god forbade...must reading

Facade Depersonalization

   Masquerade is as old as life itself. Throughout history and cross cultures, mask accompanies man. The very word persona originates in Greek theater, meaning a mask an actor wears to hide his own identity and to project the one he performs. Almost every culture preserves myths or legends of alter egos. Another hidden self, doppelgangers or doubles. How do these phenomena relate to depersonalization?

   Masks and doubles appear to be parts of the broad depersonalization spectrum, a continuum of changed identities. Depersonalization presents elements of a dialogue with what feels like my mask. The self looks at the self, as if an outside other. I feel as if all I do is not my real actions but just a masquerade. I know that my face looks as it looks all the time. But it feels to me like a mask.

   Masquerade comes as a safe opportunity to play with different sides of one's own identity. Art therapy or psychodrama also derives their healing properties from the tradition of masquerade.

   There are many people today who are artists in this sense though they may not have the portfolios to prove it to the world. For many creative people, the appropriate media for self-expression may have disappeared from modern life, or not even been invented yet. Success, in the eyes of the world, is largely a matter of talent, timing, and luck.
But being an artist by nature constitutes being an outsider, to some degree. Whether a person has a specific talent for self-expression or not, depersonalization opens the door to a different way of seeing, a different reality.

    It’s what depersonalized people must do to maintain their daily facades at school or at work, lest others should see the no one that lays beneath the mask.

Elena Bezzubova

in The Search for Self

Psychology Today 

 

See Derealization , Amygdala and A Number Lives