Helen Mirren's Prospera & Lessons on Crafting the Persona

Helen Mirren’s Prospera & Lessons on Crafting the Persona

Written on March 6, 2011 by LenCruz for The Asheville Jung Center Blog

Helen Miren’s portrayal of Prospera in The Tempest was recently featured in the Life & Arts section of the Financial Times (http://tinyurl.com/48tx2pg).  The film adaptation by Julie Taymor gender-bends the roles and Mirren delivers Prospero’s famous line:

“Our revels now are ended.  These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air…”.

No doubt Helen Mirren’s Prospera injected something quite different into Shakespeare’s character and it was Mirren’s idea to flip the genders.  So what has this to do with Jung’s concept of persona?


In Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction Murray Stein discussion of shadow and persona makes these two rich, complicated contents of psyche approachable.  He likens shadow and persona to twins that “… are usually more or less opposites of one another…”  Persona is a complex that “… possesses considerable autonomy and is not under the full control of the ego.  Once in role, the actor rattles off his or her lines willy-nilly and often without much consciousness”.  But Mirren took a traditionally male role and breathed her own special, evocative spirit into Prospero and it became Prospera. In this liminal domain, where actors impose a higher than usual degree of intentionality, where there is a descent into a well crafted character, we may gain insights about individuation as it relates to the persona.

According to Dr. Stein “The persona makes casual social interaction go more easily…”  Jung acknowledges that while we are not all “multiple personalities” we do show “traces of character splitting” (Jung, Coll Wks., Vol.6, par.799.).   There is some fluidity to the degree of identification the ego has with different roles it plays.  Stein notes that role identification is “…  generally motivated by ambition and social aspiration”.  It seems that the ego does not deliberately chose to identify with a particular persona but this is where Helen Mirren’s portrayal of Prospera informs us of a new possibility.

Dr.  Stein notes that there a two pitfalls that can occur in the development of the persona, over-identification that involves undue adaptation to the social world and the failure to pay enough attention to the external object world thereby becoming too involved with the inner world.  He goes on to point out that with age, new personas appear.  But this suggests a passive process.
Perhaps that is all we can hope for, that our persona might keep pace with the changing demands of life, our own aging process, and the changing demands of society.  But  if Helen Mirren can shed new light on Prospero, then I have hope of injecting new life into the character of Len.
Persona is a complex and therefore, easy to relegate to the domains governed by unconscious forces.  But let me attempt to illuminate persona with conscious intention.  The actor must strike a balance between her own personality and the portrayal of the character she plays.  We may use a similar approach to work upon our persona.  Beyond the passive appearance of the persona lies our capacity to craft the persona like actors do.  Such an enterprise may promote the process of individuation.

What I am proposing is reminiscent of the effort by ego-psychologists to extend classical psychoanalytic theory.  We can endeavor, through conscious, intentional effort, to fashion a persona informed by other analytic work.

On March 31, 2011, Dr. Murray Stein will present “Caring for the Soul: An Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy for Patients & Therapists”. 

For more information http://ashevillejungcenter.org/upcoming-events/ .  Whether or not you expect to attend the conference you will find Dr. Stein’s book, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction a valuable resource for understanding Jung’s extensive body of writings.  In the introduction to the book, Dr. Stein quotes one of my favorite authors (therefore the dual translation):

“You could timidly explore the coasts of Africa to the south, but going west there was nothing except fear, the unknown, not “our sea” but the Sea of Mystery, Mare Ignotum.”
Carlos Fuentes  The Buried Mirror


“Se podía explorar tímidamente las costas de África hacia el sur, pero hacia el oeste no había nada más que miedo, no «nuestro mar» sino el Mar de Misterio, Mare Ignotum.”
Carlos Fuentes  El espejo enterrado


Se  encuentra la primera parte del libro “El Mapa del Alma Según Jung” en la página del internet  http://www.adepac.org/P06-90.htm .

Len Cruz, MD

Remebrance of Things Past

Remembrance of Things Past

A friend of mine who has lost two parents and a brother in the past half dozen years recently began to reconnect with friends from his high school days. As I listened to him tell me about some of the things this had brought up, ideas occurred to me that I wanted to share because they reflect some principles we can all learn from.

The ensemble of characters cast in the dramas of their early years, now often referred to as the family of origin, were not cast in those roles for the rest of our lives. My friend's recent losses awakened in him a new found willingness to fashion a different ensemble of characters, one better suited to today. My friend's brother suffered a severe, persistent mental illness for more than forty years depriving my friend of many aspects of brotherly love he might otherwise have enjoyed. My friend was recreating a family.
We have all heard stories of individuals who overcome the wounds of childhood through a corrective experience in their adult years. A man who suffered unspeakable abuse from a tyrannical father is watched over by a teacher, a coach, or a boss and before long his pain is assuaged and the wounds begin to heal. Or perhaps we hear of a woman subjected to vicious and belittle attacks from a mother whose tenuous self-esteem was sustained by denigrating her defenseless daughter who is made right by a teacher or coworker who sees past the wounds to a realm the woman scarcely knew existed. There is a deep hunger to be mothered or fathered that does not leave us when we leave the first cast of characters in our life. But even when the stories are not so dire there we may benefit from a willing to keep an open casting call for characters in the current dramas of our life.
Principle 1: The opportunity to replace the members of our cast is often missed.

One of the guys with whom my friend had connected was a Jewish friend who had been a close buddy in grade school. They grew up in a town that was predominantly Irish and Italian. One day when the boys were in sixth grade, my friend said something anti-Semitic to hurt his Jewish friend's feelings. They must have gotten past it at the time because they remained acquaintances and partied together and high together in high school.
Nearly forty years later, these two boys reconnected and my friend took a courageous step by bringing up that fateful day when they were in sixth grade and he said something at changed their friendship forever. My friend apologized! His buddy let him know in the clearest way he knew that he did not even remember the remark or the day in question. My friend apologized again trying to reassure his high school mate that he did not grow up to be an anti-Semite. The guy told my friend he should let it go and that if he was seeking forgiveness for a crime that was not even remembered, he had it!
This brings me to another principle revealed in my friend's recent rekindling of high school friendships. We carry into our adult years countless regrets, shaming moments, and things that weigh us down. My friend was fortunate to have had the chance to surrender one of those ancient afflictions. But what about all the ones he carries that involve people he may never see again. If our capacity to release ourselves from neurotic guilt depends on the person we wronged or failed when we were younger we are likely to miss opportunities to release the flotsam and jetsam of our past.
if you were to meet someone from your past, someone you had wronged or injured consider, what can we expect. Perhaps like my friend, you would discover you had made a mountain out of a molehill and that the aggrieved party did not even remember the event that had weighed you down. Of course, your actions might have had a profound and untoward impact upon the person you wronged. If that is the case, you will find that they have either worked through the matter or they may have carried that wound around like a disfiguring scar. (I am assuming that you have outgrown, transcended, suspended, or otherwise dealt with whatever behavior or tendency that caused you to behave badly. If not, you may deserve suffer a bit.) But if you have changed from the person you were, then you need not carry around neurotic guilt.
Principle 2: Don't wait to meet the person you've wronged to receive the forgiveness you need!

My friend was deeply moved by the fact that many of his friends had traversed similar paths In their lives as the ones he had traversed. In several instances, he was aware of forks in the road of life where he and the newly rediscovered friends had similar choices to make or challenges to meet. What he learned was that while each one of us has a story that is unique many of the elements of our story turn out to be universal. It is a good idea to remember that our story is uniquely ours. But it also helps to remember that our story is likely to have quite a bit in common with other's stories. Principle 3: What happens to us is seldom a first nor will it be a last.

Finally, my friend admitted to ambivalent feelings about the way his high school friends were reaching out to him. He had missed a high school reunion and his friend. One of them told my friend how much that he and a few of others had wanted to get together again and include him. My friend admitted that the prospects of rekindling these old acquaintances as real friendships provoked a mixture of feelings he was was unprepared for. He was deeply touched by their longing to be close but like Pandora's box, the invitation had loosed a fury of old maladies. He felt some of the same emotions he thought he had left behind in high school. I don't know whether my friend will take another step toward intimacy with his old chums; I hope he does. No matter how old we are, some of the same struggles to love and be loved will hang around. The question will one day become clear that we don't have to act like we did when we youngsters. Regardless of what he chooses, there was a lesson revealed in his ambivalence.
Principle 4: Be real, follow your heart, and open your heart to love.