Center of Consciousness | Full Circle POV

Archive for the category “Center of Consciousness”

20 Oct 2014

We are Awash in Persona, Drowning Perhaps

The professional persona, the complex web of how we present ourselves and our expected knowledge, skills, and abilities, is a high-level example of persona-shaping. Persona is what we want other people to experience and perhaps rely on when they observe and interact with us. We simultaneously build connections to the world around us and maintain barriers against intrusion into our inner psychological worlds (Ego and Shadow). We work hard to build and preserve our reputations. Be seen and not seen at the same time, project and protect.

Here’s an interesting exercise: Choose a day to be especially observant and conscious of the multiple ways you adjust how you present and interact (or don’t) with the various people and situations you encounter that day. Notice the constant shaping of your Persona to sync with people and situations; notice the feedback when you fail to, choose not to, or are simply unable to sync.

Persona is not a static mask we wear. Persona is a dynamic shaping process. As I pointed out in Persona, the Public Face:

Persona is more a reflection of the collective values and expectations, than personally created, being at heart the adaptation to the social environment of family, culture, and society. The person particularly bound to the dictates of the collective environment without reflection is the most identified with the Persona.

The Center of Consciousness, the Ego, tends to over-identify with it’s Persona. For most people the “locus of control” is external. Always turned out and cognizant of the expectations of their environment, either quickly shifting with the changes in the surrounding environment or narrowing that environment to only deal with particular types of people. As we grow, we develop a greater ability to shape shift somewhat quickly, even as the composition of the group we are with changes, or simply walk into the next office at work. Our sense of proper persona can easily become rigidified.

From the moment we wake, we navigate the social milieu. Observe how you interact with your partner, your friends, your new love interest, your kids, your coworkers, your boss, the other gender, people of another race or ethnicity, your boss’s boss, the barista at the coffee shop, strangers,… Observe how you come to understand what is appropriate and not with those different people and in different settings. Notice how you shape shift.

Notice your vigilance. Notice your discomfort when you are out of sync with your social environment and, conversely, the discomfort of people in different environments when you are innocently or flagrantly not syncing; when you aren’t acting as they think you should be acting; you don’t look like they think you should look. Notice race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, age…

Turn on your TV and observe the myriad ways advertising plays into this dynamic persona-shaping process. We’re bombarded with messages, products and services that are designed to impact our public faces. Branding is a company’s persona-shaping activity.

Watch politicians shape both their Personas and their opponents’ Personas.

We make judgments about people as we experience their Personas. Narrow, rigid personas are intolerant, even afraid of a diversity of personas. Observe discrimination. Notice how dangerous, even deadly, the inability or unwillingness to adapt the Persona to the social environment (for whatever reason–where someone is seen as other) can be. Think hate crimes, religious persecution, lynching, genocide. Think ISIS.

How can such an essential aspect of our psyche be so destructive? To be conscious, we need to understand Persona’s ever-present twin, Shadow, and the dynamics of Polarities.

Persona

Posted in Analytical Psychology, C. G. Jung, Center of Consciousness, Conscious, Ego, Persona, Psyche, Psychology, Shadow and tagged Ego, persona, photography, polarities, professional image, Psyche | Leave a comment

10 Oct 2014

The Organization’s Conscious Realm

According to Corlett and Pearson:

The conscious realm of the organizational psyche is the arena where the ego-directed actions and behaviors of those who are in charge hold sway over productive activity and the shaping of the organization’s culture. This is the zone of affairs dealt with exhaustively by conventional organization theory and management theory. There is, however an aspect of this activity that cannot be seen through conventional lenses. An underlying texture, both collective and influenced by the unconscious, begins coming into focus when the observer adopts a Jungian perspective. This underlying texture has two principal threads; the center of consciousness [Ego] and the organization’s public face [Persona]….

The center of consciousness is an organizational process, comprising the myriad conscious activities–reflecting, planning, controlling, coordinating, and implementing–necessary for managing the work of the organization (p. 27).

The conscious aspect of the public face, the brand identity, does two things for the organization. First, it transmits the organization’s ideal image of itself. Think of the bank that touts itself as the “friendly neighbor down at the corner.” Second, the public face screens from the operating environment aspects of the organization that the center of consciousness wants to hide (p. 32).

In the end, an organization’s public face is a compromise between how the center of consciousness wants to present the organization and what the environment wants or expects of the organization. In seeking to find its niche, the organization inevitably caters to some degree to what its public wants. In so doing it may to a greater or lesser degree have to sublimate parts of itself. The sublimated [repressed] material will end up in the organization’s shadow (p. 33).

(John G. Corlett and Carol S. Pearson, (2003), p. 27. (See Bookshelf for full citation.)