Jung's Map of the Soul by Stein Murray

Author:Stein, Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2010-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

Persona Development

This conflict in the ego between individuation/separation and social conformity generates a good deal of the ego’s basic anxiety. How can one be free, unique, and individual while also being accepted and liked by others and accommodating to their needs and wishes. Clearly a source of fundamental conflict exists between ego and persona development. By early adulthood, one hopes that sufficient development has taken place in both ego and persona so that the ego’s dual needs for independence and relationship are satisfied, while at the same time the persona has made a suitable enough adaptation so that the ego can live in the real world. Famous geniuses like Wagner, Beethoven, and Picasso seem to be exceptions to this rule in that their gifts grant them license to be themselves as individuals to an extraordinary degree. They are forgiven their excesses because of what they offer the world in compensation.

The ego does not deliberately choose to identify with a particular persona. People find themselves in milieus in which they have to survive, and most do their best to make their way ahead. Birth order is an important factor, also gender. A little girl or boy observes what other kids are doing and imitates them. Little girls try out their mothers’ attitudes while trying on their mothers’ clothes. Little boys also try on their mothers’ clothes sometimes, and their parents worry about it. Clothes represent the persona. Little boys more frequently imitate their fathers or brothers, wearing caps when they do, and swagger and spit if that’s what the others are doing. Gender is certainly one way in which we sort ourselves out early on, and these features are taken up in the persona. A youngster realizes that he or she is treated in a certain way if the behavior is right, and responds in a gender-appropriate manner. This may come quite naturally to the individual child or not. Sometimes the persona fits, sometimes it does not. Eventually an attitude is formed that is at least adequate, if not enhancing, in terms of gender-related attractiveness. (The deeper issues related to gender and gender identification will be discussed in the following chapter.)

Persona development has two potential pitfalls. One is over-identification with the persona. The individual becomes unduly concerned with pleasing and adapting to the social world and comes to believe that this constructed image is all there is to the personality. The other problem lies in not paying enough attention to the external object world and being too exclusively involved with the inner world (a condition that Jung will describe as anima or animus possession). Such a person attends to impulses, wishes, desires, and fantasies, and is so taken up with that world and identified with it that not enough attention is paid to other people. Consequently, such a person tends to be inconsiderate, blind, and unrelated to others, and gives up these characteristics only when forced to do so by the harshest blows of fate.

Persona development is typically a major problem

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