Persona is a term in Jungian psychology for the social face through which you meet the expectations and roles of public life.
It isn’t simply a fake self. A professional manner, a host’s warmth or the composure you bring to a difficult task can be useful and sincere.
The role becomes difficult when you can’t take it off.
You are the person who handles everything. People admire it. You may admire it, too.
Then you need help and discover that asking feels like losing the right to be recognised as yourself.
The role hasn’t become false. It may have become too exclusive.
I AWAKE’s Hidden Hero’s Journey explores identity through the domain House. Its imagined rooms make space for the different ways you behave with family, friends, colleagues or people whose approval matters to you.
You don’t have to expose every private feeling to be authentic. You can simply notice which parts of your experience the visible role has stopped allowing you to acknowledge.
Role gives the everyday distinction. Shadow introduces what may remain difficult to recognise from inside a familiar self-image.
The International Association for Analytical Psychology’s Persona explains persona in its Jungian context. Read it for a more useful distinction than the suggestion that every social role is a dishonest mask.