Friday, 15 November 2013

Documentary Entry 5

"Think of it as a mask you wear to overcome life's hardships".

I've always been keen on Carl Jung and his works in psychology. As a former student and friend of Freud himself he actually disagreed with his masters theory that the subconsciousness was just a bin for all our negative thoughts. Jung argued that while that was true he felt that the mind held more than that too.

One of Jung's most popular theories was the idea of the "Persona" Jung believed that a Persona was akin to a mask we wore to hide our flaws and insecurities. The quote above is an excellent way of summarising it.

He believed everybody had a Persona that served as a compromise towards the individual and what society expects of a person. However on the other side of the coin was the Shadow.
The Shadow is that which we don't want others to see. The faults and flaws we have that no one else should see. Jung believed that unless we overcame our Shadow we would he consumed by it.

Bit more complicated than "men wish to kill their fathers and sleep with their mothers" ain't it?

To make a long story short, I realised that people who partake in being a drag queen are said to be donning a Persona, this lead me to raise the question( or in this case several):

Are we seeing the true self of the queen? Or a secondary Persona? Perhaps even their Shadow if this is something they partake in a way from the eyes of those who know them? To be honest I don't know the answer it just seemed to be an interesting topic/point to bring up.

Jung wasn't known for associating with homosexuals so I can't say what his opinion was on the matter but from what I can tell he had no problem with and actually believed there's no such thing as a 100% straight individual especially if the bibles story of Adam and Eve is considered. Though a popular theory about why Freud and Jung fell out was because the younger Jung feared that the older Freud would come onto him(something I can't buy to be honest, Freud was too busy painting humanity in the worst possible light for intimacy).

Still as I said before but it's worth saying again, it is a bit more complicated than father killing and mother boinking isn't it?

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