Foster believed that Elisabet's gaze presents Alma with questions about her engagement to Karl-Henrik. According to Foster, sexual encounters between men and women are associated with abortion; lesbian romance has an increasingly shared identity. But if "Persona" dramatizes a lesbian relationship, it is not clearly favorable, as it is later characterized by narcissism and violence. If lesbianism is considered a stronger version of female friendship, or motherly love, Alma and Elisabet's relationship replaces the depiction of the Oedipus complex in the prologue when the boy reaches for his mother in vain. According to Jeremi Szaniawski, Bergman's use of homoeroticism (gay and lesbian) in "Persona", "Hour of the Wolf", "Cries and Whispers" and "Face to Face" was a rebellion against his strict upbringing by Church of Sweden minister Erik Bergman.