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

The Demonic in the Self 69influence of daimons. 61 Diamond emphasises that the “cathartic expression”of the daimonic area is not a sufficient reaction to it. The daimonic has to beintegrated into one’s sense of self, otherwise some powerful areas are alwaysmaking war against the consciousness. 62 The techniques suggested by Diamondfor this process are based on our capacity for dialogue, emotions, andfigurative imagination or fantasy.One traditional Jungian method utilizing the “structure of consciousness”to dialogue directly with the daimonic is a form of waking fantasy knownas “active imagination.” In active imagination, the patient may at times betaught to allow images deriving from the daimonic to spontaneously wellup into consciousness, permit them to speak, and actively respond to theircompelling messages. This technique necessitates a solemn, respectful attitudetoward the daimonic, one which takes the daimonic seriously, valuesit, and honors its voice. With this attitude, Jung’s useful but demandingmethod of confronting the daimonic symbolically, in one’s inner world ofimagination – that is, conscientiously attending to and amplifying the imageryof the daimonic, as it appears in dreams, for example – can providepatients with an alternative to having to “act it out” in the outer world. 63Diamond believes that he finds this process illustrated in the Oresteiaby Aeschylus. This series of plays has been described as a “rite of passagefrom savagery to civilization.” 64 It is the only surviving classical Greek trilogy(it remains without the fourth part, the satyr play Proteus). The plot, ofcourse, consists of the most famous murders in the bloody history of thehouse of Tantalus and Atreus, the killing of Agamemnon on his return fromTroy by his wife Clytaemnestra, and the subsequent matricide by their son,Orestes. In the third play, The Eumenides, Orestes is being pursued by theFuries (Erinyes), spirits of vengeance; the play culminates in a trial whereOrestes is acquitted and the Furies are transformed into the Eumenides, theKindly Ones. Diamond focuses on the individual psyche of Orestes and advocatesa psychological reading: “the Furies can be seen as the symbols ofOrestes’ horrible rage: first, fueling the vengeful, hot-headed murder of hishated mother; then, turning against himself in the form of guilt.” 65The idea of Justice, Dikê, is central throughout the Oresteia, and thetragic conflict in it is rooted in the incompatibility of the individual conceptionsof justice. In Nietzsche’s words, “Whatever exists is both just and unjust,and equally justified in both.” 66 Aeschylus depicts a process of mutualrecognition and reconciliation; the “irrational” is brought into contact withconscious deliberation and the drive to maintain balance. The discussions61 See above, pp. 24-26.62Diamond 1996, 223.63 Ibid., 233-34.64 Fagles 1966/1979, 19.65Diamond 1996, 239.66 Nietzsche 1872/1990, 65 [§ IX]. – The tragic conflict was theorised in analogousterms by Hegel in his Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Arts (1835/1988, 1196).