A Life Full of Holes:  Daimonic Defense and National Security (Prisoner of Infinity III)

DIDman
“This inner [guardian] figure was such a powerful ‘force’ that the term daimonic seemed an apt characterization. . . It could play a protective or a persecutory role—sometimes alternating back and forth between them.”
—Donald Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit
In the second chapter of Strieber’s 2012 release, Solving the Communion Enigma, titled “The Mirror Shattered,” Strieber describes a psychological phenomenon which he calls “shattering the mirror of expectation”:

I was very young when these things happened. Whatever they were, they certainly shattered the mirror of expectation for me, leaving me, like my wife and so many other people whose understanding of reality has been upended in childhood, open from then on to noticing what most people assume to be impossible and therefore do not see. Once the mirror of expectation is shattered, the door of perception is open, and there is something there, something alive, looking back at us from where the mirror once stood (p. 24).

In 2007, a Jungian therapist recommended me a book called The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit, by a clinical psychologist named Donald Kalsched. In it, Kalsched writes about a similar phenomenon as that described by Strieber, but reaches a somewhat different conclusion. Based on his psychotherapeutic work with abuse sufferers, Kalsched describes how early experiences of trauma “destroy outer meaning”—in reaction to which, “patterns of unconscious fantasy provide an inner meaning to the trauma victim.” He relates these “inner images and fantasy structures” to “the miraculous life-saving defenses that assure the survival of the human spirit when it is threatened by the annihilating blow of trauma.” Kalsched’s description precisely echoes Strieber’s accounts of being rescued by the visitors from abuse at the hands of unethical government agencies, as a child. In Kalsched’s model, the visitors are equivalent to psychic agents of daimonic intervention.

The word “daimonic” comes from daiomai, which means to divide, and originally referred to moments of divided consciousness such as occur in slips of the tongue, failures in attention, or other breakthroughs from another realm of existence which we would call “the unconscious.” Indeed, dividing up the inner world seems to be the intention of [the daimonic] figure. Jung’s word for this was “dissociation,” and our daimon appears to personify the psyche’s dissociative defenses in those cases where early trauma has made psychic integration impossible” (p. 11).

Intense anxiety in early childhood threatens to annihilate the child’s personality, causing “the destruction of the personal spirit.” When severe trauma occurs in early infancy (i.e., before a coherent ego and its defenses have formed), “a second line of defenses comes into play to prevent the ‘unthinkable’ from being experienced.” This allows the child to survive psychologically and physically, but in later life the psychic defense system becomes a prison, preventing “unguarded spontaneous expressions of the self in the world. The person survives but cannot live creatively.”

When trauma strikes the developing psyche of the child, a fragmentation of consciousness occurs in which the different “pieces” (Jung called them splinter-psyches or complexes) organize themselves according to certain archaic and typical (archetypal) patterns, most commonly dyads or syzygies made up of personified “beings.” Typically, one part of the ego regresses to the infantile period, and another part progresses, i.e., grows up too fast and becomes precociously adapted to the outer world, often as a “false self.” The progressed part of the personality then caretakes the regressed part (p. 3).

A person suffering from trauma may experience what appears to be an authentic spiritual awakening. Yet the “awakening” is really a form of (necessary) dissociation to escape the effects of trauma, and entails a splitting of the psyche into a progressed (“enlightened”) part and a correspondingly regressed part. This latter is in constant need of the protection and care of the “higher self.” The progressed part then acts as a “guardian,” whose function is not just to prevent further trauma, but also psychic integration.

 
To read full essay, order Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering, and the Psychology of Fragmentation

15 thoughts on “A Life Full of Holes:  Daimonic Defense and National Security (Prisoner of Infinity III)”

  1. I think there may be traces or trails leading to your hypothesis if one were to examine the popularity (or heavy promotion of) the program “Ancient Aliens”, the story (or stories) of “The Collins Elite” and their alleged belief that “extra-terrestrial entities” are in fact “demons”, and the “Satanic Panic” considered as some sort of “false flag” operation perpetrated by forces I’ve seen referenced as “evangeliCIAlism” elsewhere on the internets (“The Secret Sun” I believe? An interesting site.). There are some strange, (what I can only at best refer to as) “ephemeral” connections there; ones that get a little more unsettling when viewed through the lens (mythology?) of all the MONARCH ritual trauma programming horror stories, especially ones mentioning “MILABS” and “screen memories”. These are, at the moment, my own tenuous connections or conceptual scaffolding. Your theory seems to run parallel. Food for thought (or not).

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  2. I was watching an episode of “The Outer Limits” with my son tonight. The episode went by the name of “Nightmare”. Wiki has the following synopsis:
    “In response to an unprovoked nuclear attack from the planet Ebon, a group of soldiers – representing Unified Earth – is sent to fight the enemy on their alien world. Captured en route to Ebon, the soldiers undergo physical and psychological torture and interrogation at the hands of the Ebonites, who possess the ability to control the five senses. The prisoners become suspicious of each other when their captors claim they have received cooperation in obtaining military secrets, which is further complicated by each one’s past and ethnic origins, along with the unexpected appearance of high-ranking Earth officers among the hostile aliens. The earthmen are subjected to various interactive images of relatives and friends, which have been implanted in their minds during questioning, allowing them to feel a false sense of security, or to instill deeply hidden emotional conflicts. In the end, it is revealed that all of this is but a military “game”, organized by the Earth officers to test their troops’ loyalty and valor under intense interrogation and psychological stress. The Earth-Ebon war itself is a fake, as the Ebonites’ initial bombardment was unintentional. Unexpected accidents and deaths having occurred during the test, the Ebonites – who are, actually, a peaceful and honorable alien civilization – eventually ask for such an immoral and inhuman experimentation to end at once; but, nonetheless, fail to prevent one last man from being killed…one of the conspiring Earth officers thought to be an illusion created by the Ebonites to trick the captives into revealing more information.”
    Interestingly, the earthlings are caught in a psychological “game” organized by the military in which the aliens are both the oppressor and the revealer of truth. The episode is not entitled something referring to the alien/military aspect of the plot but is instead given the name “Nightmare”. The aliens are called Ebonites. Ebon meaning black. And black perhaps relating to darkness, psychology, sub-conscious…
    Also interestingly, the episode was to be aired November 25, 1963, but was moved to December 2, 1963. Seems some guy named Kennedy got shot and the event hogged most of the network airtime.
    ps. I think you’re presenting some really important work here.

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  3. You bring up many important issues – well researched and deeply considered. My mother, who had suffered terrible physical and sexual abuse as a child, died last year at 69 years old. I believe her life was shortened by the stress of struggling every day with demons. The physical abuse left her with traumatic brain injury and severe epilepsy, the sexual abuse cut a deep permanent scar down the center of her spirit. Throughout my life I witnessed her falling in and out of dark pits and dissociative states. By the way she was also drawn to books on alien abduction and spiritual possession – trying to make some sort os sense of it all. I am horrified to consider an organized group of people harming children and destroying their futures for some perverted sexual ?pleasure? — makes me want to denounce my citizenship in the ranks of human. My tiny hope is that people, such as you, will draw awareness and light to this. Fight the good fight, brother.

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    • Thanks Amanda, and sad to hear about your mother. I don’t think it’s as simple as seeking after sexual pleasure. It’s an attempt to get free of psychic poisons, projected outward into a religious/philosophic belief system about attaining nirvana/going to heaven, getting pas the archons, by any means necessary. A religious drive as much as a sexual one. It’s also mimetic in nature, so includes every one of us.

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  4. Jasun, This terrifies me. Thinking that there is some sort of value or logic to using vile actions for the quest of attaining higher consciousness/enlightenment is a complete abomination. Having grown up with the fallout of such abuse, I do agree that there are far reaching consequences — cannot fathom how anyone could find anything “good” or expect a positive outcome by using abuse and torture (yes, I’m opposed to Guantanamo — we’re not the good guys if we do such things). It is a perversion of our potential, not a path to greater evolution. My own experience of “higher states of awareness” were achieved through love, art, yogic practice, and immersions in nature.

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  5. 100% in agreement. And yet, trauma happens, and my own spiritual development, if I am to use the term, can’t be separated from my struggle to identify and heal that trauma, as in the archetype of Chiron the wounded healer. So when someone like Jeffrey Kripal explores the ways in which trauma can lead to an awareness of the soul (that which has been traumatized), he is not wrong, only that it is only a small “logical” leap from this to advocating trauma as a means to access the soul, as I think he is doing, albeit perhaps unwittingly… I put logical in quotes because what’s driving these philosophies and agendas is, or sems to be, largely unconscious on the part of the advocates and perps.

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  6. I’m rather new to your blog but have been a daily reader/listener for the past month. I’m also new to childhood sexual/physical/mental trauma as I’ve come across my own discoveries involving someone very close to me. As with you, I too, have been putting the puzzle pieces together and exposing the details to those involved and publicly. Something is pushing us to do this.
    I remember during my childhood seeing a man on our local, small town TV, black & white, newscast discussing the UFO sightings across the US Midwest in the early 70’s. It was my first exposure to the UFO theme. Later Whitley came on the scene but I was never captivated with his story nor UFOs in general. But I’m very glad you have delved into his various writings.
    I ran across an old high school buddy of Whitley’s online by the name of Toby Johnson who is also a writer, mostly gay spirituality. Whitley and Toby attended the same Catholic school, car pool mates, both loved science fiction. A written transcript of an interview I found online, Toby says he believes Whitley’s contact was in his head, not an actual abduction. Toby thinks we are being influenced by say ‘radio waves’ or such from outer space. He also, speaking as a gay man and proudly finds the much mentioned alien ‘anal probe’ a big interest.
    What I find most interesting about Whitley is his ‘Warday’ book published in 1984 along with atomic age historian James Kunetka. This book followed a very successful made-for-tv movie called ‘The Day After’ which aired on ABC, November 20, 1983, I think it is good to question just about everything we have ever been told, including the truth about an atomic bomb. My hometown was destroyed in ‘The Day After’ and the ultra-scary nuclear exchange occurred on my birthday.
    In my mind, 1984 was the turning point – SETI was established – McMartin Trial – Madonna ‘Like a Virgin’ – etc. My own life dived into an evil abyss in 1984 that I’m just now discovering. Cheers.

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  7. Some good comments here also: http://disinfo.com/2016/01/religious-engineering-alien-abduction-cia-finders-child-abuse/
    Damien Quinn • a day ago
    Another interesting piece.
    “The book recounts a “hidden life” in which Strieber and other children
    belonged to a secret school run by “the visitors” (curiously, he
    remembers them mostly as nuns, called “Sisters of Mercy”)”
    There are nuns called the Sisters of Mercy and they did run schools in Texas. They’re an irish order of nuns. The reports into abuse by the RC church in Ireland didn’t find as much sexual abuse in schools run by this order as it did in schools run by other orders, though they were known to be fairly physically abusive.
    I wonder if Streiber attended one of their schools. Was he traumatized by the crazy nuns and disassociated.
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    Damien Quinn Damien Quinn • a day ago
    He went to a Marianist Catholic school, which is all boys and run by a male order so, if he encountered any Sisters of Mercy, they were visitors to the school.
    Now, these ladies are interesting in the context of the story. They’ve been heavily implicated in Magdeline laundries in Ireland, which, if you’re unaware of them, were in the business of enslaving unmarried women who’d fallen pregnant and then forcibly putting their children up for adoption once they’d given birth. They have also settled forced adoption cases in Australia and New Guinea, and that’s only a couple of pages of google. right through the mid century too, so the timing is correct.
    They seem to have routinely altered records to hide children’s race, background and so on, and there have been mass graves found. The really mistreated these children, did they off load the troublesome ones on the finders? Did the alter the records of the adopters as well as the adoptees and, even if they didn’t, how deeply did they check into the backgrounds of the individuals who were adopting? A letter from your priest and a marriage certificate would have sufficed, I’d imagine.
    I wouldn’t put it past them either, they were involved in the abduction and disposal of children at the time and, according to the accounts of people who’d attended schools run by them, they were deep into the systematic physical abuse of children in order to psychologically control them, that’s what nuns did back then. This all sounds right up their alley.
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    Jasun Horsley Damien Quinn • a day ago
    Another piece in the puzzle, & no UFOs in sight. No wonder Mulder wants so badly to believe.
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    Damien Quinn Jasun Horsley • 19 hours ago
    Sorry, no Aliens. Maybe it’s a side track altogether but your mention of The Sisters of Mercy stuck out like a sore thumb. It hadn’t occurred to me look at an international angle on the RC/state collusion in child abuse that happened in Ireland but it’s easy to forget that the church is an international organization.
    Nuns, and the Marian cults especially, are a pretty deep rabbit hole. They’re all pretty gone on apparitions, visitations, direct communication with the virgin Mary, flagellation, contrition and penitence.
    As far as I understand it, they believe quite firmly in the purification of themselves through mortification of the body. The idea is that, if you punish your body sufficiently, you reach a state of innocence in which you’re granted a transcendental vision experience.
    So, if they routinely use things like starvation and physical pain to induce these states in themselves, would they balk at doing it to others? Also, using their worldview and logic, if children are already innocent, they don’t need as much punishment to cross over and eight of the ten acknowledged apparitions of Mary were to children.
    Finally, they may have viewed this practice as redemptive for the children, purifying them of their sinful entrance into the world.
    It certainly all fits well with their beliefs, actions and their culture at the time.
    Now, by 1987, I’m not sure they were still doing this in Ireland, it’s possible but, if it moved, Mexico and South America are candadates. There was quite a bit of RC Irish missionary work in S and C A in the 80’s.
    As for the whole national security shut down you mention in the article, what if the alphabets got wind of the transcendental nuns who bought, sold and used children and saw an interesting asset or avenue of investigation in whatever program followed on from MKUltra. Just a thought.
    see more
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    Jasun Horsley Damien Quinn • 12 hours ago
    Yeah that’s a solid extrapolation, be very interested to see if there is further evidence of this possibility. The crossover between the Jesuits, child-rearing, self-flagellation, and intelligence work is pretty well-known. Maybe that’s a good place to start?
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    Damien Quinn Jasun Horsley • 6 hours ago
    I went and took a look at the Ryan report, a report commissioned into the industrial schools in Ireland and the abuses there. I’ll link it below. It seems the Sisters of Mercy ran their congregations pretty autonomously, at least in Ireland, under the direction of the local Bishop rather than a centrally organised order.
    They amalgamated in the early 90’s and, surprise-surprise, an awful lot of the records haven’t survived.
    In any case, there might be a few people who can tell me how these things worked in practice, though it’s going to be third hand word of mouth stuff, but I’ll let you know. The report did indicate that there was almost no child psychology training given to the sisters at the time but it is specific to Ireland and the nuns were autonomous so it won’t apply to their practices in Mexico, Texas, the UK, Australia and wherever.
    Anyhow, I’m not sure how interested you are in all this, or how much it helps your research, but let me know if I can be of any assistance in navigating it.
    http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-VOL2-06.PDF

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  8. Jason, your line of thinking here is incredible . I was once a Strieber follower too. Aliens, crop circles..all of it….Of course I can’t say what is real and what is not for WS with any certainty but nowadays I veer between your take and the possibility that he is a state managed hustler perpetuating distraction. Bread and Circuses on the one hand for the general public and maybe at a more sinister level deliberate distraction from the reality of the abuse experience for those individuals who have been systematically used.
    In the years that I was entranced by all things alien, other worldly, occultish-spritual searching for why I felt as I did, I became involved in an online discussion/study group for subjects of this nature. We had a Teacher. I’ll call her K. She was very skilled at what she did which is keeping the conversation circular while appearing to provide educational and enlightening information. She was the one who told me to listen to Strieber. She was allegedly a victim of alien abduction as well. But more importantly now she was channeling very important information from some ET entity from the future.
    K was no dummy. Mensa smart. But the longer she hustled Strieber and others like him and kept conversations on some topics but vehemently shut down others the more I began to see how I had been suckered. She was an exemplar of a master of mind control really. Alternately, seductive then cruel. Pacifying and then aggressive. Always demanding and always the smartest in the room. She was never to be challenged. She actually began to deteriorate in her role the longer she played it. Or maybe I just wised up. Maybe both.
    Shortly before I left her forum she was really pushing me and a few others to study Alice Bailey. I mean it was a hard sell. The problem for K’s agenda was that I was very familiar with AB but from a very different perspective. I knew that AB and her Lucius Company were proponents of progressive dumb down arational, highly emotional and reactive ed practices. Play dough and group processes in every classroom. Facts for the Elite Chosen only.
    In the end I am 99% sure that she was (is) a kind of State directed sock puppet/shill tasked with collecting and steering “seekers.” Just one more dedicated soldier in the line of duty working to create transformed human souls.

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