Part I: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
Then the damage is done henceforth he lives exclusively against the background of his own biography… One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”Ĭarl Jung, C.W. Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas – the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice.
#THE MONSTER WITHIN ME CARL JUNG PROFESSIONAL#
“Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona… A certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations. In rare cases, if the ego is completely identical with the persona, individuality is wholly repressed, representing maximum adaptation to society and minimum adaptation to one’s individuality, inhibiting psychological development. This indicates that our individuality is nothing but pure fiction. The other danger of the persona is an excessive identification with it. It becomes hostile only when it is ignored or misunderstood.Įxcessive Identification with The Persona The shadow, which is usually perceived as negative, also has its positive side. These undesirable aspects eventually take their toll on us as we mature, forming our shadow, the dark side of our personality, whom we may be possessed by at any moment, in sudden emotional outbursts.įor Jung, the negotiation with one’s shadow is a lifelong process as part of our self-education, which allows us to rescue the good qualities that lie dormant in our psyche and be honest about who we are, as well as knowing how much good we can do, and what crimes we are capable of. Perhaps being assertive is seen as rude and socially unacceptable and one becomes passive, affecting one’s relationships and career, or one can be too agreeable because one doesn’t like conflicts, but is taken advantage of.
The tendency is to build acceptable traits into the persona and to keep unacceptable traits hidden or repressed. Children quickly learn that certain attitudes and behaviours are acceptable and may be rewarded with approval while others are unacceptable and may result in punishment. The persona begins to form early in childhood out of a need to conform to the wishes and expectations of parents, peers and teachers. “There is always some element of pretence about the persona, for it is a kind of shop window in which we like to display our best wares.”Īnthony Stevens, Jung: A Very Short Introduction When we do not want to reveal the truth about ourselves, we act as someone who we are not. We may use the persona to help us conceal our vulnerabilities and other parts that we do not want to reveal about ourselves, or we may excessively identify with the persona. The topic we will be discussing are the dangers of concealing our true self. Negative restoration hides one’s true self and absence of a persona may not only be impossible, but also undesirable, as one must adapt himself with the external world, as much as his inner world. If one is either unconscious or overidentifies with his persona, the optimal choice is restoration. In the disintegration process, one can choose three different approaches: negative restoration (where one pretends that he is as he was before the crucial experience, in order to adapt to the status quo), absence (where one lives without a persona and cannot possibly interact with the world) and restoration (where one develops a persona that one is conscious of and which does not hide one’s true self). In very rare cases, one can have two or more personalities who have their own opinions, and may contradict each other, this is known as dissociative identity disorder, a mental health condition which is usually a result of trauma.
In this case, one must proceed to the second stage, that of disintegration, where one’s persona is intentionally or unintentionally shattered, creating a state of chaos and disorientation. The performance of the persona is quite alright as long as one knows that one is not identical with the way one appears, it only becomes dangerous if one is unconscious of it or overidentifies with it. The first stage is that of identification. “The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.”Ĭarl Jung, C.W. We all embody different masks in different settings, as it is our way to adapt to the demands of society, playing an important part in shaping our social role and in how we deal with other people. The ego refers to our centre of consciousness which is responsible for our continuing sense of identity throughout our life and the persona is the social mask that we put on.
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