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When asked “What is a friend?” Zeno, the Greek philosopher (ca 362–ca 264 B.C.), is reported to have given the somewhat cryptic reply “Another I” (or, in Latin, alter ego). Just what did Zeno mean? Did he consider a friend to be a duplicate, a twin, of oneself? Or, as I prefer to believe, did he mean a friend is an alternate or somewhat different version of oneself? I find support for my understanding in The American Heritage Dictionary's (1980) definition of alter ego as, first, “another side of oneself, a second self” and, second, as “an intimate friend, a constant companion.” The word twin, on the other hand, is defined as “one of two identical or similar persons, animals, or things.” Clearly, the two words are not synonymous.
Heinz Kohut (1971, 1977, 1984) used the words twin and alter ego interchangeably; at times, he used one word to amplify the meaning of the other. For example, he often put the word alter ego in parentheses when referring to twinship transferences, one of his major clinical discoveries. He explained in a personal communication to Detrick, “The relationship to a twin is that of an alterego” (Detrick, 1986, p. 300).
Detrick (1985, 1986), however, proposed a “sharp distinction” between alter ego and twinship phenomena, urging that the term twinship be reserved for “an experience of sameness or likeness [that] serves the central function of the acquisition of skills and tools” and the term alter ego be used for “experiences of sameness or likeness that anchor the individual in a group process” (Detrick, 1986, p. 300).