Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

2. The Demonic in the SelfBut ancient Violence longs to breed,new Violence comeswhen its fatal hour comes, the demon comesto take her toll – no war, no force, no prayercan hinder the midnight Fury stampedwith parent Fury moving through the house.– Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1Demons were chasing me, trying to eat me. They were grotesque, surreal,and they just kept pursuing me wherever I went. I was fighting them withsome kind of sword, hacking them to pieces. But each time I would cutone into small pieces, another would appear.– A dream of a patient;Stephen A. Diamond, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic 2THE SELFThe self is a problem. The long history of educated discussion about thehuman self has not succeeded in producing a consensus. Scholars working inthe same discipline do not necessarily agree on the fundamentals when debatinghow a human being should be understood. This is even truer as wecross disciplinary boundaries. Some think it is not necessary to presume theexistence of something like the “self,” others consider it more fruitful to approachhuman existence from different levels of observation altogether. Inthe area of literature and literary studies, in psychology, as well as in otherareas where individual experience is of paramount importance, the self neverthelesscontinues to raise interest. Even if theoretically disputed as the authorialfigure, the self of an autobiography, or the selves of some specificreaders, are explored as hermeneutic or phenomenological realities. The roleof the self appears no longer as the stable source or centre of meanings, butas a complex construction that is open to history and reinterpretation. Thischange also makes demons and the demonic in their relationship to self aninteresting area for research and re-evaluation.The self is perhaps best understood as an element of figurative language,a metaphor, as a way of interpreting, representing and unifying somethingintangible and heterogeneous. The attitudes of the Enlightenment arestill a strong undercurrent in our culture, and myths and metaphors are tooeasily labelled no more than lies or illusions to be debunked. George Lakoffand Mark Johnson among others have studied how metaphors and metony-1 Aeschylus 1979, 131 (Agam. 755-60).2Diamond 1996, 238.