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Article by Michael Finn
Copyright Michael Finn

(For relevant discussion, further into adaptation processes, through the gaze of Traditional Chinese Medicine, see my page in 'Metamorphosis – Chronic Symptoms')

'The persona (latin for mask) is a more or less conscious adaptation of the ego to the conditions of social life. We develop many personae which are necessary fictions. We are one way with our parents, another with an employer, another with a lover. Although the persona is a necessary interface with the outer world, we tend both to confuse the persona of others with their inner truth and to think that we too are our roles. As suggested earlier, when our roles change, we experience a loss of self.

'The persona feigns individuality, but fundamentally, as Jung notes, "is nothing real; it is a compromise between individual and society". To the degree that we have identified with the persona, our socialized self, so we will suffer anxiety at being pulled away from the outer adaptation, to address the reality of the inner.'

(The Middle Passage, pg 34, James Hollis )
www.innercitybooks.net

It's a common contemporary muse–

"Am I a spirit intrinsically having a physical life or a body with a spirit?'

I don't see the point in agonizing over the semantics, rather I put energy into having a spirited life.

If my thought processes don't require a dichotomy in the first place, the question is moot. In any case, we are born into an evolving identity. The evolution of a human being is basically a process of undergoing experiences (forces and influences acting upon us from without; hardwired internal processes expressing themselves from within) and surviving them.

Apparently, disturbances of our adaptative mechanisms, may lead to dis-ease. These disturbances manifest as excessive 'editing' or 'self-suppression', to concur with circumstances, to belong, to be validated, importantly, to remain connected to something or someone.

such 'management crises' are an everyday aspect of our relationships with various others. The human story is one of the struggle to keep two identities (essential self and socialized self) operating; not unlike parallel universes, except there's direct contact occurring constantly between the two.

Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> Adaptations