Awakening Through Dreams

Part 3: THE PERSONA

This poem by a fifteen year-old, captures the essence of the archetype, or universal image, which Carl Jung called The Persona. The face mask worn by Greek actors in ancient times was called a persona, and it is from this that Jung's term derives, as do our words person and personality.

If we visualize the human psyche in the form of a sphere, with our deepest, and most "true" (i.e., unconditioned) self residing at the center, the persona may be thought of as occupying the surface level of the sphere. It is our interface with the outer world - the way we have adapted our inner reality to the external realities of our everyday life. The persona develops naturally in response to our experiences as a more or less spontaneous expression of what we generally believe to be the best possible accomodation between who we think we are and what we think others expect of us.

The movement toward greater authenticity is at once a personal spiritual journey and one in which evolving humanity as a whole is engaged. It would seem to require that we pull off our masks, to get rid of our personas. But this is not the case. We need to have a way of meeting the world. Some form of external adaptation is essential to our survival. It's "superficial", yes, but like the skin on our bodies or the topsoil of our planet, we can't live without it. Yet there's no question that we can, and often do, allow our personas to become rigid barriers to our growth. Many of us apply our masks with Superglue, identifying so completely with our social roles that we forget who we are in a deeper and more complete sense. And so, while our personas are necessary, if we are to continue the process of growing and realizing our potential, it is essential that the persona remain a permeable and flexible membrane, allowing a free exchange between inner and outer.

How do dreams help in this process? Dreams give us the opportunity to stand back and take an outsider's look at the persona we are "wearing." Through the imagery of clothing (or lack thereof) and the condition of the dream figure's skin, we are given insight into persona problems that may be at work at a given time in an individual's life.

Here's an example. When I was in my early 30's, shortly after I'd been elected to head the board of directors of our local food bank, I dreamed: I am wearing my mother's dress. It is peacock blue. I don't fill it out in the bodice, and it keeps falling off my shoulders. I was raised by a mother who was a dynamo when it came to addressing the needs of the disadvantaged in practical ways. (She was a 5th house Virgo Sun with a Cancer Moon and Aries Rising, for you astrologers out there!) After reflecting on this brief dream, I recognized that I was carrying some anxiety about "not measuring up" to her, and concern about whether I could, in fact, "shoulder" the responsibilities of my new position. The peacock reference brought up associations of strutting and showiness, which I took as cautionary: beware the pitfall of doing good for the wrong reasons. Bringing this inner conflict up to the level of consciousness allowed me to act from awareness in my new role, so that I could use it to more faithfully express my Self, rather than simply (and inadequately) replaying my mother.

Discomfort with persona issues, which is to say our worldy identity, can be relatively minor as that dream addresses, or more far-reaching. Moving into a new job or neighborhood, for example, will generally require that we make significant adaptations at the level of persona. We're unknown in these new settings, and our dreams tell us much about how we are experiencing the relative lack of personal identity.

Not too long after the above dream, I experienced a string of fairly major losses in rapid succession, beginning with the accidental death of my brother, and culminating in the loss of a home, a professional practice and community involvements that had been sources of great satisfaction and personal growth. The latter losses were the result of my husband's work requiring that we relocate our family. Soon after moving, I had a dream in which I am walking about naked and confused, the victim of a nuclear disaster. My skin is melted, and all distinguishing features obliterated. I am in deep despair about what has become of the world. I hope the end will come quickly. Then the scene begins to shift, and no longer is this a land of devastation peopled by the walking dead. Now it is an ordinary town with people doing ordinary things. I, however, am still as I was before: naked and disfigured.

Although I have learned, through much experience, a certain confidence and trust with respect to changes in life, this dream made it clear just how wounded I had been in this particular encounter with change. In an explosion of losses, my persona had disintegrated entirely, leaving me feeling exposed, vulnerable and terribly alien. Horrible as the dream was, it let me acknowledge the deep pain and grief I had been withholding from my conscious awareness, but which had been poking through in dribs and drabs of irritability and sadness. Opening to grief, I was able to let it become a river which could heal me, freeing me to begin the process of reinventing my persona.

A funny choice of words, perhaps: "reinvent." But these times of extreme vulnerabililty, when the persona is all but absent, are times given to us to create ourselves anew, if we choose. If we resist the temptation to react to our nakedness by pulling on the first available garment - a worn out image of ourselves that no longer matches the person we have become - we learn that we are free to clothe our Self slowly and with deliberation. In this way, we begin to create a persona which can allow for the fullest possible expression to our true being.

How aptly that process conveyed itself in the last dream of this series: I am browsing through a second-hand store called "Women in Transition." I find a dress I like very much. It's quite simple; loosely-woven of natural fibers in pastel hues of rose, blue and cream. I try it on and it fits perfectly. I know it's meant for me. The price tag says $1. I look into my change purse and find a beautiful coin I didn't know I had. It's a handstruck, solid silver dollar with a woman's face on it. That, I know, is to remain with me. Instead, I pay for my new dress with four quarters.

A "loosely-woven, natural" persona: this is just the kind of permeable membrane we want to have at the interface of inner and outer, permitting free movement. Such a persona is the out-picturing of a valuable inner one-ness (the unique silver dollar), and is bought with the wholeness that we derive from our purses of change.

© Anita Doyle, 1988 (Edited slightly from original article, which appeared in Life Scribes, Spring 1988.)

Other articles in the "Awakening Through Dreams" Series:
Part One: Dreams and Change
Part Two: Elements of Dreams
Part Four: The Shadow

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