Persona? what did you think when you first heard the word. If I hear the word I immediately imagine the song that is now often sung on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media. Namely, the song “Terpesona…. aku terpesona… memandang memandang wajahmu yang manis” But today we will not discuss it because pesona and persona are two different things, and what we will discuss is persona. What’s the “persona”?
The persona can briefly be referred to as the “Mask”. What kind of mask is that? What is the iron man mask, spiderman, what is the mask of the Panji Manusia Millenium? According to Alwisol ( 2009) persona is a mask/face that is worn when facing the public. This ultimately reflects people’s perception of the role that must be played in their lives. In short, that persona is a public personality, the personal aspects shown in the world or public opinion of an individual as opposed to his or her private personality.
The above understanding certainly describes the true understanding of Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist who states that persona is the personality side of a person shown to the world. Jung believes that every human being is involved in a certain role demanded by the social world. For example, a politician is expected to display a confident face to win the popular vote and actors are required to show off their lifestyle according to public desire (Jung, 1950/1959 in Feist & Feist, 2010).
However, although the persona is an important side in personality, we should not mix the part displayed in public with ourselves, it is true that if we have to be accepted in society but if we use the persona / mask too then we will lose the inner self touch and tend to live just to meet social expectations. In order to be psychologically healthy, we must maintain a balance between social expectations and how our true personality is to reduce the level of importance of social expectations.
Given the importance of persona in social life a human being is sometimes required not to be himself in the environment, if too long done in the end we as human beings will forget which is our original persona, which one we really want, and which environment will be upon us. The above will have an impact unconsciously, example over time we are confused to be ourselves because too many masks that we use, and there will appear dissatisfaction in our minds that will make the level of stress increase.
We may use multiple personas in our lives, because the social environment does not always accept us genuinely. But, as a human being we have to realize and know which persona is our original so that we can be satisfied to be ourselves, and have a strong character that does not always follow the flow of the social environment.
