Cinq a sept, Nov 18 2010
LOVE & THE DAIMONIC- Rollo May, Love & Will
“If my devils are to leave me, I’m afraid my angels will take flight as well” Rilke-Briefe aus den Jahren, 1907 bis 1914
“The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger & rage, and the craving for the power for examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and it’s normally both. When this power goes awry and one element usurps control over the total personality, we have “daimon possession,”the traditional name through history for phychosis. The daimonic is abviously not an entity but refers to a fundamental, archetypal function of human experience-an existential reality in modern man and, so far as we know, in all men.
Still looking at my patient who had been obsessed with loneliness, let us ask. What was the constructive side of his daimonic which presumable had gone awry? Being a sensitive, gifted person, he had achieved notable success in practically all realms of human experience except personal intimacy. His gifts included a capacity for interpersonal empathy and a good deal of tenderness-most of which had been absorbed in his self-preoccupation. He had failed to use their capacities for relationship; he had been able to open himself up to others, to reach out to them, to share feelings and other aspects of personal experience, to identify with & affirm them in the ways necessary to build durable relationship. In short, what he lacked, and now needed, was the exercise of his capacities to love in an active, outgoing concern for the other’s welfare, for the sharing of pleasure and delight as an “I” with “Thou”, for a communion of consciousness with his fellows. The daimon, in the constructive sense in this case and put in the simplest terms, was his potentially for active loving.”
Love & Will, Rollo May, page 122-153
P.S: Pour que tu comprennes la situation et que tu sois à l'aise…
(So that you understand the situation and you feel comfortable…)
(So that you understand the situation and you feel comfortable…)
