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. That software allows computer stylus and tablet to be used in ways that somewhat simulate applying paint via brush to canvas. I especially enjoyed the shading and blending options very much, and I feel the approach allowed me to express myself in less literal (e.g., more fantastical) imagery than the photo manipulation software I have used so often in the past.
Facade and Reflection
The façade pictured in the image above belongs to the second and third floor of a building on Grant Avenue in San Francisco which I photographed in February 2003. That façade is NOT an element of the lovely Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, at which I had the pleasure of helping to stage a conference in the 1980s.
A fun attraction of the Peabody continues to be the twice-daily march of the Peabody Ducks to and from a fountain in the center of the hotel’s main lobby. Another fun but lesser-known uniqueness of the hotel is the “Lead Duck” pin. If you are wondering what a pin made of lead and shaped like a duck could be about you are already leaning in the direction I hope this post will take you.
The pin is given to key folks who are participating in the staging of an event at the hotel. It lets the hotel staff know that the wearer is to be accorded special assistance if requested because they are an event lead…er. Pleasantly aware that “lead” has at least two meanings, and potential humor can arise from a meaning switch, when the hotel’s delightful convention manager presented me with my pin she declared me a “Lead Duck” – pronounced “led” as in the heavy, bluish-gray, soft, ductile metal. I remain very amused.
I love words that can mean more than one thing. From words soulful like tear, to words colorful (another word that also has a couple of meanings) like booty. Which brings me to façade and reflection and the image above.
I think of my own experience of my own experience as a layer-like zone vacillating in a conical space between unconsciousness and consciousness. Imagine on the left side of the screen an immense globe of swirling unconscious material, each mote of which is related to every other mote by a gazillion associative connections. On the right side of that globe imagine a conical space…a transition area the base of which projects from and interacts with the swirling unconscious stuff. And emerging to the right from the apex of the cone is a line of thoughts, formed when the unconscious stuff moves and is processed through the cone into a linguistic-like conscious thread that allows me to purchase a jar of pickles, open it, and tell you about it.
Regarding that conical space, I think of myself as sort of a band or layer that moves back and forth between the unconscious base and the conscious apex. Often hovering nearer the base than the apex. Especially lately since I’ve been willfully courting a state that, with increasing frequency, allows what I see there to linger as images that can be recalled. Images from a depth within the cone that precedes the point where one or another related meaning gets designated as the next bead in the linier conscious thread – from a depth at which differentiation between things has not yet occurred.