The persona and shadow are two fundamental aspects of our personality. I love this topic, and I’ve made a lot of effort to explain this as clearly and comprehensively as I can, with tonnes of practical examples.
The persona describes the personality that we exhibit to the world, while the shadow describes the parts of ourselves that we hide from the world. In classic Jungian psychology, they are archetypes, or impersonal structures in the collective unconscious.
We’ll talk about what the persona and shadow are, how to identify your own persona(s) and shadow(s), and why it’s a great idea to do so. I don’t actually agree that they are archetypes, and I’ll explain why at the end.
In any case, these are powerful concepts that will help you understand yourself deeply and live a fuller and more authentic life.
The Persona Explained
Classical Jungian theory says that the persona is an archetype found in the collective unconscious and that shows up in our behaviour as our polite, palatable, social personality.
Whenever we relate to others we put on this mask, which has a dual function – to make an impression upon others and to conceal what we feel to be our true nature.
Ruth snowden
But modern Jungians tend to agree that there isn’t just one persona: there’s a whole slew of them! And I think this is more accurate.
So I’ll say that the persona is the set of sub-personalities that we adopt and show to the outside world to create a desired effect. I’ll often alternate between “persona” and “personas” according to context, but do remember there’s an entire cast of personas inside us all.
I’ll posit here that there are two kinds of personas: those we adopt to meet external expectations (externally generated), and those we adopt to mould external opinion to our own self-image (internally generated). The two intertwine, but making this distinction is helpful.
Externally Generated Personas
On the first kind, one of the main ways we adopt them is as a mask to fit in socially. They are externally generated because they are mostly standards that come from culture and society rather than from our own ideal self-image. In the past, I’ve called these social masks.
A universal persona is the one that is nice, chatty, palatable and smiley, constantly enquires “How are you?” and says “Have a nice day”. Most of us switch into this persona so smoothly that we have no idea it’s a persona.
Traits of this kind help us fit in socially, because they are what people around us expect. If we don’t adopt them, we risk not fitting in.
This kind of persona can go very fine grained, and are often highly personalised and idiosyncratic. In your particular workplace, for example, you might have to adopt a persona with very specific attributes because it fits the job title and the company culture.
Internally Generated Personas
On the other hand, we have the internally generated personas: those we adopt to bolster our self-image. More precisely, we adopt them to display a desired trait that we fear we lack, so that others will believe we have it. This assuages our insecurity and helps us hide from the fact that we lack it.
Of course, a persona can be a blend of external and internal expectations, but often they fall into one category more than the other.
We usually exaggerate these personas to hide the exact opposite, which is who we really are and who we fear being (the shadow). Much of this happens unconsciously and automatically, before we’re aware of it.
Some of these are quite harmless, while others point to profound insecurities in ourselves. They can even mask highly positive, empowering attributes that we repress in ourselves.
For example, we might feel financially impotent and have low financial self-esteem, so we’ll act like a rich person in front of others. We might even fabricate lies to support this.
If we exhibit overconfidence or excessive self-assurance, chances are we don’t feel very self-assured. We might act more masculine and more macho than we actually are on the inside, precisely because we fear being weak, and we can’t stand it. We must convince others of how strong we are, exactly because we deeply doubt that we’re strong.
A great way to read other people is to look at traits they exaggerate. As they express them, you can feel the falseness, the “overdone-ness”. They will tend to do this repeatedly with the same traits. The most exaggerated traits point to deep insecurities within them, parts of their identity they cover up with all their might.
You must do the same with yourself, of course. But knowing others’ falseness helps you know yours.
I find it fascinating to watch others acting out their personas. It’s like they’re actors, trying to convince you by putting on a show. I often feel they would save a lot of time and energy, and gain more of my respect, if they were to drop the mask and show me who they really are.
What are your favourite personas? It takes great honesty to admit what they are, and it might take years of work before you realise them all.
The Shadow Explained
It helps to understand that the persona and shadow work in tandem. Speaking broadly, the persona serves to conceal the shadow. Or, more accurately, every persona serves to conceal its particular shadow.
The shadow is all sub-personalities, traits, emotions and desires that we repress and hide from the world.
This material gets pushed underground into the subconscious. Once it’s there, it acts on its own accord. It acts through us. It is now our master, rather than the other way around.
We lose control of it, we can’t tap into its energy, and we can’t even see it. Though we’re not consciously expressing it, it still comes out, but often in a very skewed way.
All our shadows create inauthenticity because we’re suppressing who we really are, and we adopt a persona for every shadow we have. This leaves a giant hole inside us.
Find Your Particular Persona and Shadow
You better believe that you have both a persona and a shadow. In fact, you have many of them. A key insight from Jungian analyst Hal Stone is that for every persona we have, there is a shadow.
Under this model, you have a range of subpersonalities that come in pairs. For every false mask we put on, whether internally or externally generated, there is a shadow there.
We all have shadows and personas. Social expectations are aplenty, we all have insecurities, and we all have trauma. It’s no wonder we have personas and shadows.
An insight from Ken Wilber is that we’re constantly creating shadow, by virtue of how the basic development process works. As we grow, we move past what has come before and we adopt new behaviours, views, values, and so on.
If it all goes smoothly, we’ll cleanly uncouple from our old attributes and slide into our new ones, but that rarely happens. It’s never a smooth process, so shadow is guaranteed.
By extension, because every persona has a shadow, we’re constantly creating personas too. Isn’t that fascinating? We believe ourselves to be fixed, but in reality we are highly fluid and changeable.
Detect Persona and Shadow: How and Why
I hope you realise that this isn’t armchair philosophy. Our shadows and personas run our lives in many ways. It’s crucial we begin to understand them.
I want you to observe yourself. When are you showing a false persona to the world? Maybe during a social interaction you’re exaggerating or fabricating a trait. You can almost feel your own inauthenticity and how much you struggle to maintain your personas.
Or maybe there’s certain things that you simply will not allow yourself to do. You won’t allow yourself to be blunt, be direct with people, to set boundaries with people, and so forth.
Look and see: is this truly authentic? Is this really how I want to behave in this situation right now? Or am I being false? That’s a fantastic way to start seeing your personas and the shadows.
The tricky part is that any persona can feel like it’s authentic because it’s so ingrained and well-drilled.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t need to have persona or shadow. Both are necessary and help us function in the world.
Shadow is one of the main ways we learn to act in a way that is socially acceptable. They help us process difficult experiences. If we create a problem and experience the backlash, we learn to repress and cut off the emotions and behaviours that created it. Thus it’s for self-protection, and it means we don’t create that problem again.
The persona and shadow are also necessary for keeping a job and acting professionally. Look how false professionals often are. It’s quite hilarious, but sometimes it’s necessary.
So don’t just start throwing away all your personas and shadows. Seek strong understanding first. Ask yourself carefully and honestly why you have these subpersonalities.
Ask Yourself This
Once you’ve become aware of them, and have started to understand why you have them, you can then start choosing whether you want to continue playing this role or not.
To this end, you can ask, “is this persona or shadow causing me more harm than good?”
Often in adopting those traits and upholding a persona, we’re still a long way from resolving the underlying problem.The persona is just a flimsy plaster for the festering shadow. Sometimes it’s best to reintegrate the underlying shadow and be authentic.
For example, acting confident doesn’t mean you’re truly confident. You’re still unconfident. If you were confident, you wouldn’t have the persona of overconfidence. Wouldn’t you prefer to resolve the issue than sticking this tenuous plaster on your wound every time you want to project overconfidence?
You also have to wonder, is the social approval worth my inauthenticity?
Sometimes it will be. As I said, in a professional world, you might have no choice. If you were to just act as you felt, you might not be in a job.
But in situations that are softer and not so clear-cut, often you’ll find that the persona and shadow are simply unnecessary. They come from a deep insecurity within you, and you’d be best to heal it rather than perpetuate this game of psychological hide-and-seek.
My Take on Persona and Shadow
To round off, though I love the concept of persona and shadow, I don’t agree that these are archetypes.
I don’t think that calling them archetypes helps us understand them in any way. Besides, I think the potential for persona and shadow exists within us all because of the fact that we’re social animals and because of how we develop. It’s inevitable.
I don’t believe that these are “character templates” that exist in the collective unconscious. I think they are purely in the personal unconscious, and are too numerous and varied to narrow down to one source archetype.
You might like my video on personality masks.
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The post Persona and Shadow: Uncover Yours first appeared on Deep Psychology.
The post Persona and Shadow: Uncover Yours appeared first on Deep Psychology.
