JOHNNY DEPP, AMBER HEARD: ON FAME, THE PERSONA AND THE MIRROR
A Necessary Introduction:
Anonymity is your most valuable asset. The proof is if you lose it, they will pay you a lot of money.
Millions of words have been spun about the Depp-Heard defamation trial. None, in my mind, hit a target that needs to be brought forward, examined.
I grew up around famous people. It was not due to anything I did.
My father was a psychiatrist. He taught in medical schools at Yale, Washington University, the Universities of Indiana and Florida, and for five decades had a private practice in Sarasota, Florida.
At Washington University he became friends with William Inge who was teaching in the drama department. I think that is where Dad′s contact with show business began. He helped writers, directors and actors develop their fictional characters; back then, in the 1950s and 60s, a supreme value was placed on making them psychologically correct, real. I see Dad′s handiwork in William Inge′s “Splendor in The Grass” (Natalie Wood) and “Bus Stop” (Marilyn Monroe).
After we moved to Sarasota, the show business connection continued. Elia Kazan – “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh) and “East of Eden” (James Dean); Budd Schulberg - “On The Waterfront” (Marlon Brando, Karl Malden); Joe Hayes - “The Desperate Hours” (Humphrey Bogart in the move, Paul Newman in the play); Irving Vendig - “The Edge of Night” and “Perry Mason”; Lee Goodman – “The Cincinnati Kid” (Steve McQueen): the list goes on and on. Some became close family friends.
They never went to Dad′s office – patients would recognize them in the waiting room and the rumor mill would crank up; instead, they came to the house where I talked with them until Dad came home from work.
Those extraordinary people made an impact on me which was 95% unspoken; all they had to do was sit there and it happened. They set me, an adolescent, straight early on about a lot of things (“Success? Success only lasts 15 seconds, then it′s back to work.” – Irving Vendig). They were incredibly generous, hardcore perfectionists. 200% professional.
I can′t close this Introduction without noting they all had remarkable faces; if Elia Kazan were just a guy sitting at a bar you would notice him.
With the above Introduction as background, I forge ahead with my take on Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Unlike Dad, I am not a psychiatrist, however, I can read and observe. You can too.
Here is what, I think, is not being said, but needs to be.
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The "persona" is a theme that constantly emerges in Depp-Heard discussions. When are actors acting? I turn for insight to C.G. Jung, the psychoanalyst who worked in depth on the phenomenon:
(i) "The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual." "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.305.
(ii) "Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face." "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.43
We come to what I regard as the crux of the entire Depp-Heard affair. Jung:
"Every calling or profession has its own characteristic persona. It is easy to study these things nowadays, when the photographs of public personalities so frequently appear in the press. A certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional people endeavour to come up to these expectations. Only, the danger is that they become identical with their personas - the professor with his text-book, the tenor with his voice. Then the damage is done; henceforth he lives exclusively against the background of his own biography. . .The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin, and a desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this Nessus shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of immortality, in order to transform himself into what he really is. One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is." "Concerning Rebirth" (1940). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.221.
Lives exclusively against the background of his own biography. Johnny Depp once said he did not want to become a “product.” In other words: a commodity. A thing. But that is what happened. No discussion of him can take place without noting how much money he makes. That is the giveaway that a persona has welled up, taken over. The reason: you may have this or that view about who you truly are, but it is the persona that makes the money.
On to Amber Heard. Jung again:
"I once made the acquaintance of a very venerable personage - in fact, one might easily call him a saint. I stalked round him for three whole days, but never a mortal failing did I find in him. My feeling of inferiority grew ominous, and I was beginning to think seriously of how I might better myself. Then, on the fourth day, his wife came to consult me.... Well, nothing of the sort has ever happened to me since. But this I did learn: that any man who becomes one with his persona can cheerfully let all disturbances manifest themselves through his wife without her noticing it, though she pays for her self-sacrifice with a bad neurosis." "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious" (1928). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.306
Unless you are from Mars or Gilligan′s Island, you have watched on the Internet and mass media an endless barrage of derogatory comments about Amber Heard. Liar, burn the witch, bad actress are a few of the tamer ones I can repeat here. Unlike the rest of the world, I will not pass moral judgement but rather present the missing and missed target:
It′s all there in Internet courtroom videos. When Amber Heard testifies , watch what is happening in the light of what Jung observed. What you are seeing is “a bad neurosis” playing center ring in a Virginia courtroom – Jung′s “disturbances” originating in a wife′s self-sacrifice to a man who is one with his persona. True, Johnny Depp had little or no say in the matter, it was forced on him; equally true, Amber Heard didn′t have to marry him; she clearly had no idea what she was getting into. Neither did he. JOHNNY DEPP, MOVIE STAR, welled up, took control, ran both of their lives, not vice-versa. A thing. Mutual abuse – hurled fists and liquor bottles – was the inevitable result, the order of the day – and night.
The tragedy was that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard had no one – certainly not their lawyers or the social media or their entourage of cocaine-sniffing facilitators - to help them become conscious of what was in play. They still don′t.
No one to help them – make them – look in the mirror; step into the fire. Stop confronting their partner; start confronting themselves.