Description
A persona requires adaptation to the images offered by family and society, and it tends to stay the same throughout life. If you are a prince or a pauper, you stay in that persona. The persona places you in a social category – man or woman, aristocrat or plebe, elder brother/sister or younger. Today, however, persona formation is often more individualized and therefore more challenging. People have to create a persona for themselves, one that fits their specific needs and expresses their individual personality in the present moment. What’s more, as a person’s needs change and their personality matures, the persona must also be modified accordingly.
Persona is a type of mask. It hides parts of the self that you do not want to be seen by others, and it also express who you feel you are at the present time. Personas are created by choosing a particular lifestyle, by clothes, by hairstyle and adornments like jewelry or tattoos or piercings, by cosmetic make up and scent, and by association with friends, a chosen profession or fan club or political party. The persona also includes behavior and plays itself out in roles that say who you are for and with others. But it does not say who you are when you are alone. And it is by no means all of you. The “map of the soul” shows a much bigger and more complex territory.
T.S. Eliot, one of the most famous English poets of the 20th Century, wrote that every cat has three names: the name that everybody knows, the name that only the cat’s intimate friends and family know, and the name that only the cat knows. As humans, we also have three names: the name that everybody knows, which is the public persona; the name of that only your close friends and family know, which is your private persona; and the name that only you know, which refers to your deepest self. Many people know the first name, and some people know the second. Do you know your secret name, your individual, singular, unique name? This is a name that was given to you before you were named by your family and by your society. This name is the one that you should never lose or forget. Do you know it?
