Jung: A Very Short Introduction
(Anthony Stevens, 1994)
โJust as every building has a faรงade so every personality has a persona (literally a mask, as worn by actors in ancient Greece).
Through the persona we codify ourselves in a form which we hope will prove acceptable to others.
It has sometimes been referred to as the social archetype or the conformity archetype, for on it depends the success or failure of oneโs adaptation to society.
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; or one might think of it as a public relations expert employed by the ego to ensure that people will think well of us.
โOne 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 isโ (CW IX. i, para. 221).
The persona begins to form early in childhood out of a need to conform to the wishes and expectations of parents, peers, and teachers.ย
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 or the withdrawal of love.
The tendency is to build acceptable traits into the persona and to keep unacceptable traits hidden or repressed.
These socially undesirable aspects of the maturing personality are usually relegated to the personal unconscious, where they coalesce to form another complex, or part personality, that Jung called the shadow. (โฆ)
The dread prospect of being rejected on account of some โbadโ aspect of the Self seems to be at the bottom of all feelings of guilt, all desire for punishment, and all longings for atonement and reconciliation.
The moral complex forms on the basis of an archetypal imperative to learn and maintain the values of the culture into which we happen to have been born.
If no such imperative existed, anarchy would be the natural human condition: we should all be psychopaths, incapable of co-operation or mutual trust, and the species could not conceivably exist.โ
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