8 - Demon/Daimon/Daemon

New Rhetoric of Paranoia tomb

06 Mar: The Rhetoric of Paranoia in an ESTJ Culture

In this patriarchal and heavily capitalistic culture that privileges the thinking functions, feeling seems to dominate the unconscious collective psyche. In the rise of cults of personality in their contemporary manifestation, the inflated extraverted thinking function establishes a goal; then anything that does not adhere to that universal aim is excised. In this crusade-like paradigm, connection to the genuine feelings and needs of a diverse community is lost as unhealthy extraverted thinking tightens its grip on power.

tanning_blue_mom

19 Apr: The Wisdom of the Witch

I was in the grip of my own unconscious, projecting the shadows I was grappling with onto the work environment around me. I felt compulsively gripped by a desire to “fight the evil empire.” At my darkest point, I disregarded the fact that I did not have all the details and simply projected my personal beliefs and limited perceptions onto every decision made.

baziotes_the-mirror

16 Oct: Mine, Yours, and Ours

Being married is easily the hardest thing I have ever done. Marriage is an all-consuming project that requires energy, commitment, and sustained effort. Unlike my other projects, I can’t just ignore my marriage until inspiration strikes. Mostly, there’s no faking it. As an introvert in an extraverted world, faking it is a lot of how I survive.

cobain_kurt

03 Jul: The “Forever 27” Tragedy

The environmental wounds to Cobain’s natural INFP disposition left his ego vulnerable to an anima invasion. It was she who allowed the instinctual power of the unconscious, in both its creative and destructive properties, to flow through the inferior function and overrun his personality, attempting to restore order by instigating archetypal modes of adaptation.

munch_woman_on_shore

03 Jul: The English Patient in the Mirror

The more I fell apart inside, the more I needed outside structure and order. One night I dreamed of an interior colorless and noiseless explosion that was followed by a voice that boomed, “You have the courage to let your interior world be chaos; there are no walls where there should be walls. You are a crab, and you need an exoskeleton.”

mualla_the_jazz_band

22 Jan: When the Music Plays the Band

The dynamics of creative process and psychological wellbeing are such that creative artists are often overcome by the demonic. From Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to Curt Cobain’s Nirvana, there is an artistic star swallowed by the unconscious every week. But the arts can also be a type of savior—a place for us to process our darkness and not become it.

rayograph_the_kiss

11 Jul: Finding the Gold in the Iron

A marriage is not only a dynamic story of two but also a mirror of the innermost soul workings of one, a journey of the disparate parts of one’s self seeking integration, finding their way home. If I have learned anything about marriage it is this: the greatest legacy I can offer my outer marriage is soulful, abiding attention to my inner union.