Journal articles on the topic 'Carl Jung's psychology'

Karl Stern was a Catholic psychiatrist in Montreal who published extensively on psychoanalysis and religion from 1951 to 1965. He sent a copy of his second book, The Third Revolution (1954) to Jung, who responded warmly in a (hitherto unpublished) letter dated 30 April 1960. The paper ponders the similarities and differences between Stern and Jung's approach to the psychology of religion, and the impact that Jung's belated response to Stern's book might have had on Stern subsequently.

Personality, as represented by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and its interpretative literature as a means of understanding behavior, is critically analyzed. Specifically, the dichotomous nature of the indices is criticized as is its operationalization of Jung's psychological types. This paper argues that Jung's stated intentions for understanding individual behavior suggest that personality variables exist in various levels of consciousness and unconsciousness which require study to consider the proportions with which each exists. The paper also considers a reconstruction of the measure of Jung's psychological types and reconsideration of the descriptions and characteristics of each personality function measured.

This article considers the role of the God-image in Carl Jung's théories of religion, psychotherapy and human development. Jung views the God-image as a fundamental aspect of the human psyche and closely connected to the development of the self. In this regard he describes the individuation process as the progressive incarnation of the divine. His reflections on broadening the Christian God-image to include the feminine, matter and the shadow deal with the problem of psychological opposites with crucial implications for the goals of psychotherapy and psychological development.

AbstractThis paper articulates a psychodynamically informed phenomenological reading of prepsychotic perceptual alterations, which the author calls anti-epiphanies. Several of Carl Jung's experiences of the anti-epiphany, as described in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961), are taken as exemplar cases. These anti-epiphanies are viewed through a critical psychobiographical lens, in an interpretationwhich tacks back and forth between Jung's childhood, psychological theories, and later prepsychotic experience. It is claimed that Jung's anti-epiphanies are linked to his use of schizoid-narcissistic forms of transitional selfobjects, referred to as Jungian manikins. Such Jungian manikins, it is argued, function to defend the subject against annihilation anxieties related to psychological engulfment, penetration, and finalization. When these anxieties become especially pronounced, the subject's entire perceptual world may be defensively used as a Jungian manikin, creating an anti-epiphany. The author conjectures that similar patterns of experience may be operative in the prepsychotic perceptual alterations had by those with schizoid-narcissistic character pathology.

Characterisation has immense influence on the study of literature, because it is as one of the determinants in measuring the quality of a narrative. Thus, assessing this aspect of a narrative, especially when dealing with characters in a racist narrative, requires an encompassing analytical approach. Hence, this paper is aimed atanalysing the psychological impulses that underlying the personality formations of the black characters in Alex La Guma’sA Walk in the Night and In the Fog of the Season’s End. In which, it adopts Carl Gustav Jung’s Psychological Types. The choice of this psychoanalytical tool is informed by the fact that, of all the psychological discoveries of Jung, the psychological types or the psychology of individuation has been acknowledged as his most significant discovery in psychoanalysis which has not attracted the literary critical attention, especially in terms of character analysis. To this end, therefore, the study attempts to establish the two categories of the reactions identified by Jung, namely introversion and extraversion, using the two Alex La Guma’sfictions.In addition, through the psychological complexities of the characters, ultimately, it is revealed that the extreme reactions are the products of individual innate tendencies, devoid of the social or the racial affiliations.

Estimates of reliability and validity coefficients for the Gray-Wheelwrights Jungian Types Survey (GW/JTS), which was developed to measure Carl Jung's theory of types, are reported in this article. The GW/JTS is an 81-item forced-choice instrument with three bipolar scales, introversion-extraversion (IE), sensation-intuition (SU), and thinking-feeling (TF). Four methods, the GW/JTS, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and self- and peer-rating were used to measure IE, SU, and TF in a sample of 187 adults. Reliability coefficients for the GW/JTS scales were .72 for IE, .70 for SU, and .38 for TF; the reliability for TF was not sufficient. Using confirmatory factor analysis and the Campbell and Fiske guidelines, the IE and SU scales demonstrated reasonable construct validity and the TF scale showed limited validity.

This study aims to examine the relation between the character's personality and the Japanese motivational concept of ikigai on the murderers of the Kokuhaku’s movie, Yuko Moriguchi, Shuya Watanabe, and Naoki Shimomura. The method used in this study is a qualitative descriptive method with a literary psychology approach. The data analysis technique used is the listening technique followed by the note-taking technique. The personality theory used is Carl G. Jung's theory of personality typology, and the concept of ikigai in this study uses the concept by Akihiro Hasegawa. The results of this study indicate that Yuko Moriguchi has an extroverted-thinking personality and her ikigai is her daughter, then Shuya Watanabe has an introverted-thinking personality with gaining recognition as his ikigai, and Naoki Shimomura has an introverted-thinking personality and his ikigai is gaining recognition. The conclusion that can be drawn from this research is that a person's personality and ikigai influence each other, especially in their behavior.

The article reviews the book Religiöse Erfahrung zwischen Emotion und Kognition: William James’ Karl Girgensohns, Rudolf Otto und Carl Gustav Jungs Psychologie des religiösen Erlebens [Religious Experience between Emotion and Cognition: William James, Karl Girgensohns, Rudolf Otto and Carl Gustav Jung on the Psychology of Religious Experience], by Henryk Machoń.

This study attempts to put forth the relationship between Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of the archetype and Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of Ayani-sabita. In this context, the nature of the concepts of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi’s Ayani-sabita and Jung’s concept of the archetype are examined, as well as the similarities and differences between each of the two concepts, by researching the issues of the relationship of these concepts with existence and humans. Attention is attempted to be drawn in the study’s results to the topics that the concept of Ayani-sabita, which is often unrecognized in the literature on psychology, can contribute to contemporary psychology, arriving at the conclusion that this concept may be one that can contribute to the science of psychology just as Jung’s archetype concept.

C.G. Jung’s work has had a noticeable impact on conceptions about death and the dying experience, as well as on the therapeutic work methods that deal with anxiety, depression or terminal illnesses. This article analyses the reception of C.G. Jung’s work in the United States during the time period 1960-80. It examines ways in which Jung’s concepts were discussed and applied by psy practitioners who worked in fields related to death and dying studies (thanatology, palliative care, suicide and near- death studies). Following an examination of Jung’s ‘Americanisation’ in the 1950s and the reception of his commentaries on death, discussed in relation to the reception of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, I will analyse four examples: 1) a psychiatric interpretation of Jung’s account of a near- death experience and its comparison with William James’ mystical states of consciousness; 2) psychedelic therapies conducted with LSD, in which ‘symbolic dying processes’ are provoked; 3) suicide studies done on suicide survivors; 4) parapsychological investigation of near-death experience. The examples show that Jung’s work was pivotal, allowing psychologists to link it to concepts and approaches to terminal illness and positive or transpersonal psychology. Within the period under consideration, Jung’s reception has to be read and understood in relation to the more general reception of James’ work, in particular his psychology of religion. KEYWORDS William James, near-death experience, thanatology, palliative care, Tibetan Book of the Dead, LSD therapy, suicide studies, humanistic psychology

Approximately nine years have passed since the publication of Jung’s Liber Novus [New Book]. This event has dramatically changed the study of Jung’s life and work, setting forth an exceptional number of paths to explore within the history of Jung’s thought. Many of these have not been undertaken yet and call for fresh research. Jung’s inspiring understanding of Dante’s Commedia, embedded within Jung’s in-depth fascination for the Middle Ages in Liber Novus is certainly one of these. This paper represents a rst effort to delineate how Jung’s approach to Dante has been crucial to the elaboration of Liber Novus at historical and hermeneutical levels. KEY WORDS C.G.Jung, Liber Novus (The Red Book), complex and analytical psycholgy, Dante Alighieri, visionary works

Abstrak: Penelitian ini berjudul Tipologi Kepribadian Tokoh Utama dalam Novel Introver Karya M.F. Hazim: Kajian Psikologi Analitik Carl Gustav Jung. Adapun rumusan masalah dalam penelitian ini adalah bagaimana Tipologi Kepribadian Tokoh Utama dalam Novel Introver karya M.F Hazim:Kajian psikologi analitik Carl Gustav Jung. Penelitian ini dibuat berdasarkan dua alasan, yaitu pertama, novel Introver memiliki psikologi yang menonjol terutama pada tokoh utama yang merupakan sosok pemuda yang mempertahankan prinsip dan keyakinannya sebagai seorang intover. Kedua, novel ini merupakan novel yang menarik dan banyak mengandung pesan tentang kepribadian kaum introver yang belum banyak diketahui oleh orang lain.Bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan bagaimana Tipologi Kepribadian Tokoh Utama dalam Novel Introver karya M.F Hazim:Kajian psikologi analitik Carl Gustav Jung. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif. Subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah novel Introver karya M.F Hazim. Data dalam penelitian ini dianalisis dengan menggunakan metode deskriptif dan adapun tahapan dalam menganalisis data, yaitu pengumpulan data, mengelompokkan data, menganalisis data, penarikan kesimpulan. Cara pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan teknik kepustakaan, baca catat, dan studi dokumenter. Adapun hasil penelitian menunjukkan terdapat 8 kelompok data dalam novel Introver yaitu ekstrover-pikiran, ekstrover-perasan, ekstrover-pengindraan, ekstrover-intuisi dan introver-pikiran, introver-perasaan, introver-pengindraan, introver-intuisi. Abstract: This research is entitled Main Character Personaliti Typology in IntroverNovel by: M.F. Hazim: Carl Gustav Jung’s Analytical Psychology Study. The formulation of the problem in this study is how the typology of the main character’s personality in the introvert novel by: M.F. Hazim: Carl Gustav Jung’s Analytical Psychology study. This research is based on two reasons, first, introvert novels have a prominent psychology, especially in the main character who is an introverted figure. Secondly, this novel and contains many messages about the personality of the people that are not widely known by others. It aims to describe the typology of the main character’s personality in M.F. hazim’s Introverts Novel. The data in this study were analyzed using descriptive methods and the stages in analyzing the data, namely data coection, grouping data, analyzing data, drawing conclusions. Data collection is done by using literature techniques, reading notes, and documentary studies. The results showed that there were 8 groups of data in the novel introverted, namely thougt extrovert, preoccupied extrovert, sensory extrovert, intuition extrovert and thougt introvert, feeling introvert, sensory introvert, intuition introvert.

This paper explores the work of two innovative music therapists and the way in which their individual approaches relate to the theories of C.G. Jung. Firstly, the author describes how Margaret Tilly, a concert pianist, once gave Jung a session of passive music therapy explaining that she begins to play composed music in rapport with the patient's dominant function, and gradually evokes the inferior function's qualities also using the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ aspects of music. This convinced the otherwise sceptical Jung that ‘from now on music should be an essential part of every analysis’. Secondly, she examines Mary Priestley's work in which the patient improvises with the therapist to make contact with feelings and unconscious material: e.g. in dreams. The author speaks from direct experience of her analytical music therapy intertherapy training with Priestley. She quotes several passages from Jung's work to explain how this therapy accords with the need to contact the image behind the emotions, and to accept the ethical obligation presented by the dreams and the need to make concrete the experiences. She finishes with a call to musicians and therapists to be ‘more aware of the creative power of music to make us whole’.

The resemblance between Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism and Carl Jung’s theory of the archetypes of the collective unconscious has been occasionally discussed. However, Lévi-Strauss followed the foundation of Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, stressing the group dynamics of structural anthropology, whereas Jung’s psychology is an individual psychology. Jung employed myths as a series of images to interpret symbols of the collective unconscious, whereas Lévi-Strauss adopted theories of linguistics to analyse myths as narratives. From Lévi-Strauss’s point of view, a single cultural complex cannot be isolated from other groups of cultural complexes, as they are relational with regard to the exchange of symbols and signs. Lévi-Strauss’s comparison of the European and Native American twin mythology is a case study of the cultural complex when it is read from the perspective of Jungian psychology. How can we approach the mythology that is not one’s own culture? Do we impose our own mythology onto others’? Or do we analyse them more objectively as systems of thought? The trickster, for example, is a discourse by Western culture about Western culture, and it has a very different meaning for Native American people. With a prophetic warning to future generations, Lévi-Strauss died in 2009 – his centennial year.

After coining the term “philopsychy” to describe a “soul-loving” approach to philosophical practice, especially when it welcomes a creative synthesis of philosophy and psychology, this article identifies a system of geometrical figures (or “maps”) that can be used to stimulate reflection on various types of perspectival differences. The maps are part of the author’s previously established mapping methodology, known as the Geometry of Logic. As an illustration of how philosophy can influence the development of psychology, Immanuel Kant’s table of twelve categories and Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types are shown to share a common logical structure. Just as Kant proposes four basic categories, each expressed in termsof three subordinate categories, Jung proposes four basic person­ality functions, each having three possible manifestations. The concluding section presents four scenarios illustrating how such maps can be used in philosophical counseling sessions to stimulate philopsychic insight.

This research aims to describe the psychological conflict that can impact the changes of Faris and Inayah attitudes when acting on novel Lail wa Qudbhan by Najib al-Kailani. The approach of this research is the psychology of literature that discusses of the psychology aspects of figures in the work or is called the textual approach. The theory used to study the psychology of figures in this research is Carl Gustav Jung’s psychology theory and focused on the archetypes of the character’s unconsciousness. The research method used is a qualitative method, documentation technic with descriptive analysis of data analysis. There is also the result of this study found that the cause of the change in attitude of Faris and Inayah figures is their unconscious archetype. Faris’s archetype consists of a persona obstinacy, a shadow of killing and copulation, his anima is uncontrolled emotional, a great mother who brings destruction, wise old man who advise and teach patience, and Self want freedom of life and happiness. While Inayah’s archetype consists of a persona of a happy wife, a shadow of murder an indidelity, an animus of rational and stubborn thinking, a great mother who loves, wise old man who teaches patience, and Self want freedom and happiness.

Of personality theories, one of the major traits is introversion which makes people self-oriented. Introverts are more focused on their emotions, thoughts and moods. The present paper examines the reflection of Jung’s concept of personality theory in the poetry of John Keats and Faiz Ahmad Faiz; the major romantic poets of two diverse literary traditions. Both poets are primarily concerned with the feelings and sentiments of self; their works, thereby, manifest their personal life and emotional status. Carl Jung, the significant contributor to the field of psychology, distributes the human personality into two spheres i.e. ‘Introvert’ and ‘Extrovert’. Each type of human personality is further divided into four functions such as ‘thinking’, ‘feeling’, ‘sensation’ and ‘intuition’. The focus of this study is on the three functions of Introvert i.e. ‘thinking’, ‘feeling’ and ‘sensation’. By means of objects of beauty which are expressed through signs and symbols. Both poets construct a similar world of imagination.

The article is devoted to the historico-philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of personality in the receptive field of psychoanalytic views of Carl Gustav Jung. It is established, that personality is a conglomerate, that is a set of two opposite psychic structures: (a) consciousness (Ego) – the areas of self-awareness and (b) the areas of unconsciousness (personal unconsciousness and collective unconsciousness),which to the form a holistic image of the personality (deu. gestalt). For it is known, that personality is an organic whole only provided if the coherence of all structures of the psyche. It is underlined, that thanks to the symbiotic combination of the upper and lower layers of the psyche was formed a «holistic canvas» of the collective unconscious. In fact, this kind of syncretism can be explained only by the fact that consciousness and the personal unconsciousness (the area of conflicts and repressed, forgotten, repressed memories, which were previously realized and eventually fixed as complexes) are inherited psychic dispositional structures of the collective unconsciousness, which is storage the lion’s share of displaced «forgotten» information. It is emphasized, that the collective unconsciousness (the lower layer of the mental structure) is a reservoir for instincts and archetypes (historical experience inherited from previous generations). It is substantiated, that each personality belongs to a certain type of «psychological attitude» => [extrovert] – [ambievert] – [introvert] and on the basis of this analysis were identified peculiarities of each of the presented types.

The paradigm shift ushered in by the new science of the early twentieth century discloses the universe as a dynamic, energetic, and complex web of relationality. In view of this renewed sense of undivided wholeness, this article seeks to advance the growing synthesis of theology and depth psychology by way of a revised meaning of catholicity. Specifically, the article utilizes Carl Jung’s theory of individuation to suggest that catholicity is the conscious movement of the psyche toward wholeness, an outcome that Jung associated with Christ. The article introduces the term “Holonic Christ” to describe Christ as both the regulating principle of wholeness in nature and the co-recipient of the activity of deepening wholeness through the psychological development of the self-reflective individual. In this way, the article contends that catholicity is the process of individuation in its fullest form: a dynamic energy of the psyche that urges us in the direction of a more integrated personality, an ever-expanding community, and an eschatological remediation of divine self-contradiction made possible by human self-actualization. The article concludes with a discussion of the far-reaching religious implications of this study and explains why this new understanding of Christ is valuable to theological discourse.

<p>One of the prospective results of the ESF project „Linguoculturological and Socio-economic Aspects of Territorial Identity in the Development of the Region of Latgale” (2009–2012) is a linguo- territorial dictionary of Latgale, which would reveal particularity of Latgale’s historical, economic, folkloric, and literary factors in 300 cultural signs and concepts (when referring to selection of entries and the dictionary concept further see Šuplinska 2010). In the developed questionnaire „Latgola is…” (466 units) the word ‘susātivs’ (in Latgalian means ‘a shadow’)was included due to two reasons: 1) as infrequently used word in the cognition of the 21st century user of Latgalian literary language, being ousted by the word ‘āna’, which is closer to the Latvian literary language; 2) as a symbol of dualism/entirety apprehension of a personality activated in the latest literature and music (according to K. G. Jung’s archetype).</p><p>When tracing formation of the concept of ‘susātivs’ the following sources have been reviewed (see the enclosed overview of sources): folkloric collections (S. Uļanovska, P. Smelters, B. Opincāne, et al.), periodical publications of the beginning and middle of the 20th century (most of the examples are found in „Drywa” newspaper (1908–1917) and its annexes) as well as the works of M. Andžāne, K. Nautris, O. Zvīdris, P. Jurciņš, J. Klīdzējs, R. Mūks; publications where the word ‘susātivs’ has been used in the title: modern poetry anthology „Susātivs” (2008) and CD „Bolts susātivs” (lyrics by A. Kūkuojs, music by Sovvaļnīks, 2010).</p><p>The article is aimed at review of the concept of ‘susātivs’ (meaning ‘shadow’ in the Latvian literary language), revealing the conception of its lexical meanings, context and symbolic significance in folklore (mainly in riddles), literature, periodicals and stereotypes prevailing in the society. Semantic and symbolic ambiguity of ‘susātivs’ is demonstrated by Latgalian riddles, under the impact of Christianity’s as symbol of negation used in the early 20th century periodicals, interpretation of spiritual ‘susātivs’ appears in writings of K. Nautris, O. Zvīdrs. Shadow as the genuine (often banned or hidden) part of the personality in their texts is revealed by M. Andžāne, J. Klīdzējs, R. Mūks. White shadow as search of the self is activated in two publications: the modern poetry anthology „Susātivs” and CD „Bolts susātivs”.</p><p>Some analytical psychology insights are worth to be highlighted that to e great extent have influenced the interpretation of the concept of ‘susātivs’ in this article. Firstly, according to the principle of analogy, the individual structure of psyche (consciousness, personal unconsciousness, collective consciousness; Jung 1996: 165) can be perceived as a psyche of ethnos, nation, supposedly of a country or of the world. Secondly, since the shadow includes hidden, suppressed, undesirable (even villainous) sides of personality and at the same time the normal instincts and impulses of creativity (Henderson 1997: 117), then exactly this unconscious side of psyche of Latgalian as a representative of the ethnos has affected the lack of self-esteem and has exacerbated the problems to which explanation in the reality of consciousness is not found anymore, or is not so simply detectable. Thirdly, being aware of the shadow, you can start to use it for revival of integrity and stability of the psyche, but the shadow can not be ignored, denied or suppressed for a long time. Even worse, if one opts for assimilation of it that has often happened to the Latgalian separate religious affiliation or language, or for exerting influence: when the first newspapers started, also new words were started to be mentioned frequently – Latgola and Latgalians. Why the old, real Latvians had to be started to call in other names? What to do! The Courlanders have taken the name of Latvians for them. Latvians from Inflantia were called the „Polish”people. For that reason in order not to fight the Courlanders for the word of Latvians, young journalists from Inflantia started to call themselves Latgalians (Dekters 1970: 12).</p><p>When returning to the texts subject to analysis and understanding of the concept of ‘susātivs’, we should start with the analysis of this lexeme in folklore. It most frequently appears in the riddles and forms a ambiguous understanding of the lexeme: on the one hand, a sense of fatalism has been developed (You cannot escape your shadow by analogy with everybody should carry their own cross, or you cannot escape your fate), on the other hand, the notion of absolute good and absolute evil (obscure, inexplicable) as devil (also shadow). At the same time, several riddles underline that the shadow is a friend who never leaves, even more – one is walking, two will speak – is drawing attention to intuitive understanding of the creator of this riddle with regard to the fact that shadow is a part of the human psyche. Periodicals at the beginning of the 20th century underline the link of lexeme ‘susātivs’ with the human life, which is temporary, according to cognitions of Christianity, it is just a preparation for the real life, therefore exactly the negative, condemnable connotation is gradually pointed out in use of figurative meanings of lexeme ‘susātivs’.</p><p>During 20’s and 30’s of the 20th century the stereotype that ‘shadow’ is something condemnable (e. g., undesirable phenomena of social or economic life are represented by a shadow: life shadows – backwardness, obscurantism, envy (Madsolas J. 1944)), or something that cannot exist separately, dependent entity (e. g., slave, servant, dog), is prevailing in periodicals, gradually also in the reader’s conscience. And this is just the time when not the most complimentary views with regard to Latvians from Latgale are developed and maintained at a national level (including today) that have established a preconceived attitude in Latvians from other regions and created the inferiority complexes in Latvians from Latgale.</p><p>Initially in Latgalian himself his „shadow” was put to shame – different language (the opinion is gradually strengthened and only supported by Soviet times that this is a distorted Latvian literary language, also mixture of Slavic and Latvian language), which may not be Latvian (denial of the designation and introduction of the term Latgalian dialects), underdeveloped agriculture (cheap labour) and comparatively low level of education, certainly, also belonging to another faith and large families as a phenomenon of certain obscurantism. Gradually (most explicitly after K. Ulmanis’ coup in 1934 and unfortunately also after Latvia’s accession to the EU) the shadow was not put to shame in Latgalian himself or in individual from Latgale, but applied to the whole region (after accession to the EU also the other regions quite often are in this status of shadow).</p><p>At the beginning of 20th century, with the growth in numbers of anthropology, psychology and psychoanalytical studies, also the understanding of shadow is affected by the change. In Latgalian literature it was commenced by M. Andžāne in her story „A black man, white shadow” (1947), where the main character Aleksandrs Rynčs demonstrates that it is important not to lose oneself, one’s substance. even if the society, the people do not understand it or it is not topical for the age. From this story comes the designation „white shadow”, which means the true, the deepest substance of an individual, harmony with oneself as a result of adopting and refining one’s own shadow – the inner human being.</p><p>Maybe the Latgalian literature would never had seen the possibility to reduce the negative connotation of shadow, which is historically developed and strengthened in consciousness of the language user, unless there are two strong personalities, theoretically – shadow philosophers J. Klīdzējs and R. Mūks, whose works are known mainly to Latvians from other regions, in the case of R. Mūks, throughout the world. Of course their impact is indirect, at the same time in the works of the 21st century Latgalian authors there is a strong feeling of the reflection of their outlooks.</p><p>Both authors emphasize the importance of respect for the shadow in development of an individual, as well as of the peoples and cultures at large. For the most part it means transformation of fear, feelings, instinctive hunches, ideas into creative energy. Exactly this meaning of shadow as question/ response about the true nature of a human being, society, is activated in two Latgalian publications: the modern poetry anthology „Susātivs” and CD „Bolts susātivs”.</p><p>Strengthening of the shadow as a concept in the Latgalian literature at the beginning of the 21st century is due to the fact that, after going through a long way of transformation and getting rid of the negative connotation, Latgalians are beginning anew to recognize it as an integral part of their nature that allows them to retain their otherness – in language, tradition, attitude towards the world, which is still impressive with its naturalness and emotionality.</p>

This article discusses Jungian psychology as a debated, and exclusionary field of psychology using Carl Jung’s influential work to provide light on analytical or environmental psychology, and to present the theoretical rapprochement between Jungian and Freudian theories[4]. A succinct look at the realm of analytical psychology is still pertinent looking at the role of environmental psychology considering several demands from the modern world. To position Jung in minority spheres, where most of his critics have seen expressions of discrimination, and anti-Semitism, the key principles of Jungian theories will be highlighted considering various researchers to ascertain whether there is limited knowledge for this mindful inquiry[2]. In terms of environmental psychology, Jung’s relevance is important to assess. The many perspectives espoused by Jungian advocates warrant further analysis and research, but are necessary to reflect on today’s societal needs for positive, environmental, humanistic psychology, and potential creation of the psyche as a social transformational tool in psychoanalysis.

Abstract This paper shows that Georg Groddeck and Carl Gustav Jung shared a common cultural background, in which Carl Gustav Carus’s theory of the psyche was preeminent. Accordingly, they emphasized symbolization and unconscious creativity. These aspects affected their clinical work, aimed at pioneering therapies: Jung with schizophrenics, Groddeck treating physical diseases. They overcame the limits of the psychoanalysis of their time and, going beyond neurosis, discovered the pre-Oedipal period and the fundamental role of mother-child relationship. While Freud’s technique was based on a one-person paradigm, both Jung and Groddeck considered analytic therapy as a dialectical process, ushering in a two-person paradigm. Therefore, they did not use the couch; a setting that is assessed in the light of recent research on mirror neurons. It is also highlighted that the analytic groups influenced by Groddeck and Jung have developed similar ideas in both theory and technique; a fact that may induce further studies on the history of depth psychology.

This series of papers on early anticipations of a spiritual New Age ends with Carl Jung’s version of a futural planetary-wide unus mundus rejoining person and cosmos, based on his psychoid linkage of quantum physics and consciousness, and especially on the neo-shamanic worldview emerging out of his spirit guided initiation in the more recently published Red Book. A cognitive-psychological re-evaluation of Jung’s archetypal imagination, the metaphoricity of his alchemical writings, and a comparison of Jung and Levi-Strauss on mythological thinking all support a contemporary view of Jung’s active imagination and mythic amplification as a spiritual intelligence based on a formal operations in affect, as also reflected in his use of the multi-perspectival synchronicities of the I-Ching. A reconsideration of Bourguignon on the larger relations between trance and social structure further supports the neo-shamanic nature of Jung’s Aquarian Age expectations.

A personal and anecdotal account of postpartum depression with psychotic features can be understood as an extreme state addressed relationally using Carl Jung’s analytic psychology. The relationship between the analyst and the analysand is understood as the containing environment for the treatment. Rather than pathological, an understanding of this experience as natural and deeply psychological allows for personal growth and deepens the mother–child bond. A mother’s childhood wounds make their way into the field and through dreams are examined for their universal underpinnings. The natural healing mechanism within the psyche tended by the sensitive clinician becomes the force for change without the traditional interventions offered by a medical model.

Abstract My article re-reads John Milton’s Paradise Lost through a feminist post-Jungian perspective; the study will observe the implications of contemporary Jungian critical approaches toward Milton’s portrayal of Eve, who helps Adam find ‘a paradise within …, happier far’ (PL 12. 587). I will first highlight the negative portrayal of an evil, intellectually inferior Eve in Paradise Lost, and ultimately re-reading the poem—and the role of Eve in it—from the perspective of a feminist Jung. The initial reading of Paradise Lost, in which Eve was regarded as inferior and complementary to Adam, reflects Jung’s criticized notion that the anima’s role is to complement a man’s psychology. This, however, can be read differently through a post-Jungian feminist perspective. From this new viewpoint, Eve can be regarded as Adam’s equal, rather than an inferior company, and a catalyst in their ‘coniunctio’, in which they both individuate (rather than Eve, the anima be subservient to Adam’s individuation) in Paradise Lost. Despite the vast differences between John Milton’s and Carl Jung’s cultural and historical backgrounds, this novel reading of Paradise Lost in context of revisions to Jung’s anima theory and theory of individuation offers a more positive view on the poet’s depiction of Eve in keeping with more recent developments in Milton scholarship, which have drawn attention to the way the text questions conventions of gender hierarchy and patriarchy.

This paper clusters around the problem of evil within the framework of depth psychology. The first part briefly introduces the narrative of the Book of Job as an example to contextualise how the ultimate question of God’s relation to evil remained unanswered and was left open-ended in Christian theology. The second part offers a historical reconstruction of the unresolved polemic over the nature of evil between Carl Jung and the English Dominican scholar and theologian Victor White (1902-1960). It explores their different speculations and formulations concerning evil and its psychological implications, until their final fall-out following White’s harshly critical review of Jung’s most controversial work on religion, Answer to Job. The final section of this paper introduces further reflections on a challenging theme that is no less resonant and relevant in today’s world of terrorism in the name of religion than it was in a post-war Europe struggling to recover from totalitarianism and genocide.

This review discusses the pair of opposites named introversion and extraversion by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung in its biological foundation and psychosomatic implications. Jung’s typology was the reference for Elida Evans’ book on cancer in 1926, which would be the basis of American psycho-oncology and of a holistic approach to cancer patients. It is shown that introversion and extraversion have been widely used in psychology and psychiatry, even without any reference to Jung. Moreover, these concepts have been used for somatic illnesses. In 1990, independently of each other, George A. Bonanno and Jerome L. Singer of Yale University (USA) and Marco Balenci of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) conceived two similar comprehensive models of diseases - both in their physical and psychic aspects - based on the psychophysical balance of opposite attitudes. Persistent dualism in Western medicine may explain the lack of development of these models. Actually, this kind of model derives from a holistic view, which was advocated by George L. Engel in the United States, giving relevance to biopsychosocial factors. Despite the increasing discoveries of psychoneuroimmunology and developmental psychobiology can provide a new scientific impetus to the individual-as-a-whole, this perspective still has greater convergence with Eastern medicine

This paper used an ethnographic approach to examine the phenomenon of possession in the ritual of baby birth with the chanting of macapat tulak balak. This paper sought to describe the phenomenon of possession experienced by the singer of macapat tulak balak and to explain how society perceives the phenomenon that occurs. To analyze the problem of possession, phenomenological aspects, possession phenomena, metaphysical studies and ritual aspects were used. Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology was used to describe the phenomenon of possession. The phenomenon of possession and unconsciousness was explored with the approach of Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological theory. Aristotle’s metaphysical studies were used to analyze the “being as being” and “the divine”. In addition, Marret’s theory of extraordinary powers and Otto’s about human attitudes towards the occult were also examined. Ritual aspects were discussed through Van Gennep’s theoretical approach to religious ceremonies. This research produced several formulas as follows: the phenomenon of possession of the chanting of macapat tulak balak is interpreted by the community as an event that actually happened. This phenomenon is caused by several factors, namely: who is chanting, the chanter’s spiritual experience, who is possessed, and macapat tulak balak. In psychology, possession is called a dissociative trance or split personality, which is a change in consciousness characterized by a change in personal identity that has been existing with a new identity. Matters related to the occultation of the phenomenon of possession are included in the study of “the divine”, meaning that no human ability can reach it. Keywords: phenomenon, possession, macapat tulak balak, ritual

Professional relationships are at the heart of professional practice. Qualitative studies exploring professional practice relationships are typically positioned in either the social constructivist (interpretive) paradigm where the aim is to explore actors’ subjective understandings of their relationships and relational practices, or in the critical paradigm where the aim is to reveal objective unconscious structures and hidden power plays influencing actors’ practices. This paper introduces critical imaginal hermeneutics as a systemic philosophical and methodological approach situated on the juncture of the social constructivist and critical paradigms where the dual aim is to explore both actors’ subjective understanding and meaning-making processes associated with their relational practices as well as explore objective unconscious structures and power relations influencing their relational practices. At the core of this approach is a Critical Imaginal Hermeneutic Spiral – a methodological guide for text construction and interpretation processes developed by partnering Paul Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics and Carl Jung’s imaginal arts-based approach. The spiral was developed, employed, and coined as part of the first author’s doctoral thesis exploring clinical play therapists’ relational practices with parents. It incorporates the Bourdieu and Jung thought partnership explored by the authors in another paper in this volume. The approach provides a systemic guide for developing practitioners’ critical reflexivity regarding personal, social, and collective unconscious influences on their relational practices, and in turn minimising the unconscious influences that undermine the quality of professional practice relationships.

Volume 12 of the Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies (JJSS) introduces a grounding initiative: the inclusion of poems and visual art as forms of knowing that exist in conversation with the article form of scholarship. The proposal for this innovation emerged from reflection by members of the editorial board upon the presentations at the Jungian Society of Scholarly Studies’ (JSSS) conference on the theme of Earth/Psyche held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2016. The conference began with JSSS President Susan Rowland hosting an evening of poetry featuring the cosmology poems of Joel Weishaus and including poems written and read by a few attendees. During the body of the conference, a remarkable number of the speakers included either poems or visual art or both in their talks. To communicate their research concerning Earth’s relations to psyche, presenters repeatedly turned to art to share their knowledge. This volume harvests developed versions of eight of those presentations as articles and publishes them juxtaposed with poems and visual art selected by our journal’s new poetry and art editors. The juxtaposition is intended to spark connections—conceptual, emotional, kinesthetic, and aesthetic—between the complex analyses offered in the articles and the levels of consciousness stirred by the art. Perceiving such connections will affirm the overarching theme that the authors of the articles independently of one another claim as premise: the interconnectedness of being. In that spirit, I offer in this introduction a ample of points of connection between the articles. The topics of the articles address a range of subject matter: the impact of imagination, particularly the practice of active imagination, in transforming human consciousness and behavior, thus advancing planetary individuation; the synchronous relationships between body and earth in the healing modality of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy; the existence of a salt daemon working to increase harmonious relations between material, alchemical, and psychic levels of being; Christianity’s evolving relations to Earth and reclaimed approaches to scripture that enable Christians to participate in divinized creation; the psyche of a specific place, Cornwall, England, and the psychic image of a place, Santa Fe, New Mexico, including the shadow aspects caused by colonization; and the possibility of utilizing the common characteristics of large-group identities to integrate difference so as to develop conscience enabling constructive political action. Themes that resonate with one another in the various articles include imagination, the psychoid, the feminine, the body, and transformation. Not only is the present volume distinguished by the inclusion of poems and visual art; it also contains more narratives of personal experience than in the past. It has been the policy of JJSS only to publish personal experience if it supports a new idea, not merely illustrates an established one. That policy partially continues, but it turns out that examining the relations of Earth/Psyche has elicited the experiential in research in ways more numerous than illustration or support. Personal experience as numinous encounter initiates Susan Courtney’s discovery of the salt daemon and her subsequent research into parallels between physical salts, alchemical salts, and the psychoid nature of earth and psyche, research leading to her contributing to Jungian theory the idea of a salt daemon as an inherent movement of multi-faceted being toward bringing coherence to the ever unfolding series of incoherent states. Personal experience as numinous dreams leading to an understanding of his calling to speak for the psyche of a place motivates Guy Dargert’s exploration of the folklore and colonized history of the inhabitants of Cornwall and of the psychological dangers in the allurement of Cornwall’s beguiling beauty. Personal experience as numinous dreams, but also as embodied practices of active imagination, animates Ciuin Doherty’s call for collective understanding that all that exists, including each human being, is the current realization of over 13 billion years of the evolution of the universe. The ramifications of that understanding include reconceiving the import of individuation, recognizing that humans individuate not only for themselves, but also as expressions of planet Earth’s individuating through them. Understanding the permeability of personal experience, its unconscious connections with other beings and the environment through synchronicities capable of being made conscious enough for healing to occur, is given life in Jane Shaw’s article on the therapeutic power of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. Other authors refer to personal experience in more traditional ways. David Barton, in his article on the psychic image of Santa Fe, reports on experiencing the profound alterity of the Laguna Pueblo culture as he listened to Leslie Marmon Silko speak of rescuing a rattlesnake. Like Dargert, Barton acknowledges the shadow of centuries of colonization. He reports being told by young natives of their despairing sense of entrapment in New Mexico. Johnathan Erickson, concerned about negative attitudes toward Christianity’s teachings about the Earth, shares that his efforts to underscore the vein in Christian teachings that counters the scripture about human dominance over nature are motivated by his being the son of a Christian minister and of a mother with pagan leanings. Peter Dunlap offers his experience as an illustration of the psychocultural work he is hoping Jungian clinicians will engage in to bring the healing power of psychological understanding to cultural dilemmas. And while Nanette Walsh does not share personal experience of her own, she calls on the scholarship concerning the personal experience of women in Jesus’s time to argue for interpreting scripture in a way that divinizes the experience of female persons, a step toward knowing the divine in all creation. Writing about the psychological relations of Earth/Psyche apparently elicits the grounding of thought in personal experience, a grounding typically invisible in abstract scholarly communications. Personal experience obviously is the ground for art. Our journal’s call for visual art related to Earth/Psyche invited artists to submit commentary along with their work. Judging from the responses that we received, the artists whose work is published here experience artistic creation as transformation of matter with abstract implications: turning clay into a holding vessel like that of analysis (Kristine Anthis), turning chance happenings into a creation (Marilyn DeMario), turning disparate materials into an integrated piece (Diane Miller), turning reversals into continuity (S. Sowbel), turning visual metaphor into ensouling symbol (Heather Taylor-Zimmerman), and turning the relation of abstract numbers/concrete matter into paintings echoing the composition of our world (Lucia Grossberger-Morales). The poems on the theme of Earth/Psyche selected for this volume reflect the distinguishing power of individuation in their range of subject and style. Margaret Blanchard’s poems address the changing nature of the poet’s relation to the Earth over time; Judith Capurso’s not only challenge human assertion of dominance over the Earth, but also liberate people from the inflation of that dominance; Ursula Shields-Huemer’s haiku grace imaginings of the natural word through presence; Brown Dove’s poem juxtaposes shifting evaluations of idols and continuity of Earth’s rhythms; and S. Sowbel’s focuses attention on what does not get reborn in her rendering of generativity. Certain concepts are explored in more than one of the articles which suggests their inherent significance in considering the relations of Earth/Psyche. In particular, Jung’s relatively neglected concept of the psychoid receives thoughtful elaboration, especially in the articles by Courtney and Shaw. Shaw applies the concept in her explanation of the healing power of the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy treatment (BCST). Courtney provides scientific data connecting rhythms of the body to the environment. Shaw’s account of the intelligence of the body during the giving and receiving of a BCST treatment resonates with Courtney’s account of electrolytic solution and of rhythmic entrainment. Doherty also contributes to reevaluating the body in terms of its knowingness through his exploration of the perspective of right-brain knowing. The theme of the body’s intelligence flows directly from the premise of interconnectedness attributing psyche to Earth. Another thread through the articles concerns the way the interconnectedness of being is conceived. Courtney references Jung’s concept or Eros as well as British anthropologist Timothy Ingold’s conception of humans as a “‘relational constitution of being’ enmeshed in a planetary ‘domain of entanglement’ of ‘interlaced lines of relationship.’” Doherty connects Eckhart’s description of the divine as emptiness with the quantum physics description of the emergence and disappearance of elementary particles from and into nothingness to assert that creative intelligence is inherent in all being. Dargert proposes that places are infused with their own form of psyche through the existence of an enveloping continuum. Dunlap points to Jung’s idea of a superconsciousness in the unconscious. The authors writing about religion, Erickson and Walsh, see God as the source of being’s interconnectedness. Erickson traces the evolution in Western Christianity of an understanding that the Earth as God’s creation deserves care, an understanding receiving recent expression in Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home. Walsh through the concept of practical divinization attempts to rectify the omission of ecology, women, and psychology in traditional Christian practice of divinization. She links aspects of the historical lineage of the idea of person and Jung’s articulation of individuation to argue for knowing divine wisdom in all that exists. Most of the authors assert that integration of the feminine is key to addressing ecological crises, often specifying that by the feminine they are referring to Eros. Walsh, however, argues for redefining what the feminine is in terms of women’s experience and for using women’s imaginative works to understand the feminine. For example, she cites Annis Pratt who, after surveying over 300 novels written by women, concludes that transformation for women occurs through the “green epiphany,” that is, through their relationship with nature. Walsh’s article provides a significant counterpoint to traditional Jungian understanding of the feminine and of what it would mean to integrate it for the purpose of addressing our ecological crises. Finally, Peter Dunlap’s article grapples with how to bring Jung’s understanding of the collective unconscious to a psychocultural practice of confronting the capacity of large groups to degenerate into mass-mindedness. He argues for confronting that tendency by consciously applying techniques to help large groups develop a sense of shared identity capable of integrating difference, thus making possible development of conscience about relations to the rest of the world. His article shares recent social science research about how to attempt that process, including an illustration of his own experience of applying some of those techniques. His essay gestures toward the goal of bringing psychological knowledge into civic life to enable constructive political action, a goal implicit in the conference on the relations of Earth/Psyche and in this volume of JJSS issuing from it. Inez MartinezEditor

This paper will use the popular television character, Dexter Morgan, to interrogate the relationship between self and persona, and unsettle the distinction between the two terms. This operation will enable me to raise a series of questions about the critical vocabulary and scholarly agenda of the nascent discipline of persona studies, which, I argue, needs to develop a critical genealogy of the term “persona.” This paper makes a modest contribution to such a project by drawing attention to some key questions regarding the discourse of authenticity in persona studies. For those not familiar with the show, Dexter portrays the life of a serial killer who only kills other serial killers. This is because Dexter, under the tutelage of his deceased father, develops a code that enables him to find a “socially useful” purpose for his homicidal impulses—by exclusively targeting other killers he rationalises his own deadly acts. Dexter necessarily leads a double life, which entails performing a series of normative social roles that conceal his true identity, and the murderous activities of his “dark passenger.” This apparent split between “true” self and “false” persona says a lot about popular conceptions of the performative nature of the self in contemporary culture, and provides a useful framework for unpacking some of the aporias generated by the concept of persona.My aim in the present context is to substantiate the argument that persona studies needs to engage with the philosophical discourse of “self” and “authenticity” if it is to provide a convincing account of the status and function of persona today. The term “persona” derives from the classical Latin word for mask, and has its roots in the theatre of ancient Greece. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term thus:1. An Assumed character or role, especially one adopted by an author in his or her writing, or by a performer.2.a. as the aspect of a person’s character that is displayed to or perceived by others.b. Psychol. In Jungian psychology: the outer or assumed aspect of character; a set of attitudes adopted by an individual to fit his or her perceived social role. Contrasted with anima.For Jung the persona is “a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual” (305). We can see that all these usages share a theatrical or actorly dimension. Persona is something we adopt, display, or assume. Further, it is an external quality, which masks, presumably, that which is not assumed or displayed—the private self. Thus, persona is predicated on an opposition between inside and outside. Moreover, it is not a value neutral concept, but one, I will argue, that connotes a sense of “inauthenticity” through suggesting a division between self and role. The “self” is a complicated word with a wide range of usages and connotations. The OED notes that when used with reference to a person the word refers to an essential entity.3. Chiefly Philos. That which in a person is really and intrinsically he (in contradistinction to what is adventitious); the ego (often identified with the soul or mind as opposed to the body); a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness.Of course both terms are further complicated by the way they function within specific specialised discourses. Jung’s use of the term “persona” is part of a complex psychological theory of personality, and the term “self” appears in a multitude of forms in a plethora of scholarly disciplines. The “self” is obviously a key concept in psychology and philosophy, where it is sometimes conflated with something called the subject, or discussed with reference to questions of personal identity. Michel Foucault’s project to track “the constitution of the subject across history which has led us up to the modern concept of the self” (202) is perhaps the most complex and rich body of work with which persona studies must reckon if it is to produce a distinctive account of the relationship between persona and self. In broad terms, this paper advocates a loosely Foucauldian approach to understanding the relationship between self and persona, but defers a detailed encounter with Foucault’s work on the subject (which requires a much larger canvas).For the moment I want to focus on the status of authenticity in the self/persona relationship with specific reference to world of Dexter, which provides an accessible forum for examining a contemporary manifestation of the self/persona relationship with specific reference to the question of authenticity. Dexter conveys the division between authentic inner self and persona through the use of a first person narrative voice that provides a running commentary on the character’s thoughts, and exposes the gap between Dexter’s various social roles and his real sociopathic self. Dexter Morgan is, of course, an unreliable narrator, yet he is acutely aware of how others perceive him, and his narrative voice-over functions as a device to bind the viewer to the character’s first-person perspective. This is important because Dexter is devoid of empathy—he lacks the ability to feel genuine emotion, and conform to the social conventions that govern everyday activities, yet he is focus of audience identification. This means the voice-over must perform the work of making Dexter sympathetic.The voice-over narration in Dexter is characterised by an obsession with the presentation of self, and the disparity between self and persona. In an early episode, Dexter’s narrative voice proclaims a love of Halloween because it is “the one time of year when everyone wears a mask—not just me. People think it's fun to pretend you're a monster. Me, I spend my life pretending I'm not. Brother, friend, boyfriend—all part of my costume collection” (Dexter “Let’s Give the Boy a Hand”).Dexter develops a series of social masks and routines to disguise his “real” self. He is compelled to develop a series of elaborate ruses to appear like a regular guy—a “normal” person who needs to perform a series of social roles. He thus becomes a studious observer of everyday life, and much of the show’s appeal lies in the way he dissects the minutiae of human behavior in order to learn how be normal. Indeed, because he does not comprehend emotion he must learn how to read the external signs that convey care, love, interest, concern and so on—“I just don't understand all that emotion, which makes it tough to fake,” he declares (Dexter, “Popping Cherry”). Each social role requires a considerable degree of actorly preparation, and Dexter demonstrates what we might call, with Erving Goffman, a dramaturgical approach to everyday life (2).For example, Dexter enters into a relationship with Rita, an ostensibly naïve, doe-eyed single mother of two children and a victim of domestic violence—he chooses her because he believes that she is as damaged as he is, and unlikely to challenge him too strongly—“Rita's ex-hubby, the crack addict, repeatedly raped her, knocked her around. Ever since then she's been completely uninterested in sex. That works for me!” (Dexter “Dexter”). Rita provides the perfect cover because she facilitates Dexter’s construction of himself as a normal, heterosexual family man. However, in order to play this most paradigmatic normative role, he must learn how to play with children, and feign affection and intimacy. J. M. Tyree observes that Dexter “employs a fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy for imitating normal life” (82). Of course, he cannot maintain the role too long before Rita becomes suspicious, and aware of Dexter’s repeated lies and evasions.In short, Dexter dramatises what Goffman calls impression management—the character of Dexter Morgan must consistently “give off” signs of normativity (80). Goffman argues that we are all compelled to perform social roles in the manner of Dexter, and this perhaps accounts for why the show appealed to such a wide audience. In many ways, Dexter exposes normative behavior as an “act” that nobody can sustain no matter how hard they try. Dexter’s struggle to decode the conventions that govern everyday life make him a sympathetic character despite his obviously sociopathic tendencies. In other words we are all a little bit like Dexter insofar we must all perform social roles we may not find comfortable. Of course, the whole question of impression management in Dexter becomes even more complex if one considers Michael C. Hall’s celebrity persona and his performance as the titular character, but I do not have the space to pursue this line of inquiry in the present context.So, Dexter is a consummate actor within his “everyday” world, and neatly, perhaps too neatly, confirms Goffman’s “dramaturgical” theory of the “self.” In his essay, “Letter to a Poor Actor” David E. R. George provides a fascinating critique of Goffman from the perspective of a theatre studies scholar. George provocatively claims that Goffman was attracted to theatrical metaphors because of the “anti-theatrical prejudice” embedded within the western tradition. George cites Jonash Barish’s authoritative tome on this topic, which argues “that with infrequent exceptions, terms borrowed from the theatre—theatrical, operatic, melodramatic, stagey, etc.—tend to be hostile or belittling” (1).Barish cites instances of this prejudice from Plato through to St Augustine and beyond, and George situates Goffman within this powerful tradition. He writes,the theatrum mundi metaphor has always been a recipe for paranoia, and in this respect Goffman appears merely to be continuing a long philosophical tradition: the actor-as-paranoiac puts on the maximum number of masks to protect a threatened and fragile self against the daily threat of intimacy, disrespect, deception. (353)It is hardly surprising, then, that Dexter, a paranoid sociopath, stands as an exemplary instance of Goffman’s dramaturgical conception of the self, for Dexter is a show that consistently presents narratives about the relationship between the need to protect the “fragile” self through the construction of various personae. George also argues, with Lyman and Scott, that a “dramatistic” approach to understanding the world produces a cynical perspective because drama is predicated on the split between appearance and reality, nothing is what it appears to be, and nobody is what they appear to be (7). The actor, traditionally, has always worn a mask in some form or another. From the literal masks worn by the actors in ancient Greece to the sophisticated make-up and prosthetic devices worn by today’s thespians, actors, even when they are supposedly playing themselves, expose the gap between self and persona. Arguably, the most challenging and provocative aspect of George’s theory of the actor for persona studies lies in his thesis about how the reviled art of the theatre, which has been pilloried for so many centuries, can function as a paradigm for authenticity. He cites Artaud and Grotowski as examples of two iconic figures that view the theatre as a sacred space that facilitates ‘close encounters of the authentic kind (George 361).George attempts to rescue an authentic core identity, which he perceives to be under siege from the likes of Goffman, who proffers an “onion” model of the self. In George’s reading, Goffman produces a self without an essential, authentic core. This is hardly surprising given Goffman’s background. As an advocate of symbolic interactionism, a school of sociology that proposes that the self is produced as a result of various acts of socialisation, Goffman’s dramaturgical account of the self reinforces George Herbert Mead’s belief that “when a self does appear it always involves an experience of another; there could not be an experience of the self simply by itself” (195).Dexter not only dramatises this self/other dynamic, but also underscores the extent to which we, to use the terminology of Benita Luckmann, inhabit a series of “small life-worlds.” In other words, we lead a series of part-time lives in part-time worlds—modern life, for Luckmann writing in 1970, unfolds on multiple stages that are not necessarily connected or operate according to the same regulatory principles. She writes,The multi-world existence of modern man requires frequent ‘gear-shifting.’ As he moves from one small world into the next, he is faced with at least marginally different expectations, requiring different role performances in concert with different sets of people. (590)Dexter must negotiate a variety of different social roles, each with different requirements and demands. He must, therefore, cultivate a professional persona as a blood-splatter analyst, and perform the personal roles of brother, lover, husband, and so on. Each of these roles occurs in a different “life world” and requires a different presentation of self. Luckmann’s analysis of modern life remains compelling despite being written more than 40 years ago, and she raises one of the most crucial questions for persona studies: what “self,” if any, functions as the executive “gear-shifter?” In Dexter, the narrative voice, the voice behind the masks implies such an essential entity—the true, authentic self, which is consistent with Jung’s account of the relationship between self and persona.Despite a welter of critical theory that debunks the possibility of an essential, self-identical, authentic self (from Adorno’s anti-Heideggerean argument in The Jargon of Authenticity to various post-structuralist theories of subjectivity, especially Judith Butler’s conception of performativity) the idea of sovereign self stubbornly persists in everyday discourse. One of the tasks of persona studies must be to examine these common notions of self and authenticity. On one level, most people experience the “self” as something that refers to what we might call a singular sense of being, and speak about when the feel “most like themselves.” For some, the self emerges within the private realm, the “backstage” areas to use Goffman’s terminology (3). Others speak of feeling most like themselves in executing a social role or some kind of professional occupation. For example, take this extract from a contemporary self-growth web site:Are you feeling like you don’t know who you are anymore? Or maybe you feel like you never really knew yourself. Perhaps you’ve gone through most of your life living by other people’s agendas or ideas of who you should be, and are just now realizing that you really don’t know yourself, your dreams, or your purpose. (Ewing 2013)From the Platonic exhortation to “know thyself” through to the advice dispensed by self-help gurus, the self emerges as a persistent, if elusive, trope in scholarly and everyday discourse. Persona studies needs to reckon with the scope and breadth of the deployment of the self. Indeed it is the very ubiquity of terms like self, authenticity, and persona that require genealogical analysis in the Foucauldian sense of the term. This task entails looking for and uncovering the conditions of possibility for talking about the self across a wide range of contexts.In summary, then, I contend that persona studies needs to carefully examine the relationship between various theories of self and the discourse of authenticity, and establish the extent to which Goffman’s apparently cynical account for the self challenges the assumed authenticity of the self in the Jungian paradigm. Of course, there are many other approaches one could take to this question. For example, Sartrean existentialism problematises any simple opposition between self and persona in its insistence that the self is the product of the others’ perceptions of the subject. This position is captured in his famous maxim that “hell is other people.” This is not because other people are inherently antagonistic or hostile, but that one’s sense of self is in the hands of others. Sartre dramatises this conundrum elegantly in his 1944 play, No Exit.Sartre’s philosophy also engages with the discourse of authenticity, which it borrows from Heidegger’s Being and Time. Existentialism, in its many guises, dominated continental philosophy up until the 1960s and popularised the idea of “authenticity” as an ideal, which enables one to avoid the tyranny of the “They” and avoid the pitfalls of living in bad faith. There is a possibility that the nascent discipline of Persona Studies, as articulated by P. David Marshall and others, risks ignoring the crucial relationship between the discourse of authenticity and the presentation of self by concentrating on the “presentational self” as a set of pragmatic, tactical techniques designed to maximise the impact of impression management within a variety of social and professional contexts (Marshall “Persona”; Barbour and Marshall “Academic”). A more detailed and direct engagement with Foucault’s account of the emergence and constitution of the modern subject, as well as with theories of performativity and authenticity that challenge the arguments and verities of Goffman, and Jung, can provide a richer account of how the concept of persona operates today with reference to, say, “the networked self” (Papacharissi; Barbour and Marshall).So, I would like to conclude by returning to Dexter and the question of authenticity. Dexter can never really manage to identify his authentic self—his “gear-changing” core.It’s there always, this Dark Passenger. And when he’s driving, I feel alive, half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness [...] lately there are these moments when I feel connected to something else... someone. It’s like the mask is slipping and things... people... who never mattered before are suddenly starting to matter. (Dexter, “An Inconvenient Lie”)In this speech, he paradoxically identifies his “dark passenger” as the driver (Luckmann’s “gear-changer”) but then feels “the mask” slipping. There is something beyond what he assumed to be his dark core—the innermost aspect of being that makes executive decisions. Moreover, the status of Dexter’s “dark passenger” is unclear in this speech—is he ‘”he self” or some external agent impelling Dexter to commit murder. Either way Dexter questions the motives and authenticity of this “dark passenger” and those of us with a stake in the nascent discipline of persona studies would do well to be equally skeptical about the status of our key terms.References Adorno, Theodor. The Jargon of Authenticity. Trans. Tarnowski, Knut and Will, Fredric. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.“An Inconvenient Lie.” Dexter. Season 2, Episode 3. DVD Showtime, 2007.Barbour K and Marshall P. D. “The Academic Online: Constructing Persona through the World Wide Web.” First Monday 17.9 (2012). 16 May 2014 http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3969/3292.Barish, Jonas. The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice. University of California Press, 1981.Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. London and New York: Routledge, 1990.“Dexter.” Dexter. Season 1, Episode 1. DVD Showtime, 2006.Ewing, Catherine. ‘Do You Feel Like a Stranger to Yourself?’ 17 April 2014 ‹ http://reawakenyourdreamer.com/2013/09/feel-like-stranger/ ›.Foucault, Michel. “About the Beginnings of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth.” Political Theory (1993): 198-227.George, David E.R. “Letter to a Poor Actor.” New Theatre Quarterly 2.8 (1986): 352-362.Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959.Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarie and Edward Robinson. London: Blackwell, 2006.Jung, Carl. Collected Works 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.“Let’s Give the Boy a Hand.” Dexter. Season 1, Episode 4. DVD Showtime, 2006.Luckmann, Benita. “The Small Life-Worlds of Modern Man.” Social Research 37.4 (1970): 580-596.Lyman, S. M., and Scott, M. B. The Drama of Social Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Presss, 1975.Marshall, P. David. “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self.” Journalism 15 (2014): 153-170.Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934.Papacharissi, Zizi (ed.). A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.“persona, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2014. 12 April 2014.“Popping Cherry.” Dexter. Season 1, Episode 3. DVD Showtime, 2006.Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit and Three Other Plays. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage, 1989.“self, pron., adj., and n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2014. 13 April 2014.Tyree, J.M. “Spatter Pattern.” Film Quarterly 62.1 (2008): 82-85.

Sometimes a particular concept—a simple term—is the spark to a series of ideas. It might be ostentatious and perhaps hubristic that the editors of an issue on persona might imagine that their choice of the term persona has provided this intellectual spark. Fully aware of that risk, we want to announce that it has. The response to the call for papers related to persona was our first sign that something special was being initiated. The sheer number and interdisciplinary breadth of the abstracts and ultimate submissions was evidence that the term ‘persona’ was the catalyst to an explosion of ideas. As the responses flowed into the journal and to us, we became aware of the meme-like qualities of the many interpretations and history of the term, each with its own idiosyncratic coding of patterned similarity. The reality of this development is that it was not entirely unexpected. The editors have been developing the concept of persona and persona studies over the past four years, and persona studies has emerged from a congruence in our collective research interests as an interdisciplinary investigation of the presentation of the self in the contemporary moment. Together, we have been involved in the development of the Persona Celebrity Publics Research Group (PCP) at Deakin University. Within that group, we have concentrated ourselves in the Persona Research cluster, made up of a group of 15 or so academics along with another smaller group from other institutions. Emerging from our work is the forthcoming book entitled Persona Studies: Celebrity, Identity, and the Transformation of Public Culture (forthcoming Wiley 2015). Both the book and the research group are intent on exploring what has been altering in our worlds, our cultures, and our communities that make us think the new intensified play of the personal in public needs closer scrutiny. The impetus for us as a team of scholars is quite clearly linked to the uses of online culture and how greater aspects of our lives are now involved in public displays, mediated displays, and a peculiar new blend of interpersonal and presentational constructions of identities and selves. Persona as a specific area of inquiry has emerged from the close study of the public self. Its immediate intellectual past has its strongest links with research on celebrity. In the Celebrity Studies Reader collection, Marshall began forming the idea that a new public self was emerging through new media (New Media). In subsequent work, Marshall identifies celebrity culture as one of the pedagogic sources for how the wider population presented itself in online culture and social media (Marshall, Promotion). Barbour and Marshall expanded their thinking about the presentation of the self through a closer study of online academic persona and the different strategic ways individuals were managing and building reputations and prestige through these techniques. Terms such as the ‘comprehensive,’ ’networked’, and ‘uncontained’ self, mapped the various kinds of public personalities that were emerging through the most prominent academics (Barbour and Marshall). In a similar vein, Barbour’s research has looked closely at the online and public personas that fringe artists—specifically tattoo artists, craftivists, performance poets and street artists—produce and maintain in the contemporary moment (Hiding; Finding). Her work has advanced the concepts of “registers of performance” (Registers), where a closer analysis of how the personal, the professional, and sometimes the intimate registers are constructed and deployed to produce a public persona that demonstrates ‘artistness’. By analysing persona through registers of performance, Barbour is able to differentiate between the types of identity building activity that occurs online. This provides insight into the ways that impression management occurs in spaces that suffer from context collapse due to the intersection of friends, family, fans, and followers. Moore’s work (Hats; Magic; Invigorating) on the player’s assembly of a networked online ‘gamer’ persona considers the intersection of social media and video game culture and contributes analysis of the affective dimensions of player-oriented game objects and their public curation and display. His recent research visualising Twitter and Flickr data (Screenshots, forthcoming) advances an understanding of the accumulation and online presentation of the self through digital game artefacts, specifically video game screenshots. He is currently researching the interaction of social media activity, reputation management, and everyday identity ‘play’ within public game cultures and the larger dynamics of production and consumption of games and play in the video game industry. Most recently, Marshall called for what he titled a “persona studies manifesto”: the public presentation of the self demands a more extensive analysis of the play and deployment of persona in contemporary culture. Beyond popular culture, the development of reputation and persona and its intersection with online culture especially needs to be explored in those professions, disciplines and activities where this form of investigation has never been attempted (Marshall, Persona Studies). The initiative of persona studies then is in some ways turning the cultural studies’ approach to the study of the audience on its head: it is a study of agency and the processes by which agency has been individualized and assembled across contemporary culture, but highly privileged in online culture (Marshall, Personifying). Persona studies involves a close investigation of the personalized and negotiated presentation of the self. So, what is persona? The articles here assume different, but connected, understandings of the term, each with levels of deference to writers such as Jung, Goffman, Butler, and Foucault, along with some expected allusions to the ancient Greeks and Romans who coined the term. The Greek origins identify that persona is a mask and derived from performance and acting. From Hannah Arendt’s reading of the Greeks this mask of public identity was not seen in a derogatory way; rather it was natural to assume a public/political persona that was quite removed from the private and home sphere. A political persona defined by citizenry was a clearly conscious separation from the household of activity. Jung’s take on persona is that it was designed for collective experience and for the outside world and therapy would lead to an understanding of the individual that delved beneath the persona. The resurgence in interest in Goffman’s dramaturgical analogy allows us to consider persona as an everyday performance, where the purpose of the presentation of self is to convince the audience (and at times, the performer) that the performance is genuine and authentic. All of us know what it is like to act in a role, to wear a uniform or costume, to create a profile. More than a few of us know what it is to suffer through the ‘individualising’ categories of a social networking sign-up survey that do not adequately account for distinctions. Persona is all these things, or rather, through the various everyday activities of our work, social, and online selves we contribute to the accretion of the identity at the base of its structure. Persona functions like the construct or automated script that we assemble to interact with the world with on our behalf. This involves the technologies of computation and mediation and their interfaces that function to automate, produce and filter communication with us; email, blogs, Twitter accounts, and so on. These golems interconnect and can interact on their own in unpredictable ways on our behalf; connecting our Facebook account to a product, brand or petition; using Google as a portal to login into other web enabled services; or authorising an app to record our location. Then there are the traces that we leave scattered across digital networks, intranets, hard drives, and lost USB memory sticks, from scattered collections of digital photos to the contact lists of our mobile devices and the ‘achievements’ in our online gaming profiles. Persona can also be something that happens to us, as friends tag unflattering images via Facebook, or another Twitter user publicly addresses us with a unwanted, or unwarranted commentary, using the ‘@’ and the ‘#’ functions. We have an extensive degree of control over the ways we assemble ourselves online and yet the contemporary experience is one of constant negotiation with forces that seeks to disavow their responsibilities to us, and maximise the limitations under which we can act. Our personas serve as a buffer to these forces. We can strategically assemble our persona to participate in, influence and use to our advantage to transmit messages across the network and communicate a mediated form of ourselves. The many ways to account persona stands as a primary and apparently Sisyphean task for persona studies: no sooner than when we might assemble a complete topology of the many accounts, traditions, domains, methodologies and theories for account of for the self, we will have arrived at possibly entirely new way of conceptualising the presentation of online persona through some post-Facebook, Oculus Rift, or Google Glass augmented reality experience. One of the challenges of persona studies will be to provide a series of methodological and theoretical tools, as well as a common touchstone from which multiple perspectives may converge around the meme-like qualities of this dramatic term. It will be necessary to consider the future of the presentation of the self, as much as the past accounts for the understanding of the self and its compositions. In the contemporary moment we consider a series of common currents and features of the iterations of persona with which we might begin this endeavour. The collective objective of the ‘persona’ theme edition is to coalesce around the emerging significance of the public self, and to map that activity within disciplinary traditions, historical precedents and the cultural and technological predispositions that have made this kind of reading of the contemporary world valuable, important, and ultimately, sensible. This collection of articles on persona is innovative in terms of the diversity of issues it tackles through the term. Given the massive change in public identity that we have identified as an elemental part of online culture, it is not surprising that social media and online constructions of persona figure prominently throughout the issue. However, we are also pleased to include papers that consider fictional performances from both television and film and even character studies of public figures. Marshall’s feature article for the edition continues his theorisation of persona. Seriality is identified as one of the ways that a consistency of persona is developed and the article charts the usefulness in analogizing how the construction of a serial character or ‘personnage’ for an actor/performer provides insights into the relationship between the person and persona in other settings that are emerging in the contemporary moment. In ‘Darkly Dreaming (in) Authenticity: The Self/Persona Opposition in Dexter,’ Glenn D'Cruz uses Dexter Morgan, the novelised serial killer and Showtime TV anti-hero to examine the connections between self and persona and the discourse of authenticity. D’Cruz foresees a series of challenges for persona studies and considers key concerns ahead, in terms of the critical vocabulary and scholarly agenda and addresses the need for critical genealogy of the term ‘persona’. Talia Morag, in ‘Persons and Their Personas: Living with Yourself’, considers the tensions identified in the persona of the private domain, and examines the patterns of social interaction that work to affect an ‘endorsed’ private persona, compared to those patterns classified as ‘hidden’. She frames the negotiation of these tensions as a move to better understand the sphere of the private self, as well as the those strains which arise on the private persona and the grounds from which they come to occupy our time. Together these two approaches predict the convergence of the private, the performed and the public persona which occupies Neil Henderson’s ‘The Contingency of Online Persona and Its Tension with Relationship Development’. Henderson’s engagement with the dimensions of online persona in the short film, Noah, takes a position at the crossroads between Marshall’s celebrity-inscribed approach to persona studies and the application of actor-network theory in order to map the potential pitfalls of identity management through ubiquitous technologies and broader critical questions about the play of our online selves in the everyday. Moving to the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life, Lesley Procter draws on the symbolic interactionist theories of social identity and the role of the avatar in ‘A Mirror without a Tain: Personae, Avatars, and Selves in a Multi-User Virtual Environment’. Procter’s contribution to persona studies highlights the actual and conceptual mirroring involved in the sense of the self involved in the interaction with others online. Taina Bucher’s ‘About a Bot: Hoax, Fake, Performance Art’ is a revealing examination of the Twitter bot phenomenon. Bucher’s case study on ‘bot fakeness’ considers the automation and performance of persona and the interactions and relationships between people and bots. Brady Robards, in ‘Digital Traces of the Persona through Ten Years of Facebook’, offers a critical reading of the Facebook ‘look back’ video creation application made to celebrate the social network’s ten year. As with Bucher and Proctor, Robards is concerned with the ways persona is created through highly mediated social networking platforms, where the agency of the individual is countered by the intervention of the software itself. Robards considers in particular two functions of Facebook: first as a site for the performance of life narratives, and second as a location for reflection on public and private disclosure. Taking a specific element of this idea of disclosure—the sharing of one’s legal name—as a starting point, Ellen Moll’s ‘What’s in a Nym?: Gender, Race, Pseudonymity, and the Imagining of the Online Persona’ is a study of the reactions of feminist and anti-racist bloggers in the ongoing battles over pseudonymity online. Moll’s contribution centres around current concerns with the ‘real name policies’ of social media and web-based platforms and services. What is at stake here in the negotiation between the individuals, technologies and institutions over the rights of self-determination and agency in the digital and online environments. Narrowing the focus to a single case study, Emma Maguire’s study of author website as a site of self-presentation in ‘Home, About, Shop, Contact: Constructing an Authorial Persona via the Author Website’ examines the authorial persona produced for consumption within literary markets. Framing of the authorial website as ‘automedial text’, rather than as direct representations of a pre-existing self, Maguire employs authorship theory to understand the website as a genre of persona performance and textuality. Shifting away from the focus on social media, this issue concludes with a trio of character studies, each of which involves a detailed and critical account of the dimensions of a public assembly of a persona. Nathan Farrell’s ‘From Activist to Entrepreneur: Peace One Day and the Changing Persona of the Social Campaigner’ is the first, and considers the ways that an individual manages his persona for different audiences. Farrell’s focus is Jeremy Gilley, a documentary filmmaker and peace campaigner, and the paper speaks to the dimensions of overlapping audiences connected to an articulation of a socially aware entrepreneurial persona. Sally Totman and Mat Hardy have a very different figure in their contribution as they examine the many different public personas of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. In ‘The Many Personas of Colonel Qaddafi’, Totman and Hardy interrogate the multiple aspects of Qaddafi’s construction as a brotherly revolutionary, philosopher, liberator, leader, and clown. The authors chart the progression of his often conflicted and chaotic legacy, and of this political, ideological and even messianic presentation of the self to the Western and Arab worlds. Anastasia Denisova, completes the triptych of persona case studies for this collection, with ‘How Vladimir Putin's Divorce Story Was Constructed and Received, or When the President Divorced His Wife and Married the Country Instead’. Denisova contends Vladimir Putin’s divorce is representative of the degree to which political and private persona are mediated and merged across often competing channels of communication. The analysis contends with online discourse, images, and texts, which reveal the extensive personification of politics in Putin’s public persona in an environment of reception by an audience which also consider the values and attributes of their own country as a national persona. Conclusion We have structured the narrative flow of articles in this issue on persona from the fictional through to the online transformations of the self and then even further into the analyses of the public and political dimensions that are part of the constitution of public selves. No doubt, you as a reader will see different connections and intersections and will play with what makes the idea of persona so meaningful and valuable in understanding the strategic construction of a public identity and so central to comprehending the contemporary moment. We invite you to engage with this further with the issue editors’ planned 2015 launch of a journal called Persona Studies. Until then, this issue of M/C Journal certainly represents the most comprehensive and, we think, interesting, collection of writing on persona as we explore the implications behind the mask of public identity. We hope the issue stimulates discussion and with that hope, we hope to hear from you.AcknowledgmentsThe editors would like to thank Alison Bennett for creating an original gif for the cover image of this issue. More of Bennett's work, including her augmented reality images of tattoos from the internationally acclaimed exhibition Shifting Skin, can be found at her website, alisonbennett.com.au.Thanks also to Trent Griffiths for his copy-editing assistance. References Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Charles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Barbour, Kim. “Hiding in Plain Sight: Street Artists Online.” Platform Journal of Media and Communication. 5.1 (2013). Barbour, Kim. “Registers of Performance: Negotiating the professional, personal, and intimate.” MeCCSA 2014. Bournemouth, 8-10 Jan. 2014. Barbour, Kim. “Finding the Edge: Online persona creation by fringe artists.” Contemporary Publics International Symposium. 24-25 Feb. 2014. Barbour, Kim, and P. David Marshall. "The Academic Online: Constructing Persona through the World Wide Web." First Monday 17.9 (2012). ‹http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3969/3292›. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. USA: Anchor Books, 1959. Jung, Carl Gustav. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Bollingen Series. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966. Marshall, P. David. "New Media New Self, the Changing Power of the Celebrity." The Celebrity Culture Reader. Ed. P. David Marshall. London: Routledge, 2006. 634-44. Marshall, P. David. "The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media." Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 35-48. Marshall, P. David. "Personifying Agency: The Public–Persona–Place–Issue Continuum." Celebrity Studies 4.3 (2013): 369-71.Marshall, P. David. "Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self." Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-70. Marshall, P. David, Chris Moore and Kim Barbour, Persona Studies: Celebrity, Identity and the Transformation of Public Culture. Hoboken NJ: Wiley, forthcoming 2015. Moore, Chris. “Hats of Affect: A Study of Affect, Achievements and Hats in Team Fortress 2.” Game Studies 11 (2011). ‹http://gamestudies.org/1101/articles/moore›. Moore, Chris. “The Magic Circle and the Mobility of Play.” Convergence 17 (2011): 373-387. Moore, Chris. “Invigorating Play: The Role of Affect in Online Multiplayer FPS Game.” Guns, Grenades, and Grunts: First-Person Shooter Games. Ed. Gerald A. Voorhees, Josh Call, and Katie Whitlock. London: Continuum, 2012. 341-363. Moore, Chris. “Screenshots as Virtual Photography: Cybernetics, Remediation and Affect.” Advancing Digital Humanities. Ed. Paul Longley Arthur and Katherine Bode. Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming 2014. .

Introduction Although our postmodern (media) society should provide room for diversity and otherness (Greer and Jewkes), some people are not integrated but rather excluded. Social exclusion can be defined as the discrepancy of the wish of being part of a society and its possibilities to be part of it and contains feelings or experiences of physically or emotionally exclusion from others (Burchardt et al.; Riva and Eck). It is not really known what or who is responsible for social exclusion (Hills et al.), but it is certain that it is not that rare phenomenon — especially in social media. Here, digital engagement characteristics (likes, follows, shares, and comments) are important to build up, renew, and strengthen different forms of relationships. But if users do not receive any feedback, the risk of feeling social excluded increases. In this context, adolescents and young adults as the primary audience are the focus of interest. They seem to be especially vulnerable when it comes to social ostracism within social media and its potential negative psychological effects (Timeo et al.). The variety of social exclusion allows multiple perspectives on the topic. Hereafter we focus on young people with cancer. This life-threatening disease can increase the risk of being excluded. Cancer as a chronic illness and its negative effects on people’s lives, such as potential death, long-term and late effects, private and social burdens (Hilgendorf et al.), show an obvious otherness compared to the healthy peer, which might push ostracism effects and social exclusion of young people within social media to a new level. We actually can see a large number of (included) young cancer patients and survivors using social media for information sharing, exchanging ideas, networking, and addressing their unmet needs of the real world (Chou et al.; Chou and Moskowitz; Ruckenstuhl et al.; Perales et al.). Especially Instagram is becoming more present in social cancer communication (Stage et al.), though it actually increasingly represents cheerful, easy-going content (Hu et al.; Waterloo et al.). Judging by the number of cancer-related hashtags, we can see more and more public cancer bloggers thematise cancer illness on Instagram. But less is known about the actual content posted by cancer bloggers on Instagram. This leads us to the question, to what extent is cancer content found and included or excluded on public Instagram profiles of German speaking cancer bloggers? And is there a difference between biography descriptions with visible cancer references and posted motifs, captions and hashtags? Chronic Illnesses, Identities, and Social Networks Chronic illnesses such as cancer not only affect the body, but also impact on the identity of those affected. It is understood as life-changing with both short-term and long-term effects on the identity-forming process and on the already developed identity (Bury; Charmaz; Leventhal et al.). With their diagnosis, adolescents and young adults face a double challenge: they have to cope with the typical developmental changes of this age group and they have to negotiate these changes against the background of a life-threatening illness (Makros and McCabe; Zebrack and Isaacso). Miller shows three levels of identity for young cancer patients (pre-cancer identity, patient identity, and post-cancer identity), which are used regularly and flexibly by those affected in their interaction with the social network in order to maintain relationships and to minimise communicative misunderstandings. Moreover, the negotiation of the self within the social network and its expectations, especially towards convalescent people, can lead to paradoxical situations and identities of young people with cancer (Jones et al.). Although therapeutic measures are completed and patients may be discharged as cured, physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges with regard to the illness (e.g. fatigue, loss of performance, difficulty concentrating) still have to be overcome. These challenges, despite recovery, cause those affected to feel they still belong to a cancer group which they have actually largely outgrown medically and therapeutically, and also continually remind them of their present difference from the healthy peer group. To minimise these differences, narratives are the means for those affected to negotiate their new illness-related identity with their network (Hyde). These processes can be digitally transformed on blogs or to age-appropriate social network sites (SNS), which enable users to record and communicate experiences and emotions in an uncomplicated, situational manner and with fewer inhibitions (Kim and Gilham). Cancer contents on SNS are called autopathography and can serve as a means of self-expression, whilst at the same time stimulating communication and networking and thus significantly influencing identity and identity development in the chronic disease process (Rettberg; Ressler et al.; Abrol et al.; Stage). The possibility of recording and archiving private moments in a digital environment through photos and texts creates a visual diary. Here, illness recordings are not just motifs, but also part of an identity process by accepting the self as being ill (Nesby and Salamonsen; Tembeck). Instagram-Exclusive Positivity Instagram is the most popular social media network amongst 14-29 year olds in Germany (Beisch et al.). It presents itself as a highly visual structured platform. Furthermore, both posts and stories are dominated by content with innocuous motifs (Hu et al.). Additionally, the visual culture on Instagram is supported by integrated image optimisations such as filters and therefore often associated with high aesthetic standards (Waterloo et al.). This encourages the exchange of idealised self-presenting and self-advertising content (Lee et al.; Lup et al.; Sheldon and Bryant). The positive tone of the shared motifs and captions can also be explained by larger, sometimes anonymous networks on Instagram. The principle of non-reciprocal following of public accounts increasingly creates weak ties, which can additionally encourage the sharing of positively connoted content due to the anonymity (Lin et al.; Waterloo et al.). The posting of negative moods or image motifs to anonymous followers does not seem to be socially standardised, due to the associated intimate thoughts and feelings (Bazarova). In addition, users are aware of the public framework in which they address intimate topics and discourses (Bazarova and Choi). Internal platform standards and technical possibilities thus create a particular posting culture: an environment that is—due to its strong visual-aesthetic structure and anonymous follower-based networks—almost exclusively positive. However, these assumptions and findings are based on a general posting culture, which is usually not focussed on niche topics like cancer. Previous studies show that SNS are used for exchange and networking, especially by young cancer patients (Chou and Moskowitz; Perales et al.). Studies from online SNS disease-related self-help groups show that weak ties in illness situations are considered beneficial when it comes to self-disclosure, seeking help, and support (Wright et al.; Love et al.; Donovan et al.). In addition, Instagram is part of the so-called “vital media” (Stage et al.), which means it is very important for young cancer patients to share cancer-related material. But despite these research findings less is known about the content shared by German-speaking bloggers who have visible cancer references in their Instagram biography. Do they include a serious, even life-threatening illness on a platform that actually stands for positivity, or do they follow the invisible platform regulations in their posted content and statements and exclude it by themselves? The specific objectives of this explorative study were (a) to obtain a descriptive analysis of the manner in which cancer bloggers post content on Instagram, and (b) to determine the extent to which most applied practices exclude the posting of certain negatively connoted motives and emotions associated with cancer. Methodology For the study, 142 German-speaking cancer bloggers (14–39 years of age) with public accounts and visible cancer references in their biography were researched on Instagram. The sample was divided into posts (7,553) and stories (4,117). The content was examined using a standardised content analysis and a code book with relevant categories (motifs, body presences, emotions, captions, emojis; ICR Cronbach’s alpha = 0.85). Measured by the value of the content posted, the story users, at 23 years of age, were comparatively much younger than the post users, at 30 years of age. The sample was predominantly female in both posts (81%) and stories (99%). The most common form of cancer was breast cancer (posts: 28%; stories: 29%), followed by brain tumors (posts: 19%; stories: 16%) and leukaemia (posts: 4%; stories: 19%). Most content was shared by people who were actively involved in treatment – 46% of posts and 54% of stories. Completed treatments were more common in posts (39%) than in stories (19%). At the time of data collection, the Instagram entries were explicitly open to the public, and no registration was required. The content, not the individual, was analysed to minimise the risk for the bloggers and to prevent them from violations of privacy and autonomy by third parties. Furthermore, the entries were assigned unidentifiable numbers to ensure that no tracing is possible (Franzke et al.). Results The sample consists of public cancer blogger accounts who document everyday experiences for their network in images and videos. The following results are shown for posts (P) and stories (S). Motifs and Bodies Looking at the evaluation of the image motifs, the selfie predominates both in posts, with 20.7 per cent, and stories, with 32.8 per cent. Other popular photo motifs are pictures of food (P: 10.2%; S: 11.0%), activities (P: 7.2%; S: 7.7%), landscapes (P: 6.3%; S: 7.1%), and of/with family and friends (P: 12.5%; S: 6.0%). Photos in medical or clinical settings are rare, with one per cent in the posts and three per cent in the stories. Looking at the bodies and faces displayed, a comparatively normal to positive image of the bloggers that were studied can be observed. Most of the people in the posts present themselves with hair (81.3%), wear make-up (53.3%) and smile at the camera (64.1%). A similar trend can also be seen in the stories. Here 63.8 per cent present themselves with hair, 62.7 per cent with make-up and 55.3 per cent with happy facial expressions. In contrast, scars (P: 1.6%; S: 4.4%) or amputations (P: 0.2%; S: 0.1%) are hardly ever shown. Thus, possible therapy-accompanying symptoms, such as alopecia, ports for chemotherapy, or amputations (e.g. mastectomy in the case of breast cancer) are rarely or hardly ever made visible by cancer bloggers. Captions, Hashtags, and Emojis Similar to the motifs, everyday themes dominate in the captions of the images, such as the description of activities (P: 23.2%; S: 18.0%), food (P: 8.2%; S: 9.3%), or beauty/fashion (P: 6.2%; S: 10.2%). However, information on the current health status of the person affected can be found under every tenth photo, both in the stories and in the posts. Hashtags are mainly found amongst the posts with 81.5 per cent. In keeping with the caption, normal themes were also chosen here, divided into the categories of activities (17.7%), beauty/fashion (7.6%), food (5.8%), and family/friends (4.8%). Illness-specific hashtags (e.g. #cancer, #survivor, or #chemo) were chosen in 15.6 per cent. In addition, the cancer bloggers in this study used emojis in 74 per cent of their posts. In the stories, however, only 28.2 per cent of the content was tagged with emojis. The most common category is smileys & people (P: 46.8%; S: 52.8%), followed by symbols (e.g. hearts, ribbons) (P: 21.1%; S: 26.5%), and animals & nature (P: 17.0%; S: 14.2%). Emotions In captions, hashtags and emojis, emotions were divided into positive (e.g. joy, fighting spirit), neutral (e.g. simple narration of the experience), and negative (e.g. fear, anger). It is noticeable that in all three categories predominantly and significantly positive or neutral words and images were used to describe emotional states or experiences. In the case of captions, 40.4 per cent of the posts and 43.9 per cent of the stories could be classified as positive. For the hashtags, the values were 18.7 per cent (P) and 43 per cent (S), and for the emojis 60 per cent (P) and 65.7 per cent (S). In contrast, there were hardly any negative moods (captions P: 5.7%, S: 5.8%; hashtags P: 4.4%, S: 0.7%; emojis P: 8.7%, S: 6.4%). Although the disease status (e.g. active in therapy or completed) had less impact on emotional messages, a significant connection with the applied thematic areas could be observed. Thus, it is apparent that medical and/or therapeutic aspects tend to be described with positive and negative words and hashtags, e.g. the current health status (χ²(3) = 795.44, p =.000, φ = 0.346) or the topics of illness/health via hashtag (χ²(3) = 797.67, p =.000, φ = 0.361). Topics such as food (χ²(3) = 20.49, p =.000, φ = 0.056) or beauty/fashion (χ²(3) = 51.52, p =.000, φ = 0.092) are recognisably more impersonal from an emotional perspective. Discussion A Digital Identity Paradox Drugs, chemotherapy, setbacks, physical impairments, or anxiety are issues that usually accompany cancer patients during treatment and also in remission. Looking at the content posted by German-speaking cancer bloggers on Instagram, illness-related images and words are comparatively rare. The bloggers show their normal, mostly cancer-free world, in which negative and illness-related content does not seem to fit. Although they clearly draw attention to their illness through their biography, this is not or only rarely addressed. Therefore, it can be stated that cancer as a topic is excluded by choice by the bloggers examined. Neither motifs, captions, nor hashtags make the illness visible. This seems paradoxical because the content and biography appear to contradict each other. And yet, the content studied only shows what Jones et al. and Miller have already described: their identity paradox, or multiple identities. The digital acceptance of one's own illness and solidarity with (anonymous) fellow sufferers is clearly given through the disclosure in the biography, but yet a normal and healthy online ego—comparable to the peer group and equal to their own illness identity—is aspired to. It seems as if those affected have to switch their identity back and forth. The awareness that they are already different in real life (in this case, ill) encourages the users examined to show a normal, age-appropriate life—at least online, which is why we speak of an identity paradox 2.0. Based on our data, the obvious otherness of being ill—and in this context the potential higher risk of digital ostracism effects (Greer and Jewkes; Timeo et al.)—can be a reason for self-exclusion of the cancer topic, in order not to be excluded by a healthy peer. The Standard Creates the Content The positive tone that can be found in almost every second post can be explained by the platform standards and practices themselves (Waterloo et al.). Thus, smiling faces in a public environment correspond more to this than sadness, anger, or despair. Although disease-related topics in captions are also provided with negatively connoted language, they do not have a determining influence on the public self-image of the blogger and their life and the illness. The strong visual culture on Instagram does not leave much scope for "other", perhaps more authentic serious content. The fact that published content has the potential to talk about cancer and to make one’s own experience with the disease transparent is proven by blogs (Kim and Gilham). Instagram does not currently seem to be particularly suitable for public profiles to make serious illness narratives about cancer. Conclusion It remains to be noted that public cancer blogs attempt to include a serious topic on Instagram. But with regard to the data, we can see a form of (maybe unconsciously) self-chosen exclusion of illness narratives. The reasons might vary. On the one hand, cancer bloggers want to belong to a healthy peer group, and expressing a visible otherness would exclude them. Therefore, they try to reduce the higher risk potential of ostracism effects. On the other hand, internal Instagram regulations and standards create an environment which can strengthen the bloggers' posting behaviours: young people, especially, post life-affirming and life-related content. This also helps them to cope with crisis situations and to avoid being dominated by a life-threatening disease. Further research on cancer on Instagram is needed to determine to what extent this is desired, and whether an awareness of this paradox exists or develops intuitively. 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