Is It Me or My Alter Ego?

The concept of "the other side of a person" was coined in the 1730s by Anton Mesmer through experiments assessing how a person's personality is in a conscious state and when hypnotized. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, "alter ego" means the part of someone's personality that isn't usually seen by other people. An alter ego is a character that is consciously created from what a person has long desired to cover up the original personality that he does not want to be shown to others. Split personalities are clearly different; the alter ego is fully realized by the individual, whereas split personalities are a complex psychological disorder condition that the sufferer cannot control.