Carl Jung on “Persona” “Mask” Quotations [Anthology]
The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 305
Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.
“Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.43
Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona. It is easy to study these things nowadays, when the photographs of public personalities so frequently appear in the press. A certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations. Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas-the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice. Then the damage is done; henceforth he lives exclusively against the background of his own biography. . . . The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin, and a desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this Nessus shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of immortality, in order to transform himself into what he really is. One 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 is.
“Concerning Rebirth” (1940). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.221
I once made the acquaintance of a very venerable personage – in fact, one might easily call him a saint. I stalked round him for three whole days, but never a mortal failing did I find in him. My feeling of inferiority grew ominous, and I was beginning to think seriously of how I might better myself. Then, on the fourth day, his wife came to consult me…. Well, nothing of the sort has ever happened to me since. But this I did learn: that any man who becomes one with his persona can cheerfully let all disturbances manifest themselves through his wife without her noticing it, though she pays for her self-sacrifice with a bad neurosis.
“The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious” (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.306
Since the differentiated consciousness of civilized man has been granted an effective instrument for the practical realization of its contents through the dynamics of his will, there is all the more danger, the more he trains his will, of his getting lost in one-sidedness and deviating further and further from the laws and roots of his being.
“The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.276
When there is a marked change in the individual’s state of consciousness, the unconscious contents which are thereby constellated will also change. And the further the conscious situation moves away from a certain point of equilibrium, the more forceful and accordingly the more dangerous become the unconscious contents that are struggling to restore the balance.
This leads ultimately to a dissociation: on the one hand, ego-consciousness makes convulsive efforts to shake off an invisible opponent (if it does not suspect its next-door neighbour of being the devil!), while on the other hand it increasingly falls victim to the tyrannical will of an internal “Government opposition” which displays all the characteristics of a daemonic subman and superman combined. When a few million people get into this state, it produces the sort of situation which has afforded us such an edifying object-lesson every day for the last ten years.*
These contemporary events betray their psychological background by their very singularity. The insensate destruction and devastation are a reaction against the deflection of consciousness from the point of equilibrium. For an equilibrium does in fact exist between the psychic ego and non-ego, and that equilibrium is a religion a “careful consideration” of ever-present unconscious forces which we neglect at our peril.
“The Psychology of Transference” (1946). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P.394 *The years 1935-1945
Nothing is so apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility.
“Psychological Typology” (1936). In CW 6: Psychological Types. P. 964
Hidden in the neurosis is a bit of still undeveloped personality, a precious fragment of the psyche lacking which a man is condemned to resignation, bitterness, and everything else that is hostile to life. A psychology of neurosis that sees only the negative elements empties out the baby with the bath-water, since it neglects the positive meaning and value of these “infantile’ i.e., creative-fantasies.
“The State of Psychotherapy Today” (1934). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.355
We yield too much to the ridiculous fear that we are at bottom quite impossible beings, that if everyone were to appear as he really is a frightful social catastrophe would ensue. Many people today take “man as he really is” to mean merely the eternally discontented, anarchic, rapacious element in human beings, quite forgetting that these same human beings have also erected those firmly established forms of civilization which possess greater strength and stability than all the anarchic undercurrents. The strengthening of his social personality is one of the essential conditions for man’s existence. Were it not so, humanity would cease to be.
The selfishness and rebelliousness we meet in the neurotic’s psychology are not “man as he really is” but an infantile distortion. In reality the normal man is “civic minded and moral”; he created his laws and observes them, not because they are imposed on him from without-that is a childish delusion-but because he loves law and order more than he loves disorder and lawlessness.
“Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious” (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.442
The true genius nearly always intrudes and disturbs. He speaks to a temporal world out of a world eternal. He says the wrong things at the right time. Eternal truths are never true at any given moment in history. The process of transformation has to make a halt in order to digest and assimilate the utterly impractical things that the genius has produced from the storehouse of eternity. Yet the genius is the healer of his time, because anything he reveals of eternal truth is healing.
“What India Can Teach Us” (1939). In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P. 1004
The genius will come through despite everything, for there is something absolute and indomitable in his nature. The so-called “misunderstood genius” is rather a doubtful phenomenon. Generally he turns out to be a good-for-nothing who is forever seeking a soothing explanation of himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 248
Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthrals and overpowers, while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the transitory into the realm of the ever enduring. He transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, and evokes in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night.
“On the Relation of Analytical Psychology of Poetry” (1922). In CW 15: The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature. P.129
To be “normal” is the ideal aim for the unsuccessful, for all those who are still below the general level of adaptation. But for people of more than average ability, people who never found it difficult to gain successes and to accomplish their share of the world’s work-for them the moral compulsion to be nothing but normal signifies the bed of Procrustes-deadly and insupportable boredom, a hell of sterility and hopelessness.
“Problems of Modern Psychotherapy” (1929). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. P. 161
Nothing in us ever remains quite uncontradicted, and consciousness can take up no position which will not call up, somewhere in the dark corners of the psyche, a negation or a compensatory effect, approval or resentment. This process of coming to terms with the Other in us is well worth while, because in this way we get to know aspects of our nature which we would not allow anybody else to show us and which we ourselves would never have admitted.
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955) CW 14: P. 706
The “other” in us always seems alien and unacceptable; but if we let ourselves be aggrieved the feeling sinks in, and we are the richer for this little bit of self-knowledge.
“Psychological Aspects of the Kore” (1941). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. P. 918
If we do not fashion for ourselves a picture of the world, we do not see ourselves either, who are the faithful reflections of that world. Only when mirrored in our picture of the world can we see ourselves in the round. Only in our creative acts do we step forth into the light and see ourselves whole and complete. Never shall we put any face on the world other than our own, and we have to do this precisely in order to find ourselves. For higher than science or art as an end in itself stands man, the creator of his instruments.
“Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung” (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.737
A glance at the legends of the saints, or at Zola’s novels Lourdes or The Dream, will provide numerous examples of this. Yet the constellations are not always quite so crude and obvious, often they are more subtle influences, masked by symbolisms, that sway our thoughts and actions ~Carl Jung, CW 3, Para 92
At a time when a large part of mankind is beginning to discard Christianity, it may be worth our while to try to understand why it was accepted in the first place. It was accepted as a means of escape from the brutality and unconsciousness of the ancient world. As soon as we discard it, the old brutality returns in force, as has been made overwhelmingly clear by contemporary events. We have had bitter experience of what happens when a whole nation finds the moral mask too stupid to keep up. The beast breaks loose, and a frenzy of demoralization sweeps over the civilized world. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 341
He who throws Christianity overboard and with it the whole basis of morality, is bound to be confronted with the age-old problem of brutality. We have had bitter experience of what happens when a whole nation finds the moral mask too stupid to keep up. The beast breaks loose, and a frenzy of demoralization sweeps over the civilized world ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 341
It is principally among women that I have found the predominance of introverted feeling. “Still waters run deep” is very true of such women. They are mostly silent, inaccessible, hard to understand; often they hide behind a childish or banal mask, and their temperament is inclined to melancholy ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 640
In the introverted sensation type a compulsion neurosis results as soon as the unconscious becomes antagonistic. The archaic intuitions come to the surface and exert their pernicious influence, forcing themselves on the individual and producing compulsive ideas of the most perverse kind. Hysterical features are masked by symptoms of exhaustion ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 654
A mask of the collective psyche, a mask that feigns individuality, making others and oneself believe that one is individual, whereas one is simply acting a role through which the collective psyche speaks . . . [it is] a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 157
The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 305
The term person is really a very appropriate expression for this, for originally it meant the mask once worn by actors to indicate the role they played ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 245
It is only because the persona represents a more or less arbitrary and fortuitous segment of the collective psyche that we can make the mistake of regarding it in toto as something individual. It is, as its name implies, only a mask of the collective psyche, a mask that feigns individuality, making others and oneself believe that one is individual, whereas one is simply acting a role through which the collective psyche speaks ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 245
When we analyse the persona we strip off the mask, and discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective; in other words, that the persona was only a mask for the collective psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 246
Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona. It is easy to study these things nowadays, when the photographs of public personalities so frequently appear in the press. A certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations. Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas—the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice.
Then the damage is done; henceforth he lives exclusively against the background of his own biography. The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin, and a desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this Nessus shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of immortality, in order to transform himself into what he really is.
One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself. A man cannot get rid of himself in favour of an artificial personality without punishment. Even the attempt to do so brings on, in all ordinary cases, unconscious reactions in the form of bad moods, affects, phobias, compulsive ideas, backslidings, vices, etc.
The social “strong man” is in his private life often a mere child where his own states of feeling are concerned; his discipline in public (which he demands quite particularly of others) goes miserably to pieces in private. His “happiness in his work” assumes a woeful countenance at home; his “spotless” public morality looks strange indeed behind the mask—we will not mention deeds, but only fantasies, and the wives of such men would have a pretty tale to tell. As to his selfless altruism, his children have decided views about that. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 307
The singularity of his [the chief’s] outward tokens marks the individual off from the rest, and the segregation is still further enhanced by the possession of special ritual secrets. By these and similar means the primitive creates around him a shell, which might be called a persona (mask). Masks, as we know, are actually used among primitives in totem ceremoniesfor instance, as a means of enhancing or changing the personality. In this way the outstanding individual is apparently removed from the sphere of the collective psyche, and to the degree that he succeeds in identifying himself with his persona, he actually is removed. This removal means magical prestige ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 237
The term persona is really a very appropriate expression for this, for originally it meant the mask once worn by actors to indicate the role they played ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 245
It is only because the persona represents a more or less arbitrary and fortuitous segment of the collective psyche that we can make the mistake of regarding it in toto as something individual. It is, as its name implies, only a mask of the collective psyche, a mask that feigns individuality, making others and oneself believe that one is individual, whereas one is simply acting a role through which the collective psyche speaks ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 245
When we analyse the persona we strip off the mask, and discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective; in other words, that the persona was only a mask for the collective psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 246
Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 43
We know today that this spirit was chiefly a mask; it was not the spirit of antiquity that was reborn, but the spirit of medieval Christianity that underwent strange pagan transformations, exchanging the heavenly goal for an earthly one, and the vertical of the Gothic style for a horizontal perspective (voyages of discovery, exploration of the world and of nature). ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 78
Personal complexes arise wherever there are conflicts with the instinctual disposition. These are the points of faulty adaptation, and their sensitiveness releases affects which tear the mask of adaptedness off the face of civilized man ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 755
To make the reversal complete, all the powers of the underworld now hide behind reason and intellect, and under the mask of rationalistic ideology a stubborn faith seeks to impose itself by fire and sword, vying with the darkest aspects of a church militant. By a strange enantiodromia, the Christian spirit of the West has become the defender of the irrational, since, in spite of having fathered rationalism and intellectualism, it has not succumbed to them so far as to give up its belief in the rights of man, and especially the freedom of the individual. But this freedom guarantees a recognition of the irrational principle, despite the lurking danger of chaotic individualism ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 444
The process described above displays all the characteristic features of psychological compensation. We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect; friendliness softens its features. It is not a question of mere optical reflection but of an autonomous answer which reveals the self-sufficing nature of that which answers. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 29
We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect; friendliness softens its features. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 29
Among the Taos Pueblos, a virgin was made pregnant by beautiful stones and bore a hero son, who, owing to Spanish influence, assumed the aspect of the Christ child. The stone plays a similar role in the Aztec cycle of legends. For instance, the mother of Quetzalcoatl was made pregnant by a precious green stone. He himself had the cognomen “priest of the precious stone” and wore a mask made of turquoise. The precious green stone was an animating principle and was placed in the mouth of the dead. Man’s original home was the “bowl of precious stone” ~Carl Jung, CW 13 Para 132
Here we have another of those well-known quaternities of opposites which are usually masked as a triad, just as the Christian Trinity is able to maintain itself as such only by eliminating the fourth protagonist of the divine drama. If he were included there would be, not a Trinity, but a Christian Quaternity. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 237
Unfortunately, it is almost a collective ideal for men and women to be as unconscious as possible in the ticklish affairs of love. But behind the mask of respectability and faithfulness the full fury of neglected love falls upon the children. You cannot blame the ordinary individual, as you cannot expect people to know the attitude they ought to adopt and how they are to solve their love problems within the framework of present-day ideals and conventions. Mostly they know only the negative measures of negligence, procrastination, suppression, and repression. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 218
What this child seemed to feel most was the unconscious of her father. If a man has no real relations with his wife, then obviously he seeks another outlet. And if he is not conscious of what he is seeking, or if he represses fantasies of that kind, his interest will regress on the one side to the memory-image of his mother, and on the other side it invariably fastens on his daughter, if there is one.
This is what might be called unconscious incest. You can hardly hold a man responsible for his unconsciousness, but the fact remains that in this matter nature knows neither patience nor pity and takes her revenge directly or indirectly through illness and unlucky accidents of all kinds.
Unfortunately, it is almost a collective ideal for men and women to be as unconscious as possible in the ticklish affairs of love. But behind the mask of respectability and faithfulness the full fury of neglected love falls upon the children. You cannot blame the ordinary individual, as you cannot expect people to know the attitude they ought to adopt and how they are to solve their love problems within the framework of present-day ideals and conventions. Mostly they know only the negative measures of negligence, procrastination, suppression, and repression. And to know of anything better is admittedly very difficult ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 218
The two women will also offer quite different stories. The Seeress will tell the whole world about her ghosts. Hélène Smith, however, will talk, behind her mask, of very tangible realities. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures 1933-1934, Page 273
What the Europeans regard as Oriental calm and apathy seemed to me a mask; behind it I sensed a restlessness, a degree of agitation, which I could not explain. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams an Reflections, Page 239
It is death to the soul to become unconscious. People die before there is death of the body, because there is death in the soul. They are mask-like leeches, walking about like spectres ~~dead but sucking. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
Not in vain are little children afraid of their own mothers in the night. Primitive mothers can kill their children. It is absolutely incompatible with the daytime, for then they are most devoted mothers. But in the night they take away the mask and become witches; they upset children psychically, even kill them. Tor the more they are devoted to them in the wrong way the worse it is. ~Carl Jung, The Woman in the Mirror, Page 31
The timeless and masklike beauty of Greta Garbo made her a wonderfully acceptable anima figure, and of this her producers and directors were obscurely aware. ~William Schoenl, C.G. Jung-His Friendships with Mary Mellon & J.B. Priestley, Page 74
He [Jung] said that when I first came to analysis, I was terrifyingly superficial – a painted surface. I was a hollow mask with death inside. ~Katy Cabot, Jung My Mother and I, Page 363
the dream I told Jung when I visited him at Kusnacht in 1953. In the dream I was sitting nude on yellow female pollen in a holy medicine basket. The Navaho Wind God was looking down at me. When I told this dream to the medicine man I was working with at the time, he said, “It is a good dream. If you were a Navaho I would give a prayer over you.” “What difference does it make, I would like a prayer”, I said. So he recited the prayer sprinkling me with holy pollen as he gave it.
It was then and during the Purifying Rite that my femininity was born and I removed my mask, or the persona, as Jung calls it, and became myself. The Indians felt this and accepted me as a friend, a woman friend they could trust. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 75
Dear Georges, I think I have found the solution: One must struggle very hard in order to avoid attaching oneself to the image-memory of the deceased. The image-memory has become an empty mask. One must search for an image of the deceased person as he or she is in the beyond, and then try to establish contact with this otherworldly image. With all my best thoughts, ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Homage to MLVF, Page 271
