Persona and Type

[conscious]

Hi, there's a lot that can be said about the theoretical limitations of type in general, but the concept of persona recently entered my mind because it seemed relevant and important to typing.

I was curious and looked it up. Apparently Jung did consider Persona as relevant and even a healthy important part of a person's identity, suggesting that lack of persona is even bad. I think this also relates to Freud's idea of the superego as the part of identity that society wants from you, a more idealized and moral version of yourself. But I'd disagree with that and say persona sounds more like an external identity you use to adapt yourself to the society's expectations and morals and isn't arguably always moral or wise to do, but is also a mask that can become unhealthy, if you start to identity too much with it.

Basically, then it made me wonder, if we even disregard type altogether, this seems to be nature vs nurture, where I think type is supposed to relate more with nature and persona more with nurture.

And apparently in Socionics Gulenko's DCNH acts like a system of persona types. Gulenko might disagree with that generalization, but it's kind of neat how concepts seem to weave together sometimes.

Anyway, I'm curious what anyone thinks about this, even if you disagree with it completely.

 

[HongDou]

If I'm reading correctly, you're asking what people might think about the idea of conflating type with nature and persona with nurture? I have a few thoughts I'll free associate.

1) I think framing things as "good/healthy" or "bad/unhealthy" when it comes to persona gives me pause (re: Jung's thoughts on persona). I feel like persona isn't inherently either, it just is. So I think I'm in agreement with what you're saying in this regard. I do think, if your goal is to exist in society with other people and feel fulfilled at the same time, you have to develop a balance of engaging both your superego and your ego. In that sense, I think what Jung is saying has merit - it's just built on the assumption that everyone has that goal, which isn't the craziest assumption to make.

2) It's interesting when our sense of self is challenged by engaging with others who have stronger behavioral/emotional proclivities, showing to us that we may not strongly be as X trait as we initially thought. For example, I identify with ENFP, but there are definitely other people in my life who are even more whimsical, brimming with ideas, "authentically" outspoken, etc. Sometimes interacting with them makes me wonder if I really "am" an ENFP at times, but then I compare myself to other people in my life (my INTP partner for example) who are more cautious, more discerning, less excitable, etc, and suddenly I feel reaffirmed that I "am" an ENFP. I put "am" in quotation marks because I feel like this kind of highlights how contextual the self actually is. To some friends, I am the responsible, composed, quietly thoughtful, mom friend. To others, I am a zany, bubbly, confident rambler. Neither are actually "inauthentic", there's just different sides to me that get drawn out based on my specific connections with others. What even is my "self" if I can't define it in comparison to the actions and experiences of others?

3) To that point, I think type (or even "identity" itself) is a very aspirational thing. My favorite Lacan analogy is one about the hand reaching for the unattainable rose - which combusts into flames as the hand draws closer. It's human nature to aspire to the unattainable, and in that sense it's human nature to aspire to have a sense of "self". I haven't honestly read a lot of Jung beyond Psychological Types to get a deeper understanding of the cognitive functions of MBTI, but I might surmise that this is why he sees it important to consider persona when it comes to type. Our sense of our "individual" self could be seen as a persona itself in that way. Although, Jung himself may not agree since he believes in individuation. That's one of my main critiques with him I've come to realize, and it's changed the way I relate to typology drastically - as a true tool for reflection and not a static classification system.

 

[conscious]

Hey, thanks for taking the time to respond. This is very interesting.

2) It's interesting when our sense of self is challenged by engaging with others who have stronger behavioral/emotional proclivities, showing to us that we may not strongly be as X trait as we initially thought. For example, I identify with ENFP, but there are definitely other people in my life who are even more whimsical, brimming with ideas, "authentically" outspoken, etc. Sometimes interacting with them makes me wonder if I really "am" an ENFP at times, but then I compare myself to other people in my life (my INTP partner for example) who are more cautious, more discerning, less excitable, etc, and suddenly I feel reaffirmed that I "am" an ENFP. I put "am" in quotation marks because I feel like this kind of highlights how contextual the self actually is. To some friends, I am the responsible, composed, quietly thoughtful, mom friend. To others, I am a zany, bubbly, confident rambler. Neither are actually "inauthentic", there's just different sides to me that get drawn out based on my specific connections with others. What even is my "self" if I can't define it in comparison to the actions and experiences of others?

I do wish sometimes that type was more variable or scaled like in Big 5. I think I know what you mean. I know someone that is more of an introverted ENFP, but when I compare him to extroverted ENFPs, he is quite different. If I put it in Big 5 terms, I'd say he is more conscientious. In a Jungian sense, I guess that would mean he leans more on Fi. Yet it doesn't make sense to say he is an introvert because he lives more of an extroverted role, engaging reality at will over filtering it in his head.

I have the other problem with myself. I "should" be INTP or INTJ, but I'm heavier on introversion and don't relate with the much more extroverted INTPs or INTJs. It's like we're different people, where they are putting on some kind of show or image, but I just want everything to be more even-keel. They have more ego and non-empathetic traits and I have less ego and more empathetic traits. Each has its own problems though. It could be an issue of persona, but I'm not sure. I didn't have a great upbringing and forming an identity has been a struggle. But I've gone the other way now and kind of have an overcompensated persona that feels detached from who I am underneath, even though I'm well-aware of what I'm doing and why. But the Jungian introverted functions are easier to relate with in general then. Then I'm just an introvert that enjoys abstraction and problem-solving. So INtx I suppose.

I've recently learned about Paul Dirac and was surprised to find that he was often described as a classic introvert. There's a joke that the Dirac is a unit of conversation, meaning one word per hour. Now that's an introvert...

3) To that point, I think type (or even "identity" itself) is a very aspirational thing. My favorite Lacan analogy is one about the hand reaching for the unattainable rose - which combusts into flames as the hand draws closer. It's human nature to aspire to the unattainable, and in that sense it's human nature to aspire to have a sense of "self". I haven't honestly read a lot of Jung beyond Psychological Types to get a deeper understanding of the cognitive functions of MBTI, but I might surmise that this is why he sees it important to consider persona when it comes to type. Our sense of our "individual" self could be seen as a persona itself in that way. Although, Jung himself may not agree since he believes in individuation. That's one of my main critiques with him I've come to realize, and it's changed the way I relate to typology drastically - as a true tool for reflection and not a static classification system.

That's an interesting take. It might have been nice had he taken more time to be explicit with everything. Persona seems like the most interesting aspect of personality because it can imply many things, good or bad, and has a lot of crossover between questions of nature and nurture and identity, like you've pointed out, and becomes a strange tangled nexus to frame understanding.

 

[HongDou]

This convo is reminding me I want to retake the Big 5, because I'm interested in seeing how my results have changed as I've aged. My guess is that everything has become a lot more balanced (such as finding less drastic differences between openness and conscientiousness), which kind of falls in line with realizing how contextual the idea of the "self" really is. Identity feels more elusive when there are less clearly identifiable behavioral extremes.

Also, this is why I've personally developed an affinity for Enneagram even more over time. Have you read Maslow? His description of self-actualization as a fleeting moment of "peak experience" (as opposed to a static state of being which some people misinterpret when they look at the hierarchy of needs) has really helped illuminate a lot for me. Something I've read in Enneagram literature that I'm internalizing more and more is that the types are actually not as different as people make them out to be. The desire among all the types could all fall under the umbrella of self-actualization. 2s desire a sense of feeling loved, 7s desire a sense of feeling fulfilled, 5s desire a sense of intellectual awareness and clarity, 6s desire feeling safe and secure, etc. When we have a "peak experience" we ultimately feel all of these things, so in reality we all ultimately desire the same thing - they're just projected in different ways and thus we navigate our pursuit of it differently. I would argue that self-actualization is like Lacan's rose in this sort of way. We desire something unattainable and our fear is reckoning with the moment that unattainable thing eludes us. As a 7, I've had to do a lot of reckoning with the idea that I'll never be able to reach a state in which I feel perpetually fulfilled (which is in line with 7's integration to 5), but the actions of letting go of that involve the same motions of grief that a 6 would go through in reckoning with the idea that they'll never feel perpetually safe. I like Enneagram for this reason, in the sense that it acknowledges that what we attribute as the uniquely identifiable self is just a projection and that our path towards growth involves accepting that we will continue to strive towards answering desires that can never be fully met.

 

[Curious Catzilla]

Hi, there's a lot that can be said about the theoretical limitations of type in general, but the concept of persona recently entered my mind because it seemed relevant and important to typing.

I was curious and looked it up. Apparently Jung did consider Persona as relevant and even a healthy important part of a person's identity, suggesting that lack of persona is even bad. I think this also relates to Freud's idea of the superego as the part of identity that society wants from you, a more idealized and moral version of yourself. But I'd disagree with that and say persona sounds more like an external identity you use to adapt yourself to the society's expectations and morals and isn't arguably always moral or wise to do, but is also a mask that can become unhealthy, if you start to identity too much with it.

Basically, then it made me wonder, if we even disregard type altogether, this seems to be nature vs nurture, where I think type is supposed to relate more with nature and persona more with nurture.

And apparently in Socionics Gulenko's DCNH acts like a system of persona types. Gulenko might disagree with that generalization, but it's kind of neat how concepts seem to weave together sometimes.

Anyway, I'm curious what anyone thinks about this, even if you disagree with it completely.

I think you're on the right track, but identity (personality) is both static and dynamic.

Personally, I wouldn't label anything as good or bad. I think there are pros and cons to everything, as nothing in life is perfect. The value of something in a designated context can be estimated by cause-and-effect relationships.