Archetypes in the Tarot: Persona
Tags archetypes, persona
Carl Jung proposed the theory that human beings share a set of mental models he called the Collective Unconscious. One quality of the Collective Unconscious as he proposed it was that it was populated by characters called archetypes; figures such as the Hero or the Wise Old Man who frequently occur in fiction, myth, and dreams as common character patterns that we can instantly relate to.
One such archetype was the Persona. The persona represents our identity as it is presented to others. The persona bears all the masks we wear when we interact with others. It is on this figure that we hang our sense of self. Jung warned against allowing our self to become so entangled with the persona that they were indistinguishable.