The skill of an actor in being able to persuade the audience that they are someone else is one of the things I most admire.
And yet, we all act, some more than others. The trope of the comedian making people laugh through his depression, is another way we might think about presenting an altered self. We act to disguise, or often, to protect something of ourselves. I have often prepared myself for social or for professional occasions by assuming a mask. In other words, how much was character and how much the actor?
When I was a little younger I often found myself commentating, in my head, on my life. I looked at myself from some other perspective and described myself, my actions and my thoughts like a novelist writing about somebody else. I was looking at myself as a character. Not all of this is healthy. I had split something off from myself and I was losing touch with my core. Professional roles sometimes require an adoption of a false self.
It can be unhealthy. The most extreme professional examples are well-known in the literature of organisational or business psychology. Most oft-quoted is that of the air crew staff on long-haul flights. It is exhausting and is an accelerator to burnout and breakdown. Paediatrician turned psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott wrote a very fine paper about the True Self.
I have read it a number of times. At times it can be dense, but at others it seems very clear to me, and it also describes a phenomenon that I recognise in myself.
