April Hejka-Ekins – USA
Photo © David Grossman.
Let's begin with a story about Mullah Nasr Eddin: Mullah went to a bazaar to buy cloth. Finding all the booths full of customers bidding and driving up the prices, he stationed himself near the opposite end of the bazaar and began shouting at the top of this lungs about the bargains there, hoping to draw away his competitors. He was so successful that people started steaming down to that end of the bazaar, leaving the cloth sellers' booths empty for him, just as he wished. But seeing all the people hurrying by, he thought: Perhaps there really are splendid bargains down there! So he abandoned the cloth dealers and ran after the crowd.
What does this amusing tale tell us? We all play roles that are a natural part of our human existence and when we do so, we take on a mask or a face that we express to the world. Just like Mullah, sometimes we forget who we are and what we are doing; we are taken over by the role we are playing and the mask we put on. In this case, Mullah pretended that he was a customer with the intent to deceive others, but in the end, he fooled himself through his own scheming. In this article, I will explore some of the primary meanings of the mask, discuss the importance of recognizing the masks we wear, and offer some suggestions as to what they have to teach us.
Masks have been used throughout human history to express both mythological and psychological meaning. In primitive societies, the mask served as medium between human beings and the nature. Joseph Campbell suggests that the mask represents an apparition of spirit, and that the wearer of the mask actually becomes a god during a sacred ritual. Reality is built on an "as if" view in which the actor imagines the spirit behind some material or intangible aspect of nature and by taking on the mask becomes that entity. For example, a witch doctor, who wears a lion mask, takes on a psychic identity of the lion, or as Joseph Campbell would say, he IS the lion. Thus, for ancient tribal people, the mask was used to mediate between the spiritual and physical worlds.
Another meaning of the mask for humans is psychological. Carl Jung equated the mask with one's persona or the outward face of the psyche. According to Jung, a mask is worn by an actor, which enables him to portray a specific public role, which is not his own, in order to gain societal acceptance and recognition. We can wear multiple masks such as parent, child, teacher, partner, spouse, citizen, etc. Masks can be used to reveal or to conceal, depending on the personal motivation and context of the situation. These are all expressions of what Jung calls, archetypes or prototype images that reside in the collective unconscious psyche of all humankind.
We may wish to ask ourselves: Are we aware of the masks we wear? Do we consciously choose which one to adorn? Do we believe we are our masks? Do we play our part or does our part play us? Jung claims that there exists an individual conscious self behind the mask if we recognize it in us. Often however, we mistake the mask for the self as Mullah did in the above story. A good example of the self behind the mask is the idea of the face within a face. One such mask is Kwakiutl, the Wild Man of the Woods from the Pacific Northwest; another is this statue of monk Hoshi from China that reveals three levels--a self within an ego within a mask. Perhaps there is not only a face within a face, but also another deeper level of reality behind the self that we can discover. If so, the mask can be viewed as a metaphor, a symbol, and a tool for the realization of the real self and the reality beyond self.
The mask also symbolizes what Jung called, an inflated persona that results in psychological fragmentation or a splitting of the psyche or a neurosis. Books, theater, and film have depicted many examples of this: a most familiar one is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In Stevenson's classic fable, we see a splitting between a social (Jekyll) and asocial (Hyde) man. Jung described the archetype of the shadow as our basic animal nature, that contains the dual potential for our most impulsive and violent desires but also our creative and instinctual vitality. By repressing our shadow we do not annihilate it, but force it underground where it festers and awaits the opportunity to emerge stronger than ever. The psychological splitting of Jekyll occurs when he identifies with the mask of the kindly physician, and disassociates himself from Hyde, his shadow. As Jekyll repeatedly denies and eventually rejects Hyde as part of his own self, his shadow grows. Finally the only way Jekyll can control Hyde from overtaking him is by suicide.
Death has often been portrayed through the mask. For example, the essential theme in Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Masque of the Red Death is that we live in death, which is played out in seven chambers, composed of seven colors. People revel within each chamber until they hear the chiming of the clock, which reminds them of their mortality. Eventually the figure of death appears in a red mask with, as Poe would say, "the countenance of a stiffened corpse."
A brilliant example of how the mask has been used to show both our horror towards death and the disassociated self is revealed in Oscar Wilde's, A Portrait of Dorian Gray. Obsessed with preserving his youth, beauty, and immortality, Gray uses his portrait as a siphon for his shadow. In return, he retains his handsome, youthful persona and now is seemingly free to lead the life of a rogue. Ironically, the full horror of his psychological bargaining overwhelms him, and his self-destruction is sealed as he watches his portrait take on the ugliness of his own diabolical actions.
While the mask can be used as a form of psychological concealment or disassociation, it can also act as a medium for healing and self-integration. As a method of transformation for the actor, the mask becomes a catalyst enabling a dialogue among the suppressed archetypes within the psyche. The potential exists to reconcile the inherent tension between them. For example, in the film, Adaption, Nicholas Cage portrays twin brother writers, Charles and Donald, whose personas symbolize a splitting within the psyche. A bizarre twist of events leads them to face one another with the result of an eventual psychological reintegration. Thus, we see that the mask can act as the constant which contains the transformative power to allow the fluid interaction of disintegrated parts of the personality to come together.
What implications do these meanings of the mask have for us as individuals? On a mythological level, perhaps the symbolic imagination needs to spark our modern, rational mind set. Jung believed that the destiny of humanity is bound up in the creation of symbols that reveal the evolution of the psyche. What mythology can we imagine that speaks to our age of conflicts between technology and the human condition, between global control of resources and social inequities? Perhaps our search to create a mythology for our time can help to reconnect us to the cosmos and each other.
Psychologically we may ask ourselves: do we play our roles or do our roles play us? How aware are we of the masks we wear? Do we have inflated personas? Are the masks we wear leading us to disassociation or transformation? Can we learn to face all aspects of who we are and come to a sense of peace about the tension between our internal contradictions? Can the process our self-integration lead to external transformations in our troubled world? If we are left with more questions than answers, maybe the lessons of the mask can provide us with some meaning if we are willing to acknowledge our doubts and bravely face the conflicts within ourselves.
For further reading:
- Campbell, J. (1959). The Lessons of the Mask. THE MASKS OF GOD: PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY. New York: Viking Press.
- De Laszlo, V. (1993). THE BASIC WRITINGS OF C.G. JUNG. New York: Modern Library.
- Dooling, D.M. (Ed.) (1981) Mask and Metaphor: Role, Imagery, and Disguise, PARABOLA, 6, 3.
[This article came from pages 16-17 of the Autumn 2003 issue of The Serapeum].