The persona
The persona is the face that is “put on” like a mask over the authentic self. It serves the function of protection, of sustaining an effective social engagement and a path within society for the individual. It essentially acts a bridge between what is required from the outside environment and what lies within in terms of basic temperament and selfhood.
A well-developed persona is nothing more and nothing less than an ability to adapt to whatever social situation one is in – it’s a conformity tool. There’s usually a status quo, a kind of surface equilibrium that is supposed to be maintained in order for social and societal structures to function smoothly. The persona plays a function within the psyche that is not to be trivialized – there is a definite necessity to playing roles in society. The skill of adopting expressions and behavior that works socially adds up to create a potent persona, an effective way of being that is ideally designed to work in harmony with the more authentic core of the individual.
There’s nothing wrong with the persona per se, unless it’s confused with the authentic self. I imagine that many people live their whole lives through a mask because it’s an effective coping mechanism and they have not managed to connect to the center of themselves or their personal needs. Some are lost in a role through having played it so long. They have reduced themselves to empty shells without genuine feeling or direction in life. They may have played the game well, but it would not have been meaningful or fulfilling to the inner self. Their lives are not their own, the things the say, the actions they take are possessed by something that was never supposed to be more than a mask. Life is run on autopilot, unaffected by personal desire, feeling or direction. These people don’t know what they want out of life, they echo standards of a societal or social nature while remaining completely disconnected from themselves.
In astrology, the persona is marked by the Ascendant, the cusp of the 1st house. This is the house of self and the way it’s projected to the environment. For some, the Ascendant works well with the Sun (personal will) and the Moon (personal emotion) for example, for others it is in conflict. The persona can be in conflict with different archetypes (planets) of the unconscious, which would be illustrated by hard aspects or an incompatibility of element (fire, air, earth, water) or modality (cardinal, fixed, mutable) or masculine/feminine signs. The Midheaven, which marks the 10th house cusp represents public image. Persona and public image are different. The first is a general projected energy that is used to cope with personal interactions, and the second is how one portrays oneself to the public as a member of society.
Is it possible to spot and differentiate the persona from the self? It’s reasonable to believe that if a person has a well-developed persona but a poorly developed connection with the self the façade might occasionally crack and reveal confusion and underneath with no clear center or definition to be found. This is usually discovered when life becomes challenging and something inside is incapable of keeping up the act. The person is faced by chaos and emptiness because they have never really been living from a place of authenticity and they haven’t built any real strength beyond the strength of conformity. These people interact through a comfortable mask and others usually have trouble reaching them because they barely know themselves. They are nothing beyond the role they play in society and on a personal level. Some people have a well-developed persona and copes well in the world but haven’t confused it with themselves and wouldn’t experience any major crisis if it didn’t hold up perfectly. They know themselves beyond the image they project into the environment and wouldn’t experience the pain of “losing face”. Some people, I imagine, have an undeveloped persona – these are the people that have very bad social adaptation skills yet everyone knows that they are completely honest and authentic to the extent that they know themselves. However, they might be difficult to approach or deal with because they don’t have a reliable self-image that works when interacting with the world in general.
