Freud's Daemonic — spacewhy

Freud, like some 15th century alchemist, is always on a diabolic quest to bring transcendental spirit down to earth. In the beginning of The Interpretation of Dreams he starts out with a bang, denying that dreams are divine: “We are told (by Aristotle) that dreams are not sent by the gods and are not of a divine character, but that they are ‘daemonic’, since nature is ‘daemonic’ and not divine. Dreams, that is, do not arise from supernatural manifestations but follow the laws of the human spirit” (1900 p. 2). We will note that the credibility of these laws of human spirit—and by that we mean any laws at all applied to psyche—is to be seen. In any case Freud is somewhat astonished at the notion of the “daemonic” and in an earlier edition, appended now to a footnote, he says that “Aristotle declares that dreams are of a “daemonic” but not of a “divine” nature; no doubt this distinction has some great significance if we knew how to translate it correctly.”

What is this “great significance” that Freud intuits?

A manifest reading will assume first the significance of bringing spirit to earth; the denial of the transcendent in favor of the immanent. In this case what is immanent is daemonic nature itself; that is dreams. Instead of early modern notions of divine soul given to man alone from the top down (particularly Descartes and his pineal gland—the divine organ and third eye), the divine soul becomes daemonic and earthly; coming from the bottom up as it were (the navel of the dream).

A latent reading might perform a translation using Freud’s own use of the term daemonic as found throughout the standard edition (Strachey uses the terms daemon and demon not quite interchangeably… the Greek daemon has an aura not shared with the medieval demon; this Greek aura is intentional, at least for Strachey; Freud, as far as I can tell, uses the single term dämon). My own working definition of Freud’s daemonic is that it is precisely what is beyond the pleasure principle: the death drive. Now if the pleasure principle is the foundational law of the psyche, and the daemonic death drive is what eludes or upends this law, then that which is daemonic is subject to no law.

So, at the very dawn of psycho-analysis, the great significance that Freud the scientist cannot quite make out is that, by taking spirit from the divine and giving it over over to the daemonic, he would threaten the very idea of order, scientific or moral. Daemonic nature—whether of human spirit, or of the planet—is never subject to the laws of Man.