Eric Oliver

Well, then the big question is, OK, we have these stories.

How should we interpret them?

And this is where someone like Carl Jung could be very useful.

Now, Carl Jung was not really a scientist.

He was much more of a mystic.

But he offers us some really interesting conceptual tools for interpreting our own stories.

And one of his great insights was this idea that we have personae.

And the word personae comes from Latin origins, and it originally meant the masks that Etruscan mimes used to wear in early dramas.

And they're literally the masks that we present ourselves to the world around us.

And all of us have a wide collection of these personae and we tend to take one on, put one on or take one off depending on whatever circumstance that we're in.

So when I'm in front of my students, I have the personae of the authoritative professor because they seem to like that.

When I'm with my friends, I'm the more jovial clown.

With my children, I try to be the nurturing father.

And these are all parts of myself, but they don't necessarily define myself in its totality because I'm constantly switching them.

What works in one moment is not necessarily going to work in another moment.

So acting the jovial clown won't work at a serious academic conference.

And so part of knowing ourselves is both recognizing when we're in our different personas, but also recognizing that our persona are not us.

The mask that I'm wearing at any given moment is not me.

It's just a vehicle, a convenience for negotiating with this period of time.

And the more that I identify or invest in strongly in that one persona, I think the more distorted my experience of being is going to become.