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The Mechanisms of Personality
The mechanisms of personality are difficult to intercept. The acrylic paintings that explain them, show us how, in our life, coherence is not our strong point.
During the day, we often change our behavior: in the office, we behave differently than at home, and we show a different side to each person. We are never ourselves or, perhaps, only very rarely, say when we remove our mask or in moments of deep pain.
In our everyday lives, we start some strange mechanisms. We start them without knowing it, but they act and condition our way of thinking and of seeing reality. We do in this case our best to escape truth and to turn down good proposals. We continually change our minds, our programs, we set goals and we let them fall; we wish what we can’t have; we hate and we get angry.
Looking at the mechanisms of personality remembers to us, (explaining it with acrylic paintings), that we behave like some actors. When we get so much into a role, it becomes hard to get out of it when we leave the theater. When the comedy is over, we try to set the scene outside, to go on playing out and out. Whether it is a tragedy or a comedy, it is not us!
It is a way of playing a game, but a more deep and persistent way, because it concerns ourselves. Until we like that role and until we believe it gives power to us, we remain stuck in it.
I consider personality as a frozen idea; it is an obstinate strain, caused by an illusion, a prejudice, a stubborn point of view. If somebody tries, for instance, to stop for a long time the emotion of fear, he is going to create a fearful personality and his behavior will take different forms, but always stereotyped. The one remains motionless, the other acts reckless, but none of both have really chosen what they are doing. In fact, lack and excess of action are both ways to escape fear. The one remains stuck by fear, the other tries to overcome it by facing it.
Personality acts despite us
Personality acts despite us. It is as if we had entrusted our life to it. We are no more free to choose. It will face whatever happens in our place, and it will cause us to make always the same choices. We become foreseeable.
Sometimes we notice we are repetitive, but we say to ourselves, “I am this way!”. Actually, only our personality is this way. And we bravely defend it, we fear something will change. Should some change happen, we would feel unnatural. We feel as if our defenses go down, as if we were as helpless as children.
As shown in my acrylic paintings, our personalities are strategies we use to try solving an emotional problem, when we cannot elaborate it. The emotional force we have blocked will then continue acting in us by exaggerating things.
Aurora Mazzoldi