Encountering Our Daimonics: Existential dynamics within experiences trauma and humiliation

Abstract

In order to understand the turbulence of our times, we must first turn to understand our own daimonics. Existential daimonics refers to our human capacity to bring about both great destruction/devastation and construction/ creation in our own lives, the lives of others and the world around us. There is no ‘us and them’ when it comes to daimonic destructiveness and constructiveness; what divides us is ethical and reflexive. Extending and reformulating the work of Rollo May and Stephen Diamond, and drawing on contemporary phenomenological psychotherapy, I suggest that understanding and holding the existential tensions that arise from the dynamic relationship within our personal daimonics can cultivate the ground for hope, understanding and healing.