don’t disappear just because we refuse to acknowledge them. They simmer beneath the surface, waiting for the moment when we will, consciously or unconsciously, let them out. Hyde is the embodiment of this buried darkness — a force that, once freed, is capable of violence, chaos, and destruction.
How often do we see a person who presents themselves one way to the world, only to reveal a completely different face when they think no one is watching? The colleague who is always calm and collected at work, but who explodes in rage when they get home; the friend who is selfless and attentive in public, but cruel and dismissive in private. These are the modern-day Jekylls and Hydes, individuals torn between their socially acceptable selves and their hidden desires. The real question is: how much of our Jekyll is truly us, and how much is just a carefully constructed mask? And conversely, how much of our Hyde is truly “evil,” and how much is merely the raw expression of unacknowledged pain, frustration, or need?
This is where the danger lies: in believing that we can neatly compartmentalise ourselves, that we can bury the parts of us that make us uncomfortable and think they will stay buried. The very act of suppression gives those hidden parts power, power that grows in the darkness until they break free in the most uncontrolled and destructive ways. The more we deny these aspects of ourselves, the more we lose touch with the complexity of our nature. Just as Jekyll’s denial of Hyde ultimately led to his undoing, so too can our attempts to split ourselves into neat, separate identities drive us to the edge of self-destruction.
In the end, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde serves as a chilling reminder that duality is not something we can escape. We all have a dark side, whether we acknowledge it or not. It’s the part of ourselves we keep hidden, the one we bury beneath layers of social expectations and personal pride. But the more we attempt to suppress it, the more dangerous it becomes. Hyde may seem monstrous, but he is, in reality, a reflection of the parts of Jekyll that he tried so desperately to deny. And perhaps that is the key to understanding ourselves — not to try to banish the darkness, but to recognise it, to understand it, and, in doing so, to learn how to live with it.
We must ask ourselves, how much of our true selves are we willing to embrace? How much of our duality are we prepared to confront? For in the end, it is only by accepting both the Jekyll and the Hyde within us that we can ever hope to find a sense of wholeness. The tragedy of the novel lies in Jekyll’s refusal to do so — his failure to understand that the very essence of his being was not in splitting himself apart, but in recognising the unity of his whole self. It is a lesson that we, too, must learn: the self is never singular, never simple, and certainly never as cleanly divided as we would like to believe.
Lynch’s World of Double Vision
David Lynch’s works are an eerie testament to the way identity morphs, dissolves, and collides within the confines of a dreamlike, uncanny world. In films like Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, and Twin Peaks, Lynch crafts spaces where the boundaries between reality and illusion blur beyond recognition. These worlds are not only fragmented in their narrative structure but are also fragmented in the very essence of who the characters are. Their shifting personas are not just character traits or mood swings, but visceral explorations of the fractured self — the sense that, within each of us, there exists an uncanny, otherworldly doubleness, as though we’re always slipping between roles, hiding in plain sight, wearing masks we’ve long forgotten to remove.
Lynch’s cinematic universe is built on contradictions. His characters are often at war with themselves, torn between competing desires, unable to reconcile their darker impulses with the image they wish to project to the world. But what Lynch does, brilliantly and terrifyingly, is invite the viewer into this battle, to become complicit in the character’s internal strife. The real self, as Lynch suggests, is never quite what it seems. It is always a construct — part performance, part illusion, part subconscious desire — and, like the shifting landscapes of his films, it can never be pinned down for long. Perhaps this is the most unsettling aspect of Lynch’s vision: the idea that we are all always already performing, slipping between identities, unable to fully connect with our own truths.
In Mulholland Drive, the shift between personas is more than just a narrative twist, it’s a profound commentary on the self's instability. The character of Betty Elms, an aspiring actress, morphs into the darker, more desperate Diane Selwyn, and it’s in this transformation that we see the first cracks appear in the illusory world of Hollywood glamour. Betty is a projection of hope, innocence, and ambition, but Diane is the reality that lurks underneath — the dark truth that lies just beyond the veil of aspiration. In Lynch’s world, the dream of self-creation — the idea that we can reinvent ourselves at will — is not only futile, it’s dangerous. The duality within each character speaks to the inherent conflict of the human experience: we try to become someone we are not, to present an idealised version of ourselves to the world, but in doing so, we risk losing touch with the very thing that makes us human — the uncomfortable, often unsavoury truth of our own complexity.
Lynch’s films are always playing with the idea that the self is never static. The image we project to the world is never the whole picture. Characters are constantly shifting between realities, sliding through alternate versions of themselves, and often, it’s only in the darkest moments that the masks start to slip. For example, Blue Velvet presents an ostensibly idyllic suburban world that conceals a much darker, more twisted reality beneath the surface. The character of Jeffrey Beaumont, a young man caught in a web of obsession and violence, finds himself drawn into a world where duality isn’t just a psychological condition but an existential one. The lines between good and evil, innocence and corruption, self and other are so blurred that the only way to navigate this world is to surrender to the fluidity of identity. At times, Jeffrey is the clean-cut boy next door; at others, he becomes a voyeuristic participant in a sinister game of power, control, and degradation. The characters in Blue Velvet are not fixed entities but are fluctuating representations of desire, fear, and the masks we wear to survive in a world that demands constant reinvention.
Lynch’s approach to duality is most potent in Twin Peaks, where every character lives in a world of contradictions. The sleepy, picturesque town harbours a seedy underbelly of secrets, and its inhabitants are all plagued by fractured identities, moral ambiguity, and shadowy alter egos. The central figure of Laura Palmer, whose murder sparks the investigation, is revealed to have lived an existence that was anything but innocent. She presents herself as the quintessential girl next door, but beneath this facade is a girl filled with darkness, violence, and trauma. What Lynch explores here is the human tendency to compartmentalise and deny the parts of ourselves that are deemed unacceptable by society. The town of Twin Peaks itself becomes a microcosm for this dynamic: a place where the appearance of tranquillity and innocence masks the grotesque truths that lurk beneath.
Lynch’s worlds are not just dreamlike — they are also drenched in a sense of estrangement. Characters slip in and out of identities with ease, much like the shifting sands of a dream. In these worlds, the very act of being is fluid; our perceptions of who we are shift like the lights in a foggy haze, always just out of focus. The boundaries between waking life and the subconscious are porous, and the more we try to pin down our sense of self, the further we slip away from it. Identity, in Lynch’s view, is not something stable or resolute, but something constantly in flux, forever transforming under the weight of repressed desires, fractured memories, and the overwhelming forces of our subconscious.
This transformation, this slipping between different versions of the self, can be unnerving, even unsettling, and yet, it resonates with a profound truth about human existence. We are, all of us, many different people at once. We are not static beings but living contradictions, torn between the faces we show to the world and the truths we keep buried in the recesses of our psyche. It’s in these moments of fractured identity that we come face-to-face with our most profound fears — the fear of losing ourselves, of becoming strangers to the person we thought we were. Lynch captures this fear brilliantly, allowing us to witness not just the external shifts in his characters but the internal chaos that lies behind them.
Perhaps this is the universal fear — that in the act of performing for others, we lose sight of who we really are. We wear the mask so often that it becomes fused with our own skin. And in those moments of estrangement, we are both the actor and the audience, trapped in the performance of our own lives, unsure of where the mask ends and the self begins. It is this tension, this fluidity of self, that Lynch explores so brilliantly. The more we try to define ourselves, the more we slip away from ourselves — until we are left, like his characters, in a world where nothing is quite as it seems, and identity becomes a haunting, elusive reflection of who we think we are, rather than who we truly are.
In Lynch’s world, the act of being is both a performance and a puzzle, a riddle that we may never fully solve. Perhaps that is the beauty of it — the constant slipping, the constant shifting, the constant becoming. And in that endless transformation, perhaps we find the truest version of ourselves: not a single, fixed identity, but a series of selves, all existing at once, each one just as real and just as false as the other.
The Many Faces of the Self: Non-Western Perspectives on Duality
If Lynch, Stevenson, and the entire canon of Western literature have taught us anything, it’s that identity is never quite as stable as we’d like to believe. We live in the tension between our desires and our fears, between who we are and who we must be to survive. But this concept of duality, the idea that the self exists in multiplicity, is not just a Western obsession. Across cultures, philosophies, and belief systems, the notion that identity is fluid, illusory, or fractured has long been recognised, perhaps even more explicitly than in the Western framework.
For example, the Japanese concept of honne and tatemae. In Japan, there is an understanding, one so deeply ingrained that it is rarely questioned, that every person has two faces: honne, the true, inner self, and tatemae, the socially acceptable persona presented to the world. Unlike in the West, where we often wring our hands over “authenticity” and feel vaguely guilty about the roles we play, in Japan, this duality is not only expected but necessary. Tatemae is the mask we wear in public — politeness, deference, social harmony. It is the version of the self-designed to exist within a structured society, where disrupting the collective order is seen as far worse than suppressing individual expression. But honne — raw, unfiltered, private — is the part of us that rarely sees the light of day, the thoughts and emotions we reveal only in safe, intimate spaces, if at all.
At first glance, this might seem like a rigid, suffocating structure, a system that forces people to live in a perpetual state of self-denial. But is it really so different from the way we operate in the West? The difference is that in Japan, the split between internal truth and external performance is openly acknowledged. In Western societies, we cling to the illusion of a singular, authentic self, even as we perform different versions of ourselves in various contexts. We criticise the idea of facades, pretending we don’t wear them, all while curating our social media personas with the precision of a Renaissance painter. But in Japan, there is no shame in playing a role — because it is simply understood that life itself is a series of performances.
Then there’s the Hindu and Buddhist concept of maya, the idea that the world as we perceive it is not reality at all but rather an elaborate illusion. In Hindu philosophy, maya is the veil that shrouds us from seeing the ultimate truth — that the self we cling to is a construct, and that our perceived separation from others is a falsehood. If in Western narratives the struggle is between two competing selves, in Hindu thought, the real battle is between illusion and enlightenment. The identities we forge, the masks we wear, the roles we play — they are all part of maya, a grand deception that keeps us from recognising our deeper, interconnected nature.
However, maya is not necessarily something to be defeated or escaped from. It is an inherent part of existence, a necessary illusion that allows us to function in the world. We may never fully transcend it, just as we may never fully break free from our masks. And perhaps we are not meant to. Hindu philosophy suggests that identity itself is not a thing we can hold onto, but something that shifts, dissolves, and reforms like water in a river. Much like Lynch’s characters, who slip in and out of personas with dreamlike fluidity, our sense of self is not fixed — it is always moving, always transforming, always just beyond our grasp.
Even outside of Hindu thought, this concept of self-as-illusion appears in other Eastern traditions. In Zen Buddhism, for example, the self is seen as something ephemeral, something that cannot be pinned down or defined in absolute terms. There is no “true” self to find — only the ever-changing moment, the flow of existence. This is, perhaps, where Western and Eastern ideas of duality diverge most starkly. In the West, we are obsessed with uncovering the “real” version of ourselves, peeling back the layers in search of some core truth. In Eastern philosophy, the notion that such a truth even exists is itself an illusion.
And yet, despite these philosophical differences, the tension remains universal. Whether we call it Jekyll and Hyde, honne and tatemae, or the struggle between maya and enlightenment, we are all caught in the same web of contradictions. We all live in the space between who we are and who we must be, between the self we know and the self we show. The only real question is whether we acknowledge it or continue to pretend we are whole.
For me, these ideas have never been abstract. I have lived them, felt them pressing against my skin like a second layer of existence. I’ve felt the quiet suffocation of smiling when I didn’t want to, of playing the role that was expected of me even as my honne clawed at the inside of my ribs. There have been moments — at dinner parties, in business meetings, at family gatherings — where I have watched myself perform, all too aware that the person speaking, nodding, laughing, was not me, or at least, not the me I felt most aligned with. But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps the self I feel most aligned with is just another illusion, another layer in the great masquerade.
If identity is fluid, if selfhood is a performance, then maybe the masks we wear are not deceptions but simply different truths. Maybe we are not one thing but many, not a single, unified self but a shifting mosaic of experiences, personas, and contradictions. And maybe that is not something to fear, but something to embrace.
The Art of Being Two People
The idea of being “two people” is not just about schizophrenia or mental illness, as it is often portrayed in popular culture. It is a reflection of the human condition — the way we adapt, evolve, and sometimes disintegrate into multiple selves. In high society, we wear the mask of the sophisticated, composed individual, but in private, we are something else entirely — a person stripped of the formalities and expectations, free to express our raw, unfiltered emotions. Online, we create an avatar that doesn’t exist in the real world, one that may be kinder, happier, and more successful than we truly feel. But perhaps the art of being two people is not necessarily a tragedy. Perhaps it’s the very thing that makes us human — our ability to transform, to play roles, and to navigate the complexities of a life that doesn’t always fit neatly into one box.
In a way, we are all performing. We perform for ourselves, for others, and sometimes we even perform for the future versions of ourselves we hope to become. The key, perhaps, lies not in the pursuit of a singular, unchanging self but in accepting the multiplicity of who we are. It’s in recognising that we are both Jekyll and Hyde, both Lynchian characters lost in a web of dreams and reality, both the masks we wear and the faces beneath them.
We might never know the “real” us, but perhaps that’s the beauty of it. Identity is not a static thing. It’s fluid, dynamic, a dance between who we are, who we want to be, and who we feel we should be. The art of being two people is not something to fear, but something to embrace — after all, it’s the duality that makes us human.
S xoxo
Written in Comporta-Melides, Portugal
15th March 2025