personality development · mana personality
Personality stands as one of the most contested and multiply-inflected terms in the depth-psychological corpus. Jung employs the word across at least three distinct registers: the socially presented character (approaching what he elsewhere calls the persona), the fuller totality of the psyche striving toward integrated selfhood, and the specialised construct of the mana-personality—that inflation-laden configuration into which the ego collapses when it mistakes archetypal power for its own achievement. His 1954 essay ‘The Development of Personality’ insists that genuine personality development obeys neither caprice nor moral exhortation but only the compulsion of inner necessity, placing it in intimate tension with individuation while resisting equation with mere individualism. Rudhyar extends this Jungian axis into a cosmological frame, treating personality as the ‘front’ the total being presents to the world—a variable complex whose ruling centre shifts from instinct to ego to Self across the arc of individuation. Hillman radically pluralises the concept, dissolving the unitary personality into a polyphony of partial personalities or soul-figures, each deserving amplification rather than integration into a sovereign ego. Greene and Sasportas further operationalise this plurality as ‘subpersonalities’ carrying archetypal valences. Across these positions a central tension persists: whether personality names a summit to be achieved through individuation or a multiplicity to be honoured through differentiation.
The developing personality obeys no caprice, no command, no insight, only brute necessity; it needs the motivating force of inner or outer fatalities.
Jung argues that genuine personality development is driven exclusively by inner or outer necessity, not by conscious intention or social instruction, aligning it fundamentally with the logic of individuation.
, The Development of Personality, 1954thesis
I therefore call such a personality simply the mana-personality. It corresponds to a dominant of the collective unconscious, to an archetype which has taken shape in the human psyche through untold ages.
Jung defines the mana-personality as an archetypal dominant of the collective unconscious into which the ego inflates when it appropriates the power of the anima rather than differentiating from it.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
Conscious realization of the contents composing it means, for the man, the second and real liberation from the father, and, for the woman, liberation from the mother, and with it comes the first genuine sense of his or her true individuality.
Jung contends that differentiating the ego from the mana-personality through conscious realisation of its contents constitutes the decisive step toward authentic individual selfhood.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
The mana-personality is on one side a being of superior wisdom, on the other a being of superior will. By making conscious the contents that underlie this personality, we find ourselves obliged to face the fact that we both know more and want more than other people.
Jung describes the mana-personality as a bipolar archetypal constellation of superior wisdom and superior will whose conscious appropriation confronts the ego with its uncomfortable kinship with the divine.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
All that has happened is a new adulteration, this time with a figure of the same sex corresponding to the father-imago, and possessed of even greater power.
Jung argues that ego inflation following the apparent conquest of the anima does not produce genuine mana but merely substitutes one unconscious identification for another, this time with the father-imago archetype.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
Personality is conceived less in terms of stages in life and development, of typologies of character and functioning, of psycho-energetics toward
Hillman’s archetypal psychology rejects developmental and typological models of personality in favour of a pluralistic conception grounded in partial personalities understood as soul-figures or daimones.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983thesis
The personality is therefore the human being as it appears from day to day, with its behavior, thoughts and feelings. It is the ‘front’ which the total man presents to the outer world.
Rudhyar defines personality as the outer face of the total being—a composite complex whose ruling centre may be ego, instinct, or ultimately the Self at the consummation of individuation.
We can, therefore, speak of an inner personality with as much justification as, on the grounds of daily experience, we speak of an outer personality.
Jung establishes a structural duality within personality itself, distinguishing the outer persona from the inner personality (anima), each constituting a distinct habitual attitude toward its respective domain.
, Psychological Types, 1921supporting
A change from one milieu to another brings about a striking alteration of personality, and on each occasion a clearly defined character emerges that is noticeably different from the previous one.
Jung documents the empirical fluidity and context-dependence of personality expression, revealing the structural plurality underlying what appears to be a single character.
, Psychological Types, 1921supporting
Through this process the anima forfeits the daemonic power of an autonomous complex; she can no longer exercise the power of possession, since she is depotentiated.
Jung describes the precondition for encountering the mana-personality: the successful depotentiation of the anima as an autonomous complex through which the ego risks a new and graver inflation.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953supporting
Each subpersonality will have its own story, its own mythology and its own history. Some are more easily recognisable than others. They may come and go; new ones appear and then change again.
Greene and Sasportas operationalise the pluralistic conception of personality through the clinical construct of subpersonalities, each carrying its own archetypal mythology and developmental history.
, The Development of Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Volume 1, 1987supporting
If career success is based on schizoid retaliatory fantasy, or oedipal rivalry, then personality is diminished. But it is far too gloomy a view to say that this is true of everyone.
Samuels interrogates the Jungian claim that one-sided social achievement necessarily diminishes personality, arguing that the decisive factor lies in the individual’s psychological attitude to achievement rather than achievement itself.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
Jung situates personality development in an intergenerational field, arguing that the educator’s unresolved psychological material is transmitted to children and constitutes the primary obstacle to their authentic development.
, The Development of Personality, 1954supporting
All personality patterns do at some point. It had become a way of continuing to deprive herself, a major obstacle to receiving love and caring, and a source of great suffering.
Welwood illustrates how adaptive personality patterns formed in response to early deprivation eventually become dysfunctional structures that perpetuate the very suffering they were designed to prevent.
, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000supporting
The concept of an addictive personality, or the addiction-prone personality reviewed in Chapter II, is a major misconception, rooted in a socially constructed ideology that suggests someone is inherently flawed.
Dennett critiques the reifying tendency in clinical psychology to collapse complex biopsychosocial aetiology into a fixed personality type, arguing that the addictive-personality construct is an ideological rather than an empirical entity.
, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025supporting
This man’s ego becomes identified with the anima personality, which is as a rule hypersensitive and soggy with emotionality.
Stein illustrates the clinical consequences of ego-anima fusion as a form of personality distortion characterised by affective dysregulation and relational dysfunction.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
Just as it was essential for a man to distinguish between what he was and how he appeared to others, it was equally essential to become conscious of ‘his invisible relations to the unconscious.’
The editorial commentary on the Red Book situates personality differentiation within the broader individuation sequence, linking persona discrimination to anima differentiation as consecutive structural tasks.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009aside
A new subdiscipline of personality psychology—narrative identity research—has emerged. Its organizing concern is how individuals employ narratives to develop and sustain a sense of personal unity and purpose.
Singer introduces narrative identity research as an adjacent framework to depth psychology, foregrounding the role of autobiographical storying in the construction and maintenance of personality coherence across the lifespan.
, Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction, 2004aside