Daemonic= fated suffering, the suffering we cannot escape because it is willed and sent by God.
People with milder, or less severe, afflictions — psychological [early child damage] or existential [later adult experience of harsh realities] — are not ‘moved’ to wrestle with what hurts them. They can get away with denying the hurt, defending themselves from the suffering. Nevertheless, they pay a heavy price for such escape. They remain in the shallows, and there they go ever more insensible and insensitive, blanded out, flat. Maslow calls them ‘the walking dead.’ He refers to the spouse not damaged enough to stop them from getting married, but in their denial of the damage they carry within them, incapable of making a real marriage. He speaks of the parent not so sick they can’t mother or father their child, but their parenting remains hollow, more a gesture than a real caring. He also speaks of the person not so damaged they cannot go out to work, but at work they find no satisfaction nor can they contribute anything. No need to worry over the Hollywood driven coming apocalypse of zombies. The state of ‘zombie-fication’ is already well advanced among many people today.. Maslow’s ‘walking dead’ are everywhere.
The unchosen and unwanted affliction we suffer is often, in a bizarre and spiritual way, necessary for great and profound spiritual qualities to be attained by us over a longer haul of our entire life.
Severe problems, psychological and existential, are a blessing because they are harder to deny, harder to flee from, harder to contain under repression, harder to throw away into the unconscious. We cannot escape huge problems that overwhelm our personal existence. When hit by problems of this enormity, you have to face them, you have to wrestle with them, you have to let them test and try you like gold in fire, or, you destroy yourself.. You go under. Or to keep the flight going, you make various deals with various devils.