Person and Persona

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Person and Persona

Postby minime » Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:01 pm

Nothing like a good meta-thread.

R.S.V.P.
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby dada » Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:22 pm

dada's definition: Persona - image of one's self projected outward. How I want others to think of me. Person - image of one's self projected inward. How I want myself to think of me.

Jung on the 'defeat of the persona' [my comments in brackets] - A collapse of the conscious attitude is no small matter. It always feels like the end of the world, as though everything had tumbled back into original chaos. [yay!] One feels delivered up, disorientated, like a rudderless ship that is abandoned to the moods of the elements. [this is a good thing] So at least it seems. In reality, however, one has fallen back upon the collective unconscious, which now takes over the leadership. [well, maybe it isn't a good thing. I don't like leaders.]

We could multiply examples of cases where, at the critical moment, a “saving” thought, a vision, an “inner voice,” came with an irresistible power of conviction and gave life a new direction. [Yeats' anti-self?] Probably we could mention just as many cases where the collapse meant a catastrophe that destroyed life, for at such moments morbid ideas are also liable to take root, or ideals wither away, which is no less disastrous. In the one case some psychic oddity develops, [some psychic oddity?] or a psychosis; in the other, a state of disorientation and demoralization.

But once the unconscious contents break through into consciousness, filling it with their uncanny power of conviction, [beware the uncanny power of conviction] the question arises of how the individual will react? Will he be overpowered by these contents? If so, it signifies a condition of paranoia or schizophrenia. Will the subject credulously accept them? If so, he may either become an eccentric with a taste for prophecy, or he may revert to an infantile attitude and be cut off from human society. [hey, who you calling infantile?]

Will the subject reject the contents? If so, there is a regressive restoration of the persona. [regressive restoration of the persona: putting humpty dumpty back together again] ...The regressive restoration of the persona is a possible course only for the man who owes the critical failure of his life to his own inflatedness. With diminished personality, he turns back to the measure he can fill. But in every other case resignation and self-belittlement are an evasion, which in the long run can be kept up only at the cost of neurotic sickliness. [so don't do it]

...Access to the collective psyche means a renewal of life for the individual, no matter whether this renewal is felt as pleasant or unpleasant. Everybody would like to hold fast to this renewal: one man because it enhances his life-feeling, another because it promises a rich harvest of knowledge, a third because he has discovered the key that will transform his whole life. Therefore all those who do not wish to deprive themselves of the great treasures that lie buried in the collective psyche will strive by every means possible to maintain their newly won connection with the primal source of life. [yawn] Identification would seem to be the shortest road to this, for the dissolution of the persona in the collective psyche positively invites one to wed oneself with the abyss and blot out all memory in its embrace. [come on, wed oneself to the abyss. You know you wanna] This piece of mysticism is innate in all better men as the “longing for the mother,” the nostalgia for the source from which we came. [What a piece of mysticism. The only thing I dislike more than leaders is mysticism. And nostalgia. But then, I'm not a better man.]

As I have shown in my book on libido, there lie at the root of the regressive longing, which Freud conceives as “infantile fixation” or the “incest wish” a specific value and a specific need which are made explicit in myths. It is precisely the strongest and best among men, the heroes, who give way to their regressive longing and purposely expose themselves to the danger of being devoured by the monster of the maternal abyss. [nom nom nom] But if a man is a hero, he is a hero because, in the final reckoning, he did not let the monster devour him, but subdued it, not once but many times. [That sounds dirty]

Victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value, [now we see what it's all about. Consumerism] the capture of the hoard,[Get stuff = victory] the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, [Jung talking dirty again] or whatever it be that the myth deems most desirable.

Anyone who identifies with the collective psyche or, in mythological terms, lets himself be devoured by the monster and vanishes in it, attains the treasure that the dragon guards, but he does so in spite of himself and to his own greatest harm. [heroes are so stupid]

--

and that's my inspired, authoritative, maundering (yes, maundering) take on the subject of Person and Persona. Here are some pictures. Are they at all related to the topic? you be the judge.

300px-Deku_link_reflection.jpg


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Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby minime » Sat Mar 03, 2018 1:06 pm

bump
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby minime » Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:10 pm

bump
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby minime » Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:47 pm

So, dada, is this metaphysical banter?
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby minime » Wed Mar 14, 2018 7:42 pm

Again, thanks to dada and I want to get into this in depth, into the psychology of it...

but for the moment I want to address it on maybe the most superficial level: that of wearing a persona, a mask, as an actor wears a mask.

I assume, naively maybe, (I act as if) everyone is who they say they are, and use plainspeak. I know that is likely untrue, but I couldn't have a conversation if I doubted it in the transaction. Nevertheless, knowing that you or you all might be wearing a mask keeps me from taking anything personally, even if it is intended personally. It's funny and it's tragic. If someone 'offends' me, I react appropriately, while at the same time knowing it well may be a charade. How can I react emotionally to a charade?

At the same time, if I am myself--and I am always myself--at least it's not a case of my persona talking to your persona. What a mindfuck that would be?
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby norton ash » Wed Mar 14, 2018 9:10 pm

There's a powerful person who's become his persona who's terribly dangerous at the moment.
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby Grizzly » Wed Mar 14, 2018 11:55 pm

reminds me of Twain...


“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:27 am

That was creepy, Grizzly.

"How can I react emotionally to a charade?"

Life is a charade. Act naturally, of course. Emotionally, too, if you feel it necessary.

But some say life could be an illusion, a holographic projection, It would be cruel to imagine life as being both, a projected charade. Because that's just not funny.

"Bye." Just doesn't convey the emotions precipitating the moment of movement. An unnatural exit - a premature withdrawal, and emotionally unsatisfying, at least to this reader.

Be more like Neo and learn some navigation skills and your world will become more manageable and more often agreeable. Why build walls where none exist, eh?
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Thu Mar 15, 2018 6:56 am

minime » Today, 01:42 wrote:but for the moment I want to address it on maybe the most superficial level: that of wearing a persona, a mask, as an actor wears a mask.

I assume, naively maybe, (I act as if) everyone is who they say they are, and use plainspeak. I know that is likely untrue, but I couldn't have a conversation if I doubted it in the transaction. Nevertheless, knowing that you or you all might be wearing a mask keeps me from taking anything personally, even if it is intended personally. It's funny and it's tragic. If someone 'offends' me, I react appropriately, while at the same time knowing it well may be a charade. How can I react emotionally to a charade?


In this context at least, your approach is an intelligent one, both emotionally intelligent and an insightful observation. Regarding masks, is it Eliot who posited the "mask upon the mask" for the purpose of the people we meet? At any rate, for the vast majority there is no escaping the first mask of the persona regardless of that which you refer to here: an additional, mostly voluntarily, often deceitful kind of cloak. Our twenty-first century has rendered this perhaps even one deeper than in generations past, what with all the variations of trolling that have placed an additional layer over our otherwise less anonymous version of emotional manipulation. And one cannot, I don't think, disregard the persona as it would have, potentially, any additional masked behaviour* emerging from the zone of the unconscious.

*like me spelling behavior with a u, the motivation of which I only questioned subsequent to typing it and even then only because of the topic (I have concluded that it is purely intellectual conceit on my part, not my trying to conceal that I was born and raised in the Benighted States.)
Seeing the world through rose-colored latex.
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby brainpanhandler » Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:22 am

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby brainpanhandler » Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:30 am

minime » Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:42 pm wrote: I am always myself


Why are you so sure you are always yourself, minime?
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby dada » Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:14 pm

minime » Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:47 pm wrote:So, dada, is this metaphysical banter?


Strictly pataphysical.

On the most superficial level, a "real person" is a genuine fake, as Alan Watts said.

There are store-bought masks, and there are homemade masks. You can always tell that someone is a real person by the fact that they come on wearing a store-bought mask.

edited to add: Most people buy their masks at the world famous archetype store. Popularized by that idiot Jim in that song that time: "The consumer awoke before dawn, and he took a face from the ancient gallery..."
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Person and Persona

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Mar 16, 2018 1:18 am

Person and Persona: An example.
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