Repression, projecting, displacement... all sorts of things I like to incorporate into my writing having been a psych major. I can't remember where I had read this and just looked briefly on-line and came up short, but there's also something about "the many faces" we have and to whom we show each. In theory, there's the face we show to our friends and then there's the face we show to our family. The one we wear when we're at work is often vastly different than the one we do at home. And then there's the one we don't show anyone... sometimes not even ourselves. All fascinating things that should be in any serious writer's arsenal.

"The many faces" is a key aspect of writing characters in my view. I call it "masks," like actors in ancient Greek plays used to put this mask or that in front of their face to signify a different character. This is merely a reflection of human interactions where we act differently in different contexts with different people and with our different moods. In writing, a way to wrangle that is to think of five primary character archetypes -- Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster -- and see how each of those can emerge in our characters. While their primary function in the story may be Protagonist, Nemesis or whatever, and that foundational function never changes in terms of the macro story, from scene to scene, relationship to relationship, characters can don 'masks' to play that part and provide that function on a temporal basis for that scene. This allows writers to explore the multiple layers of being that should be present in all our characters, at least the primary ones.

Probably the best film I can think of that exemplifies all of the above is Ordinary People. The dynamics played out by the characters continually shift, often times within the same scene. Great piece of writing.

[...] Written Interview: Seth Lochhead (gointothestory.blcklst.com) [...]