Redeeming Our Inner Demons - an Interview with Psychologist Stephen Diamond

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Dr. Diamond says the idea of possession has been around a long time, and “it used to be believed — and still is by many people — that it is caused by entities of some kind, demons, devils and so forth.

“Jung is the one who talked about it most. He said the shadow, and the unconscious in general, has the power to possess the individual due to its unconsciousness; the more unconsciousness there is, the more vulnerability there is for that kind of possession in the negative sense.

“And he talked about complexes in particular, having the ability to take possession of one in a destructive way.”

Dr. Diamond notes that one illustration of this is the Robert Louis Stevenson story in which an unconscious personality, the shadow, has the power to take over, “because of its very dissociation: that’s what gives it its power.

“When Rollo May talked about the daimonic, part of the definition is the potentiality to be possessed, to be driven by it unconsciously, for it to take over and usurp the whole personality.”

[Photo is from movie ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ 1941 with Spencer Tracy, based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886).]

Here is more material from a related article of mine; this is not a transcript, but does include many quotes by Dr. Diamond from our interview.

A clinical and forensic psychologist, Stephen Diamond works with many talented individuals committed to becoming more creative. He says:

“Creativity is one of humankind’s healthiest inclinations, one of our greatest attributes.”

As he explains in his book, “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic,” our impulse to be creative “can be understood to some degree as the subjective struggle to give form, structure and constructive expression to inner and outer chaos and conflict.

“It can also be one of the most dynamic methods of meeting and redeeming one’s devils and demons.”

One artist Dr. Diamond mentions is painter and sculptor Niki de St. Phalle (1930-2002), who was able to find “a fertile outlet for her ferocious rage in her work, such as her ‘shooting paintings’ - see more of his comments below.