Armor and Persona

A “softer” version of Reich’s character armor is to be found in the description of “persona” by Carl Jung and his associates (Jung, 2013). As a prominent psychoanalyst who broke away from Freud, Jung suggests that all of us carry around and present to other people a “mask” (persona) that allows us to present a self that is appropriate to the specific setting in which we find ourselves. While this persona can be changed somewhat from one setting to another, it tends to become rather stiff and unchanging as we grow older or as we begin work in a specific job and are assigned a specific role in our family and society.  The persona becomes rigid and takes on the characteristics (and pathology) associated with Reich’s character armor.

The Persona does serve a positive function when it doesn’t become rigid. Personas not only enable us to act in a predictable manner (which is reassuring to other people with whom we interact) but also enable us to “engineer” our own presentation self: we can be kind, humorous, challenging, aloof, earthy . . .  whatever works best for us.

Most importantly, our persona protects us from vulnerability. Like the Cowardly Lion, we can appear to be fearless when we are actually terrified. We can appear competent when faced with a task that is way over our heads (“beyond our pay grade”). At times, we need a mask given the diverse and unexpected challenges of mid-21^st Century life and work.

The Impostor Syndrome

Finally, there is the armor worn by an impostor. In returning to Oz, we know that the Wizard was an imposter. He was found out by Toto and soon had to provide “real” assistance to Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion – and our Tin Man. We might also view the Lion as an imposter. He is pretending to be ferocious – and brave—yet is actually a coward. We might even think of the cowardly lion and the Wizard as having their own armor. In many ways, the impostor away from Oz is simply one form of “celebrity” that is engaged for manipulative purposes. The manipulation leads to creation of a public figure that is either a distortion of reality (like the Lion) or an entirely fictionalized character (like the Wizard) that has been created by someone for personal gain and power.

As in the case of Sennett’s analysis of the actor on stage, the impostor exists and is successful because other people go along with the false reality. In the world of Oz, it is only the dog, Toto, who points out the cowardly ways of the Lion as well as the deception of the Wizard. Without Toto’s hold on reality, there is collusion between the impostor and his/her “audience.”

Kets de Vries (2003) notes that we want to believe that the impostor is the real person. It is important (even critical) that this person is skillful, knowledgeable, kind or whatever we wish him/her to be. This is another case of dissonance reduction.  Just as we want policemen to be honest, physicians to be knowledgeable and CEO’s to be skillful, so we want the impostor to be the real thing (whether serving as an accountant or airline pilot).