I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to the concepts of persona and facade. Here are links to what Dr. Google currently has to say about a couple of aspects of those related ideas.
- In psychological terms what is the difference between the Jungian concept of persona and facade?
- Does the distinction between persona and facade diminish with age? (Asked the crusty retired gent.)
Something that occurs to me about persona and facade in relation to the ideas Dr. Google presents is that persona emerges primarily as an unconscious reaction to recurring conscious input, and facade forms largely as a product of conscious intention. I say largely since it seems to me that I am psychically always in a liminal state … one foot in the unconscious and one in consciousness (and from moment to moment I’m almost always only aware of the conscious stuff). So every product of conscious intention (i.e., facade) rides on a layer of unconscious material, some of which, I dare say, might reasonably be thought of as unconscious motivation(s). Sort of the inverse of the formation of persona where the unconscious is the driver navigating where consciousness needs to go.
An obliquely related thought, at least in my mind, is an idea from a book I read at an impressionable age titled The Morning of the Magicians in which the authors assert that a man does not get what he deserves, but what he resembles. That train of thought visited me often during the weeks that I worked on the image above which I developed using Corel Painter.