Bergman structures the film as a dynamic, terrifying struggle between Carl Jung's concepts of the Persona, the social mask, and the Shadow, the hidden, repressed self. Elisabeth represents the total rejection of the Persona; she sheds her public mask of actress and mother, retreating into silence to find her authentic self. Alma, whose name literally means soul in Latin, represents the fragile ego desperately clinging to her socially approved Persona of the dedicated, conventional nurse. When they are isolated together, Elisabeth's silence acts as a mirror that coaxes Alma's repressed desires, guilts, and sexual anxieties, her Shadow, out into the open. The conflict deepens because Elisabeth's rejection of her mask is itself a performance, a luxury paid for by Alma's labor. Bergman does not merely illustrate Jung; he critiques him by showing that shedding one's Persona is not a peaceful path to self-actualization, but a violent, parasitic process that threatens to destroy the ego entirely. The horror of the film lies in the realization that without our masks, we do not find purity, but a chaotic abyss of raw, destructive human impulses.■