The Persona

Primary source

• C. G. Jung, The Structure of the Unconscious, 1916, CW 7, Appendix 2, pars. 503-514 (esp. 505, 507-509, 512-514) with the editors' n. 21; delivered to the Zurich School for Analytical Psychology in 1916 and published that year in French as 'La Structure de l'inconscient', Archives de Psychologie XVI, 152-79, trans. M. Marsen. The German holograph, 'Uber das Unbewusste und seine Inhalte', disappeared and came to light again only after Jung's death in 1961; the 1966 second edition prints a new translation of it, with material not in the 1928 version in square brackets - §§503-510 stand inside one such bracketed [Addendum]That the hinge claim is 1916 rather than 1928. The concluding summary is unbracketed and its propositions are reproduced in the 1917 English translation: §513.2 'the persona must be considered a segment and also a constituent of the collective psyche'; §512.3 'The conscious and unconscious contents of a personal nature constitute the persona'; §512.2 'The unconscious personal contents constitute the self, the unconscious or subconscious ego'. §505, 'The dissolution of the persona is therefore an indispensable condition for individuation', is 1916 too: it stands inside the square-bracketed [Addendum], but the editors' n. 21 records that pars. 504-506 were in the German Urtext and appeared in the earlier French and English translations, and the corresponding sentences are in the 1917 text. §§507-510 are NOT 1916 - the same note says the addendum was incorporated 'at the time of the first revision' and was not in the 1928 version, and none of that material appears in the 1917 English. Note 21 also names pars. 507 (sec. 6), 508 and 521 as 'what appears to be the first formulation of the anima and animus in Jung's writings'.
• C. G. Jung; ed. Constance E. Long, Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, 2nd edn., 1917, chapter XV, 'The Conception of the Unconscious' (so headed in the volume and so cited in CW 7's editorial note and index; the contents page and Jung's preface read 'The Concept of the Unconscious'), pp. 445-474, the concluding Summary at 472; the volume's analytical contents summarise the persona sections. Open at Project Gutenberg, ebook 48225That the term was in print in English by 1917, in the translation of the 1916 lecture, and that CW 7's appendix can be dated against it. The analytical contents read 'The "persona" a mask for the collective psyche', 'Dissolution of the persona results in release of phantasy', 'The persona must be strictly separated from the concept of the individual', and 'Dissolution of persona indispensable to individuation'. The concluding Summary at p. 472 carries the propositions behind CW 7 §§512.2, 512.3 and 513.2, while nothing from CW 7 §§507-510 - 'centre of gravity', 'architectonics', 'midway', anima or animus - appears anywhere in the chapter. Long's editorial preface dates the second edition to the third year of the war.
• C. G. Jung, Psychological Types, 1921, CW 6, par. 801, in the Definitions entry for 'Soul'That Jung's usage is structural rather than metaphorical: the persona is 'a functional complex that comes into existence for reasons of adaptation or personal convenience, but is by no means identical with the individuality'.
• C. G. Jung, The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, 1928, Collected Works vol. 7, 2nd edn. 1966, Part One §III 'The Persona as a Segment of the Collective Psyche', pars. 245-247; trans. R. F. C. Hull from Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewussten (Rascher, Zurich, 1928; 2nd edn. 1935)The hinge claim, verified verbatim. §245: 'This arbitrary segment of collective psyche - often fashioned with considerable pains - I have called the persona. 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' and '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.' §246: 'When we analyse the persona we strip off the mask, and discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective.' §247 immediately qualifies: 'It would be wrong to leave the matter as it stands without at the same time recognizing that there is, after all, something individual in the peculiar choice and delineation of the persona.'
• C. G. Jung, The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, 1928, CW 7, Part One §IV, 'Negative Attempts to Free the Individuality from the Collective Psyche', pars. 254-265, in two sub-sections: 'Regressive Restoration of the Persona' (254-259) and 'Identification with the Collective Psyche' (260-265); with par. 266That neither course frees the individual. §259: except for the man whose failure was caused by his own inflatedness, 'resignation and self-belittlement are an evasion, which in the long run can be kept up only at the cost of neurotic sickliness.' §265: 'In both cases inflation is brought about by the collective unconscious, and the independence of the individuality suffers injury.' §266 opens Part Two by placing individuation 'beyond the alternative stages dealt with in our last chapter'.

The tradition itself

• Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (CW 7), on the persona as a segment of the collective psycheThe esoteric reading given on this entry

Linked entries

• Set againstThe ShadowAttested

  Two products of one act of selection: CW 7 §247 says "the purely personal attitude of the conscious mind evokes reactions on the part of the unconscious", which is the ground the shadow is formed on.

• Set againstThe AnimaAttested

  Jung paired them only when he revised the 1916 manuscript (CW 7 §507, from an addendum absent from the 1916-17 printings), writing that beyond individuality "a kind of persona exists, but a persona of a compensatory nature which (in a man) could be called the anima" - the passage CW 7's editors name the first formulation of anima and animus in Jung.

• Part ofIndividuationAttested

  The 1916 text calls the dissolution of the persona 'an indispensable condition for individuation' (CW 7 §505, which the editors' n. 21 places in the German Urtext), which puts this entry inside that process rather than beside it.

• Set againstThe SelfAttested

  CW 7 §247 sets the persona against 'the unconscious self, one's real individuality' - but in the 1916 layer of the same volume 'self' means the unconscious personal ego (§512.2), not the later totality: one word, two constructs.