Book Review: Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic

Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic. The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil and Creativity by Stephen A. Diamond. New York: State University of New York Press 1996.402 pp.

Stephen A. Diamond is an American psychologist with a passionate concern which I share, and that is psychotherapy's apparent helplessness in face of the increasing manifestations of violence at the present time. Dr. Diamond sees this violence essentially rooted in our disregard for anger and rage which we have come to see as entirely negative qualities to be denied.

Though I have reservations about this basically psychodynamic explanation, I do agree that this disregard is haunting a great deal of psychotherapeutic theory and practice. This is also and perhaps particularly true of existential psychotherapy -I am talking here of a therapy based on the philosophical assumptions of Continental existential phenomenology which have their origin in the writings of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In the various books written by existential psychotherapist (including my own) I have yet to come across an existential-phenomenological analysis of anger, rage and violence which would help to understand and meet these phenomena when they appear in our practice.

Thus I agree with the author when he indicates that there is a gap in the existential approach. I do not agree with him, however, when he suggests that what we need is 'depth', or 'a new myth'.

This is a book of 400 pages, diligently researched with an extensive bibliography. I cannot hope to do it justice in this review, and in my attempt to sum up the gist of Dr. Diamond's thinking I risk being thought guilty of misunderstanding and over-simplification. All the same I shall try to give a brief outline of his argument.

The author seems to suggest that we repress - or as he more frequently says 'suppress', to indicate the presence of a conscious element in the process - our anger and rage, and it is this denial which finds its expression in different forms of violence. Our denial is due to misunderstanding anger and rage as utterly destructive and therefore unacceptable. We do not see that both anger and rage have a positive, creative aspect.

At this point, Dr. Diamond introduces the notion of the 'daimonic', a notion elaborated by Rollo May and defined by him as 'any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person' (p.45). The most important aspect of the daimonic is that it 'includes the diabolic as well as the divine human endowments, without making them mutually exclusive' (p.81). The daimonic thus transcends the dualism of 'good' and 'evil'. The daimonic must not be mistaken for the 'demonic' which is purely negative. It is the demonization of the daimonic which leads to the complete non-acceptance of daimonic forces, that is, anger and rage, and their suppression.

In this situation the author expresses the aim of psychotherapy in a 'redefinition' of depth psychology 'to include the various forms of psychotherapy that deal directly with the daimonic, and encourage the constructive integration into consciousness' (p.183). I am, however, unclear - and I may have missed an important strand in the argument - what this process of facing the daimonic 'directly' and integrates it into consciousness actually entails. The author questions the value of catharsis which may just lead to a form of 'acting out'. He also shows how a turn towards spirituality, may result in the very denial of aggression which is at the core of the problem.

Dr. Diamond says that 'the painstaking discernment of these daimonic contents as they tentatively enter consciousness' is the aim of what he calls 'existential depth psychology'. The psychotherapist's job is to assist the "patient" in patiently persevering during the oftentimes tedious process of discerning whether these angry feelings... would be most likely be the source of evil or creativity' (p.231). But what is the way from a suppressed feeling of rage to the possibility of such discernment?

Finally I would like to address the author's suggestion that there is a need for an 'existential depth psychology'. The depth psychological elements of the method he describes are clear: an unaccepted or unacceptable feeling is repressed and returns into consciousness transformed (how?) into destructive behaviour. By facing and integrating the denied feeling, it is deprived of its destructiveness. On the other hand, there is an existential element in Dr. Diamond's suggestion: the emphasis on the responsibility of the client. "The final responsibility for deciding, how and when to satisfactorily assert the daimonic - and when not to - rests with the individual" (p.231). The client needs to ask him/herself questions like 'In this circumstance do I desire evil or good? How do I, personally, define evil and good?' (p.231). These seem to me extremely difficult questions and I fail to see how the context of the suggested therapeutic work would enable clients to answer them.

In fact, I wonder whether such a thing as 'existential depth psychology' is feasible. After all, the concept of 'depth' suggests a structured psyche with different interacting levels and such a view is not part of existential phenomenology's definition of being human as a 'Being-in-the-World'. Nor would such an approach try to understand a client's violent behavior as the outcome of one particular situation but rather as the result of a total life situation in which past, present future merge.

Existential psychotherapists will have to attempt their own phenomenological exploration of violence and its meaning. When the author of this book says that 'most violence... stems from the fiery human emotions of anger and rage' (p.9), he does not describe its meaning, as he intends, but give us an explanation. This is not the place to undertake such an exploration, but I am grateful to Dr. Diamond for underlining so passionately the need for doing it.

Ernesto Spinelli.