Kierkegaard notoriously suffered from a proliferation of identities and doubts. The doubling of consciousness is a central theme in Kierkegaard’s work, as it was in Møller’s before him. It would even seem to be a hazard of long standing among the Danes. The Danish word for despair, Fortvivlelse, carries lodged at its heart the morpheme tvi, which means “two” and signifies the doubling of consciousness.237 Tvivl in Danish means “doubt”; Tvivlesyg means “skepticism”; Tvetydighed, “ambiguity.” The self watching itself is indeed a commonplace of puritanism, closely akin to the Christian
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