Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

It was Jung who formulated the concept of persona: the mask that "feigned individuality."3 Adoption of such a mask, according to Jung, allowed each of us-and those around us-to believe that we were authentie. Jung said: When we analyse the persona we strip off the mask, and discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective; in other words, that the persona was only a mask of the collective psyche. Fundamentally the persona is nothing real: it is a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a tide, exercises a function, he is this or that. In a certain sense all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only a secondary reality, a compromise formation, in making which others often have a greater share than he. The persona is a semblance, a two-dimensional reality, to give it a nickname.4