Map of the Soul is one of the most important albums in the history of music GLOBALLY. No, it’s not because it was made by BTS but because it is perhaps the only album in history that gained international recognition that fully sought to understand human psyche by tracing people’s journey towards maturity. It isn’t just beautiful lyrics, music, beats, and rhymes in one album. In fact, it isn’t just one beautiful message. It’s a critical journey towards the most powerful thing each person has, our mind.
There are songs that talk about specific areas of our thought process but no other internationally recognized series of albums has been fully devoted to inspiring, triggering, and guiding listeners to go beyond their emotions and explore their own psyche and understand how their mind affects their personalities, dispositions, and ultimately, life and relationships.
It’s a sharp turn in theme. BTS’ early years have been all about exploring emotions, analyzing emotions, and talking about emotions.
Map Of The Soul is the first series they devoted to studying how those emotions are formed, affect our actions, design our lives and drive our relationships. It is cerebral through and through.
The rationale? It is only when you know why and how you react to things the way you do, perceive things the way you do, and form your understanding the way you do will you actually be able to start improving your thoughts, your emotions and your actions.
This is how BTS turned Jungian Psychology into a global pop phenomenon.
MAP OF THE SOUL: THE CEREBRAL APPROACH
Map of the Soul has three cornerstones, Persona, Shadow, and Ego. They served as the intro, interlude, and outro of Map Of The Soul: 7.
This traces the Model Of The Psyche developed and studied by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and founder of analytical psychology. While Jung developed many theories, systems, and studies, the core of his system is the belief that the whole of the individual’s experience should be respected and included. In layman’s speak, he believes that everything we are, the good, the bad, and the ugly must be recognized and accepted. Jung believes in recognizing and embracing the lows and highs of our experiences and thoughts. It is only then can we really strive to become a better version of ourselves and achieve our full potential.
He calls this the process of individuation.
Jung identified four major archetypes or, as I usually call it, the components of ourselves.
The PERSONA, SHADOW, AND ANIMA/ANIMUS.
According to Jung, our mind or psyche is a self-regulating system (like the body). While our body has organs that serve different purposes that are independent of each but affect each other, our psyche has components that function independent of each other but affect each other.
Just like our body organs who try to function as well as it could to make our body healthy, our psyche strives to maintain a balance between opposing qualities while at the same time actively seeking its own development or as he called it.
The first is Persona.
PERSONA
In BTS’ album, Persona is the intro, written and performed by RM.
In Jung’s archetype, the persona is our relationship to the society. Think of it like a mask we wear so we can fit in, get recognized, and find our place but on the other side of the mask is our true self.
The origin of this Latin word goes back to the masks worn by actors in antiquity. The mask, or persona, looks like ourselves, but it is largely influenced by the outer world; therefore, it is a kind of compromise between the individual and society. Persona is how we appear to other people and how we want to be seen by other people.
We have various persona during our lifetime, according to each developmental phase, but that’s another post for when we dive deeper into the BTS’ music.
One interesting thing is that Jung emphasizes that the persona is not individual but collective. That is important when we talk about the songs in Map Of The Soul 7.
Another important point Jung made is that the person is eventually dissolved and our ego and shadow fuse with it later on life. Again, remember that because that will figure into the songs in the album.
SHADOW
Shadow is the title of Suga’s Interlude in Map of the soul 7.
In Jung’s archetype, this is the part of our unconscious mind that Jung believed to hold all the things about ourselves that we repress, whether because they are evil, socially unacceptable, harmful to others, or detrimental to our own health. Our Shadows embody our inner darkness, the things about ourselves we hide, the damage we experience in our lives but never fully heal, desires we cannot satisfy.
Shadow is highly emotional, driven by primal instinct, often violent, and usually concealed from the social world by the conscious mind. Jung also believed the qualities in our Shadow were determined by the things we criticize the most in others. Jung believes that the more we repress our shadow self, the more it becomes stronger and the more our persona becomes weaker.
The key to stability with this darker nature is not to give in to the Shadow, but to embrace it and how it helps define one as a person, and find a balanced way to express it in one’s daily life.
EGO
Ego, in Map of the soul 7 was written and performed by Jhope.
Jung saw the ego as the organiser of our thoughts and intuitions, feelings, and sensations, and has access to memories which are not repressed.
The ego arises out of the Self during the course of early development. It has an executive function, it perceives meaning and assesses value, so that it not only promotes survival but makes life worth living.
I will not discuss anima or animus.
BTS TRACES THE JOURNEY TOWARDS MATURITY
Just as a quick review:
- Persona is who we are to society.
- Shadow is our hidden self, usually a darker one.
- Ego is the one that processes our emotions and feelings.
BTS started as outcasts or outsiders. They eventually achieve international recognition. That became their persona.
But boiling under the surface are 7 men navigating through an unchartered territory, lost and confused by the power they unwittingly got and responsibility that came with it.
That’s their shadow.
Just as Jung theorized, when we repressed our shadow too much, it becomes too strong and powerful that it starts to destroy our persona, our public face. That’s what happened to BTS. They almost broke up, quit the industry or pursue another career behind the camera.
Jung said that the only way we can keep our shadow in check is by accepting it but not giving into it. That’s what BTS did. As the persona disintegrates, the fullness of someone’s individuation starts.
They find their true selves and learn how to present it to the world. This is a process done by the ego.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO ALMOST EVERYONE
If I have a nickel for every time I hear people talking about rock stars going soft as they get older, or tyrants going softer when they start aging…
The reality is that the life we live when we are young is heavily influenced by our desire to find our place, get recognized, find our people, and be accepted by our choice of a section in the society.
Once the part of ourselves that we repress becomes too strong, we destroy that persona. That forces us to find our balance again and once we do, a more balanced self comes out.
This is what BTS inspired many to do, to get to know our shadow and persona and find a balance.
MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 STRUCTURE
The song opens with ‘Persona’. Remember, persona is the mask we wear to be accepted by society.
The song itself asks and seeks to answer a difficult question, who am I? The preceding songs deal with the different masks we wear.
Starting with ‘Boy With Luv’. While RM pounded himself with questions, Boy With Luv turned to others to ask questions pertaining to the other person. How are you? What makes you happy?
‘Make It Right’ continues to talk about one’s role to other people, as they accept becoming someone’s ‘hero’.
‘JAMAIS VU’ is about the cycle of an unhealthy relationship. They then start sinking down into the madness of their world in Dionysus.
Enter ‘Shadow’ by Suga. It’s angry, frustrated, and explosive. They have it all, the adoration of the world and they are still not happy. The shadow is repressed and it wants to break free. I am tempted to talk about the scary explosive anger in Suga’s delivery, from great to earth-shattering epicness. He is absolutely terrifying but I can’t, not in this video. Let me know if you want me to dive deeper into that.
‘Black Swan’ is the start of their death as artists. The fuel that fired them up has been consumed. That line about the moments becoming eternity is absolute genius.
And Jimin singing, almost shouting, brand new ‘Filter’ hit me like a ton of bricks. He was presenting himself like a product and we are the consumers. I don’t know how he, in his sultry voice, managed slap me with a truth I can’t ever deny.
In ‘My Time’, Jungkook talks about growing up, like a continuation of Begin. This time, he starts questioning who he is, opposite of the certainty he communicated in ‘Begin’.
In ‘Louder Than Bombs’, BTS starts pulling ARMY closer but only to make us see the reality they finally see, the darkness enveloping all of us.
And with ‘On’, they start standing up again ready to fight another day but with a greater certainty and a clearer direction.
In ‘UGH’, the rapline gives it all, screaming, cursing, throwing themselves and all their emotions towards anger. Yeah, they are angry at their anger, angry at their shadow.
They finally settle down at zero o’ clock, they are much more introspective, spent but slowly becoming wiser.
They start examining who they were in the beginning with ‘Inner Child’. They paid tribute to their friendship in ‘Friends’, paid tribute to ARMY with Moon, paid tribute to their craft and their bond with ‘Respect’, and paid tribute to this new chapter they are about to begin, beckoning ARMY to go with them with ‘We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal’.
Finally, the ‘Ego’ talk, written and performed by Jung Hoseok. And one of his last lines says it all, ‘Just trust myself’.
And with that, they start their journey to get to know themselves away from the fame, away from the recognition and expectation and into their core as persons and as artists.
And that is how they inspired ARMYs to start drawing a map of their souls along with them.
