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Shakespeare famously claimed that “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” and this theatrical quality of life is nowhere more evident than in the social world. For the social world is not, and never will be, a world in which we reveal our true selves. Our total character is the product of our genes, our environment, and the interaction of the two, but who we are in public is only a slice of this totality. From very early in life, we learn to magnify the traits of our character most likely to produce social acceptance, while diminishing and hiding those traits which garner rejection or ridicule. This process leads to the creation of our social mask, or what can be called our persona, and as Carl Jung explains, the persona:
“…is a compromise between the individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a title, represents an office, 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 product of compromise, in making which others often have a greater share than he.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 7: Two Essays in Analytical Psychology
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