We keep parts of our personal histories, inclinations, or physical appearance to ourselves because we prefer it that way. Some matters are no one else’s business. You may, for instance, opt not to share with others details about your love life, medical history, or childhood, and you may, consequently, perceive questions—particularly repeated or insistent questions—about those things as prying on the other’s part.

When an issue we don’t talk about is one we regard as private, we do not, on account of our silence, experience a gap between whom we know ourselves to be “underneath” and who we appear to be to the outside world. There is also no gap when hidden aspects of identity add richness to the personality, as when a scientist plays in a music band on weekends. Or when concealment is done for self-protection, as when Emperor Claudius, from Robert Grave’s novel I, Claudius, pretends to be stupid in order to avoid becoming the target of political rivals.

Sometimes, however, we may come to see our public persona as misaligned with our private self. A gap opens up between the two, and possibly a chasm. This is what I am interested in here.

Not everyone is bothered by the existence of a gap, even a large one, between public and private self. Some revel in their ability to fool others. Consider Eddie Chapman, a professional criminal who persuaded the likes of actress Marlene Dietrich that he was a well-off playboy. After the start of World War II, Chapman went on to put his skills—in both robbery and conmanship—to a different use and became a double agent whose codename, appropriately enough, was “Zigzag.” It appears that Chapman was a person for whom creating an elaborate hall of mirrors was a way to realize his potential. He could live with many faces because he was all and neither of them. He was just what he wanted to be: a swindler.

Chapman’s case, however, is unusual.........

© Psychology Today