Proud Mary and Your Personality

It’s been three days, and Ike and Tina Turner have been keeping me company when I work with my articles. Tina narrates during the first part while Ike balances her high voice with his low baritone. “So we’re gonna take the beginning of this song and do it easy.” She starts, but then finishes with “Then we’re gonna do the finish rough.” True to her promise, the first part of the song was slow and it glided through the air, and if songs were fabrics, this part was the smoothest silk you can find. It migrates to the fast-paced, blood-pumping pace and the duo had escalated their voices and energies to keep true to finishing it rough. It was where we are reminded that this song was a rock song. And that was how they did Proud Mary.

It actually got me thinking. Yesterday, while I was in my class, we were discussing about Personality and its definitions. I have to admit, Proud Mary continued to resonate in my mind while we were discussing since it was the perfect example of what we were talking about.

During class, personality was first defined with its etymology. It was derived from the word persona which denotes the theatrical masks that were popular during that time. Masks were used in theatre during the Greek and Roman era mainly because there were no female performers.

Persona was favored by most authorities, but some believed that the Latin phrase personare was a better fit. It translated to the phrase to sound through. This allowed people to define personality with two parts: the inner self (the true self) and the outer self (or the mask-like self)

Over the years, personality has been defined by a lot of people. It has ranged from definitions acknowledging the existence of the inner and outer self, while some chose to omit one. Carl Jung’s defines personality as “your public self-image”. And he was right, but is it the whole story?

Proud Mary wasn’t all easy and rough, was it? It had notes playing around various octaves; it played with percussions, strings, other vocals besides Ike and Tina. It’s not just the fact that it was played as smooth as silk one moment, then as rough as crushed ice the next. It was comprised with different elements that produced something so powerful.

It’s not all easy and rough, and with personality it’s not at all black and white like Jung or the earlier theorists have said. In fact, it was never just two sides. There was more to a person than we are ever being lead to believe.

Gordon Allport has given us a definition that most experts consider as the formal definition of personality: what a man really is. This statement indicates that personality is the typical and peculiar characteristics of a person. Later on, he remodeled his definition as “a dynamic organization within an individual of the phsychophysical system that determines his or her characteristic behaviors and thoughts.

We are all formed with different bits and pieces that make us who we are. Still, some people stick with the notion that we have only two selves, while others say that Allport has a point and personality is not only defined by the inner and outer self. Do you agree with Allport and his definition? Or would you rather go with what Jung said? Regardless, the way you do you is as rock and roll as the way Ike and Tina perform their awesome song.

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