“Look at this…
(it’s ashes.)
We could have built a new Krypton
in this squalor.
But you chose
The Humans
over Us.
I exist, only to protect Krypton.
That is The Sole Purpose
for which I was born.
And every action I take,
no matter HOW Violent, or how CRUEL...
is for The Greater Good...
of My People.
And now...
...I have no People.
My Soul...
...that is what you have
taken from me.
I'm going to make Them suffer, Kal.
These Humans you've adopted —
I will take them
ALL from you...
…ONE by ONE.
— Zod.
“Kalsched describes a split between the vulnerable and shamefully hidden remainder the "whole Self," often portrayed as a child or animal, and "a powerful, benevolent or malevolent great being" who protects the innocent being.
What seems counterintuitive in his description is that this "protector" should show itself also as a malevolent force in the psyche, one that often persecutes the personal spirit and shows itself to the dream ego as a daemonic and terrifying force.
He notes that most "contemporary writers tend to see this attacking figure as an internalized version of the actual perception of the trauma.”
However, for Kalsched, this is only half correct since "the internal figure is often EVEN MORE SADISTIC and brutal than the actual `outer world perpetrator."'
For Kalsched, this indicates that we are dealing with something that is contributed from The Psyche, a psychological factor and "an archetypal traumatogenic agency within The Psyche itself."" It is strange to think of such a brutal force as a "protector."
Kalsched explains that the intention of this daemonic force is to prevent at all costs the reexperiencing of the horror, the genesis of the traumatogenic organization.
The daemons of the inner world, like the temple lions at the entrance of sacred spaces, serve to keep away The Unprepared.
They will "disperse fragments (dissociation) or encapsulate it and sooth it with fantasy (schizoid withdrawal) or numb it with intoxicating substances (addictions) or persecute it to keep it from Hoping for Life in This World (depression).""
Hope would open The Soul, leaving it vulnerable to what is imagined as an even more painful experience than that which the "protective daemon" enforces on the wounded "personal spirit."
It is often the case, however, that The Cure is worse than The "Illness," even if this cannot be seen from within the experience of the overwhelming threat that continues in the wake of trauma. The fact that The Ego does not notice the problematic character of The Cure sets the stage for the fact that "the primitive defense does not learn anything about realistic danger.... Each new life opportunity is mistakenly seen as a dangerous threat of re-traumatization and is therefore attacked. In this way, the archaic defenses become Anti-Life Forces which Freud understandably thought of as part of The Death Instinct."
This is not surprising since the "self-care system" will "go to any length to protect The Self" in spite of the continual masochistic suffering involved, "even to the point of killing the host personality in which this personal spirit is housed
As a result, what was intended to be a defence against further trauma now becomes itself destructive in a variety of ways: "The person survives but cannot live creatively.""
Such consequences also manifest themselves in the ravages of depression and melancholic affect "engineered by our self-care system..""
