History Main / DoubleConsciousness

-->-- W.E.B Du Bois, ''The Souls of Black Folk''

-> ''"All the furniture that made up the way I'd thought and felt about things all my life started coming loose in my head. Nowadays it slides around and breaks into pieces and I have no idea what parts of it are real and what aren't. It hurts, and a lot of the time I don't know who I am anymore."''
-->-- '''Lara Notsil[=/=]Gara Petothel[=/=]Kirney Slane''', '''''[[Literature/XWingSeries Solo Command]]'''''

** Lelouch's relationship with Nunnally means that he doesn't suffer from this as much as other characters with dual identities, since he had decided right from the start that his role as Zero was only a means to an end, (that end being Nunnally's happiness,) and so even though it was difficult to juggle both his lives, he did not suffer from too many emotional conflicts at first. This starts to change when [[spoiler: he finds out that Zero killed his love interest's father]], and he considers giving up but ultimately keeps going, and gets tested even more severely when [[spoiler: Nunnally becomes viceroy of Japan, putting Zero in direct opposition to her]], but by this point he can't bring himself to abandon everyone depending on Zero, and is seriously internally conflicted as a result.
** Rolo and Viletta have a few brief problems with this. Rolo spent most of his life as a dirty tactics assassin, but also spent one year with Lelouch as a normal person. The feedback during the Asian Embassy fiasco (disobeying Britannian orders to kill Lelouch) leaves him a wreck until Lelouch offers him a job. Viletta also has to deal with the fact that she still loves Oghi but she has finally been given noble status, and yet [[spoiler: said nobility and even some of the royal family have had their titles rescinded by Lelouch and are subsequently punished for mass corruption]]. It takes her a while to forget about her obsession with nobility (though for other reasons, that ironically ends up a moot point).

** Her husband, Rory Williams, also has a Double Consciousness, having memories of being both the ordinary [[TheMedic nurse]] Rory Williams, and the [[spoiler: 2,000-year-old Last Centurion from the universe of the Total Event Collapse]]. He has worked out how to keep the latter set of memories locked away in his mind most of the time, however, and only lets them out when he needs them. ''To terrify Cybermen''.

* Post-colonial philosophers like Frantz Fanon, Edward Said and authors like Creator/SalmanRushdie often note that individuals from ex-colonies experience this, especially the middle-class who work with the colonizers and speak their language. These individuals, they note, see the colonizers as the people see them while they also absorb and ape the colonialist perspective and learn to see their fellow people, their country and themselves as the "colonizers" see them.

* Shades of this trope appear in ''WesternAnimation/GerisGame'', one of the first PixarShorts. Playing chess with himself, the old man's personality seems to shift as he goes from playing white to playing black, and he reacts just as if he really were two people.

* This trope turns [[spoiler:Huey]] into a complete psychopath in MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain; he's still a genius who cures ''parapalegism'' in the MGS universe 30 years before mass-implemented cyborg augmentations, but due to his paranoia and hatred causes the deaths of hundreds (in ways that boggle the mind) and is completely unrepentant in his role of developing mass-produced infantry-assisting murder machines. And yet he has an unviolated conscience. Whenever he says anything contradicting within ten seconds, no lie detector that Diamond Dogs has can see anything; he's telling the truth that he remembers. The secret to his psychosis is his ability to restructure his memory in milliseconds, allowing him to lie to EVERYONE, especially HIMSELF, leaving him more deranged as he gets questioned and retaliates destructively in turn. The only saving grace he has in this game is that his boss is even more evil and pushed him to become a sociopath, and even said boss is disgusted by the cowardly monster that he has become.

* Dana in OctaviaButler's ''Kindred'' is a 1970s black woman transported back to the antebellum south, where she has to masquerade as a slave, causing a lot of conflict between her 'liberated' self and the demeanor she has to adopt to survive as a slave.

* Shades of this trope appear in ''Geri's Game'', one of the first PixarShorts. Playing chess with himself, the old man's personality seems to shift as he goes from playing white to playing black, and he reacts just as if he really were two people.

** Kallen suffers from this, being half-Japanese half-Britannian, part of Japan's [[LaResistance freedom fighters]], and passing as a full-blooded Britannian in society.

** Rolo and Viletta have a few brief problems with this. Rolo spent most of his life as a dirty tactics assassin, but also spent one year with Lelouch as a normal person. The feedback during the Asian Embassy fiasco (disobeying Britannian orders to kill Lelouch) leaves him a wreck until Lelouch offers him a job. Viletta also has to deal with the fact that she still loves Oghi but she has finally been reinstated into the nobility, and yet [[spoiler: said nobility and even some of the royal family have had their titles rescinded by Lelouch and are subsequently punished for mass corruption]]. It takes her a while to forget about her obsession with nobility (though for other reasons, that ironically ends up a moot point).

* Niko Bellic, protagonist of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'', is a veteran of TheYugoslavWars who immigrated to America, and is thus possessed of conflicting worldviews. On the one hand, he [[PapaWolf cares]] about his family and friends from Serbia, but is too [[ShellShockedVeteran traumatized]] by [[SociopathicSoldier war]] to live a normal life. On the other, he wants to build a [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanDream new life]] in America, but is also [[PunchClockVillain hungry]] for wealth and believes he can only achieve it through [[BecauseImGoodAtIt crime]]. This can explain the {{Moral Dilemma}}s the game presents and even some instances of GameplayAndStorySegregation.

* Niko Bellic, protagonist of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'', is a veteran of TheYugoslavWars who immigrated to America, and is thus possessed of conflicting worldviews. On the one hand, he [[PapaWolf cares]] about his family and friends from Serbia, but is too [[ShellShockedVeteran traumatized]] by [[SociopathicSoldier war]] to live a normal life. On the other, he wants to build a [[AmericanDream new life]] in America, but is also [[PunchClockVillain hungry]] for wealth and believes he can only achieve it through [[BecauseImGoodAtIt crime]]. This can explain the {{Moral Dilemma}}s the game presents and even some instances of GameplayAndStorySegregation.

* ''PleaseSaveMyEarth'' has the scientists watching the earth being [[{{Reincarnation}} reincarnated]] into Japanese students. They all worry at some point about their previous actions or what will become of their now-selves. [[{{Bishonen}} Issei]] is the [[GenderBender reborn Enju]] who was in love with Jinpachi and falls in love with his best friend again, Alice is so afraid that she'll lose herself that she blocks her memories as Mokuren for most of the manga, Daisuke still feels responsible for his actions on the moon and Rin has to fight with the awakened Shion inside of him.
* [[spoiler:Reiner Braun]] from ''Manga/AttackOnTitan''. [[spoiler:The conflict between his cover as a human soldier, and his true mission as a [[TheMole Titan spy]] leave him so guilty that he begins to suffer [[BecomingTheMask dissociate episodes]] where he genuinely believes his cover is real]].

* ''ShadeTheChangingMan'' described this after the Angels returned him to Earth unpredictably deranged, claiming they had "stolen his ballast", and that he no longer knew who he was from moment to moment. The rebirth had integrated multiple facets of his personality, some previously repressed, and some that weren't even his. At least his Wangst episodes became briefer and more varied.

* Zuko from ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' feels this way. It is amplified when he discovers [[spoiler:he is the grandson of both Fire Lord Sozin and Roku, the Avatar's previous incarnation]].

* This trope turns [[spoiler:Huey]] into a complete psychopath in MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain; he's still a genius who cures ''parapalegism'' in the MGS universe 30 years before mass-implemented cyborg augmentations, but due to his paranoia and hatred causes the deaths of hundreds (in ways that boggle the mind) and is completely unrepentant in his role of developing mass-produced infantry-assisting murder machines. The secret to his psychosis is his ability to restructure his memory in milliseconds, allowing him to lie to EVERYONE, especially HIMSELF, leaving him more deranged as he gets questioned and retaliates destructively in turn. The only saving grace he has in this game is that his boss is even more evil and pushed him to become a sociopath, and even said boss is disgusted by the cowardly monster that he has become.

* There is a theory that everyone has three consciousness: their public idenity, their family [=/=]friend identity, and their private identity.

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* Brelvis from ''{{Magellan}}'' - Brian Lonsdale, genetically blended in a transporter style experiment gone wrong with his pet dog Elvis, now refers to himself as Brelvis Lonsdog and has melded behaviours and combined human/dog words for certain people, objects and actions.
* A magic mirror in ''YetAnotherFantasyGamerComic'' showcases the true self of whoever looks at it. But it changes every time someone looks at it. That is because the true self can be defined in many different and distinct ways.

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

-->-- '''Lara Notsil[=/=]Gara Petothel[=/=]Kirney Slane''', '''''[[XWingSeries Solo Command]]'''''

* Possibly [[Literature/{{Dexter}} Dexter Morgan]], who for obvious reasons must keep his more squishy hobbies out of the public eye. He also works for the cops as a crime scene analyst.

* [[XWingSeries Gara Petothel]], when she [[DeepCoverAgent becomes Lara Notsil]], starts to feel this. Previously she'd become many roles and shed them, as she was trained to do, without a qualm. But this time she had no handler, and she cracked, realizing that something was very, very wrong with her.
** [[NewJediOrder Tahiri Veila]] also had a bad case of this: not during her time as an experimental test subject of a [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong]] MadScientist, when the implanted Riina personality was in control, or immediately thereafter when her own personality reasserted itself, but years later. The two personalities [[BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind fight for control]], resulting in blackouts and causing Tahiri and Riina to fight a literal duel amid a mindscape made up of Tahiri's painful memories. She ends up having the epiphany that the two halves of her are just that -- inextricably linked to each other, they will have to merge lest they wind up killing each other. Although she continues using the name Tahiri, she isn't quite the same person afterwards (she sometimes even thinks of "old Tahiri" as a distinct person in her own right), and her beliefs are a synthesis of both Jedi and Vong thought.

* Nearly every character in TheRegenerationTrilogy experiences this trope. Rivers is a psychologist who also trained as an ethnologist, and he often finds himself stepping beyond the role of a therapist into the role of a father for his patients. Sassoon is a brave, charismatic lieutenant who does a great job getting his men to kill Germans. He also strongly opposes the war and has many pacifist friends, although he doesn't consider himself one. Prior is bisexual, with all the attendant conflicts in a paranoid wartime society. He's also a lieutenant and government worker from a working-class background, who probably wouldn't have risen that far in peacetime, and he knows it. And that's without getting into the SplitPersonality.

* Another Cardassian in the StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch: Rugal Pa'Dar. He's a Cardassian who is Bajoran who is a Cardassian who is part of the Federation. After being raised on Bajor, he's returned to his original home on Cardassia in his mid-teens (as seen in the TV episode "Cardassians"). While insisting at first he's still Bajoran, he comes to accept his Cardassian identity too, and ends up taking on a third when he joins the Federation. In the end, he's just concerned with being himself - whatever that may be.

* Happens quite a bit to George Orr, protagonist of Ursula K. Le Guin's ''TheLatheOfHeaven'', because he can re-shape reality by dreaming. He remembers all the old versions of reality that have accumulated, and sometimes has trouble keeping them straight.

* Amy Pond from ''Series/DoctorWho'' remembers two different versions of her life according to her actress. In series 6, [[spoiler:she has a ''triple consciousness'', where she remembers the collapsing timeline stuck on 5:02pm, where Amy was an agent that killed Kovarian]].

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* African-Americans and other minorities, immigrants, transgender people and many others often feel a double consciousness.
* There's a movement among those with multiple personalities who identify not as one fractured person, but as several SharingABody (AKA a "multiple system").

[[/folder]]

-->-- '''[[DeepCoverAgent Lara Notsil]][=/=][[BecomingTheMask Gara Petothel]][=/=][[IHaveManyNames Kirney Slane]]''', '''''[[XWingSeries Solo Command]]'''''

[[folder: Film ]]


* ''Franchise/RoboCop'' has both a human brain and a computer program, with all the inner conflict that results from [[WhatHaveIBecome having to accept that he is both a machine and a person at the same time.]] Over time, he [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming grows past it]] and asserts his identity as "Murphy".

Compare SecretIdentityIdentity, LivingADoubleLife. In extreme cases this can lead to SplitPersonality. See also DoubleThink.