Persona, Shadow, and Ego; BTS’s Map of the Soul: 7 and Carl Jung’s Archetypes

Abstract

Professor Murray Stein wrote a book named Jung’s Map of The Soul: An Introduction which goes into detail about the unknown territory, also called the human psyche. Through the discovery of the psyche, Jung came across different archetypes like Persona, Shadow, and Ego or Self which are observed in this study. Although there are many other archetypes, this study concentrated on these three and for this purpose, a K-pop group BTS was chosen to analyze these archetypes. Their album Map of The Soul: 7 incorporated these archetypes and they were observed through the lyrical analysis of specific songs present in their album. Although the literature for both the k-pop group and the theory of psyche was less, this qualitative descriptive research provides a direction for future researchers who can make use of other archetypes and find them in the whole discography of the boy group BTS and can make an extensive study of the effects of these archetypes in their lyrics.

Keywords: Archetypes, Persona, Shadow, Ego, Self, Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS), Korean Pop Music (K-pop), Psyche, Map of The Soul