SATAN

 Dear Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt

Recently over the last few years well, all my life really I've used alter egos when interfacing with other people. I've gone by names like Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Samael, Azazal, Diablo, Old Nick, Robert, Abaddon, Prince of Darkness, Dybbuk and Baal along with many others. This is all very well and adds to my mysteriousness but sometimes I get confused and run the risk of either repeating myself and losing connection with the very people I wish to influence, or forgetting which character I am at any particular moment. Can you help me?

- Satan.

Dear Satan

Get over yourself for fuck's sake

An alter ego simply means an alternative self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original personality. That old fraud Freud (note the closeness of his name to his nature) tried to peddle the idea of dual consciousness to support his thesis of the unconscious. He considered that “We may most aptly describe them as cases of a splitting of the mental activities into two groups, and say that the same consciousness turns to one or the other of these groups alternately”. To my mind the old charlatan was just trying to get away with charging his naive patients double or more for their 'treatment'.

I think that you've been reading too many comics and have been going to see too many of those silly Marvel-type action hero films like Superman, Batman, The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman and others. You'd be better off watching Fight Club and then hitting yourself, repeatedly, in the face.

Why don't you watch proper films like Five Easy Pieces, The Conformist, Last Tango In Paris, The Searchers, Diva, Metro, Lawrence of Arabia and other quality cinema.

You know you remind me of another confused old guy - this one a retired schoolteacher who forgets himself and communicates as different (made up) people.

It's just as well that you don't really exist.

- The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt