, other themes closely relating to reality like materialism,racism, lack of communication, disillusion of dreams, etc. have also been studied.
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Chapter One Theoretical Frame
1.1 Identity Crisis
Identity has been an important concept in the field of philosophy. From the verybeginning, the philosophers start to probe into the world with the question “who amI”, and it is around this question that philosophers attempt to explain man’sunderstanding of the external world. At the early stage, philosophers try to explain theexistence of man with man himself, as Rene Descartes said “Cogito, ergo sum”. Hebelieves that thinking is the essence of man, and it successfully separates man fromthe outside substantial world and lays the foundation of all other things. For him,man’s consciousness determines man’s subjective position as the center in theknowing of the whole world, and this could be viewed as the start for exploring ofman’s identity.From the late 18thcentury, influenced by European sociology and socialpsychology, a new type of social identity theory came into being. This new idea seesthe individual as the opposite side of the society, and emphasizes the decisive effectof society on man’s existence and consciousness. From then on, the research center ofidentity moves from man himself to different social influencing factors. Marx putsforward the basic principle “social existence determines social consciousness”, bywhich he means it is the productive relation that determines man’s class identity.While in the eyes of Sigmund Freud, the establisher of modern psychoanalysis, manonly realizes his identity in the outside world on the psychological level, and man isno longer the center of identity, but the intersection of undergoing all kinds ofconflicts, and here social constraints have a deadlock with self’s libido power.
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1.2 Archetypal Theory of Persona and Shadow
Carl Gustav Jung is a great psychologist in the 20thcentury, and he is consideredas the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung’s most important theories includecollective unconscious and archetypal theory, among which persona and shadow are two inherent and significant archetypes for all human beings. Persona refers to therole people play in society, which is a state of mind that people have when facingothers instead of facing the true ego. Thereby, persona should be regarded as a socialarchetype. It reflects one’s public image, which means one’s image that is shown toothers. Jung remarks that persona is actually “which one in reality is not”, but “whichoneself as well as others think one is” (Jung 1969: 123).In order to be accepted by others, people construct some kind of personaaccording to the social standards, and the purpose of persona is to please the outsideworld. Jung regards the persona as a “protecting covering” for individual’s inner self.He holds that persona is “designed on the one hand to make a definite impressionupon others, and on the other hand, to conceal the true nature of the individual” (Jung1969: 60).As a product of collective unconscious, one’s persona will reflect the socialbackground, for its formation is heavily dependent on moral values. As it has beenmentioned, persona is an appearance one shows to the outside world, which isdifferent from his true self. It seems favorable for individual to adapt to the society,since if a person wants to become mature, he should be armed with flexible andadaptive persona. Nevertheless, if one is too indulged in the role he plays, the ego willidentify with the persona, therefore, the other side of personality will be ignored andeven suppressed, which will lead to a destructive result to the development ofpersonality. This overdevelopment of persona is called “inflated persona” (Jung1969:155). The person with i
