I found this article in one of my Psychology text books. It was written by Sydney J. Harris. If I find the book i'll be sure to put the entire reference.
The personality of man is not an apple that has to be polished, but a banana that has to be peeled. And the reason we remain so far from another, the reason we neither communicate nor interactin any real way, is that most of us spend our lives in polishing rather than peeling. Man's lifelong task is simply one, but it is not simple: To remove the discrepancy between his outer self and his inner self, to get rid of the "persona" that divides his authentic self from the world.
This persona is like the peeling on a banana: It is something built up to protect from bruises and injury. It is not the real person, but sometimes (if the ffear of injury remains too great) it becomes a lifelong substitute for the person. The "authentic personality" knows that he is like a banana, and knows that only as he peels himself down to his individuated self can he reach out and make contact with his fellows.
Most of us, however, think in terms of the apple, not the banana. We spend our lives in shining the surface, in making it rosy and gleaming, in perfecting the "image". But the image is not the apple, which may be wormy and rotten to the taste. Almost everything in modern life is devoted to the polishing process, and little to the peeling process. It is the surface personality we work on--the appearance, the clothes, the manners, the geniality. In short, the salesman ship: We are selling the package, not the product.
Thats it! I hope you like it as much as I do.
Polishing and Peeling
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Jeanne84