Michaels summarized what he calls "the most widely held view" of "Persona": that it is "a kind of modernist horror movie". Elisabet's condition, described by a doctor as "the hopeless dream to be", is "the shared condition of both life and film art". Film scholar Marc Gervais has suggested several possible interpretations: "a metaphor of the subconscious or unconscious", "one personality consuming the other", "the fusing of two personalities into one", or "the different sides of the same personality fleetingly merging". Gado suggested that "Persona" was "an investigation of schizophrenia, a story about lesbian attraction, or a parable about the artist".