The Possible Meaning Behind BTS's Trailer Titles "Persona", "Shadow", and "Ego"

Every ARMY has been there. Pouring through BTS‘s music videos and trailers and extra content, trying to connect the dots and come up with various theories as to how everything is connected.

The latest series of trailers for Map of the Soul: 7 have been no different, and fans have been theorizing what might connect the songs “Ego” by J-Hope and “Shadow” by Suga to Map of the Soul: Persona‘s comeback trailer, “Persona” by RM. The songs of these three rappers were first hinted to be connected by scribbles of the three words on a chalkboard, and though initial theories were that the Map of the Soul series would be a trilogy, that turned out not quite to be true.

Nevertheless, fans are still brimming with ideas as to what connects these three words and ideas together. One of the most popular ideas is that the three words are connected by a psychological theory. In particular, they’ve touched on theories thought up by famous psychologist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, and his ideas of how we present ourselves to the world.

One writer mentions how in BTS’s MMAs performance, the members purposefully put on an “ego”-filled display that can be interpreted as a “projection of self”, as a sense of identity much like Jung has described. Through “persona”, they reflected in on their inner selves, and reached the conclusion that ARMYs are their source of strength and their desire to know their fans and show their love for them. The “shadow” phase of the trio connects with “ego” as BTS looks back at the many years of their career, to remind themselves of their original calling and “lays out the process of finding the true self by combining persona and shadow”, as one Twitter user stated.

It’s all certainly quite confusing, and of course they’re all just theories. But RM and the rest of the members are known to get very deep into their creative process, so it’s not impossible that they were inspired by the theoretical ideas of a famous psychologist!