The Sadomasochistic Perversion

The Entity and the Theories

Franco De Masi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429922077
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book examines the terminology used in the analysis of sadomasochism, surveys extensively, and in detail, the theories of other psychoanalysts, and explores the relationship between sadomasochism and depression; its relationship to psychosis, borderline states, and many other conditions.

Chapter One
Introduction

"In Diderot's tale, the good genie Cucufa discovers at the bottom of his pocket, in the midst of worthless things—consecrated seeds, little pagodas made of lead, and moldy sugar-coated pills—the tiny silver ring whose stone, when turned, makes the sexes one encounters speak. He gives it to the curious sultan. Our problem is to know what marvelous ring confers a similar power on us, and on which master's finger it has been placed; what game of power it makes possible or presupposes, and how it is that each one of us has become a sort of attentive and imprudent sultan with respect to his own sex and that of others"

Foucault, 1976, p. 79

This book arose principally out of the acute dissatisfaction I felt when, wishing to investigate in depth the nature and significance of the various forms of perversion observed in the material or fantasies of many analysands, both male and female, I attempted to compare my own views with the available psychoanalytic literature. I was surprised to find that there is no single, clear-cut psychoanalytic position on this subject.

Perversion is approached from such contrasting standpoints that its psychopathological significance is easily lost sight of. Perhaps the inconsistency of the various approaches stems from the fact that the symptom of "perversion" has so many different meanings that it calls for a variety of observational perspectives. However, this multisidedness cannot justify the tendency to generalize from or base theories on what may be regarded purely as clinical or therapeutic options.

Hence, it seemed to me important to shift the focus from the clinical level to that of theory in order to identify the points of agreement and disagreement on the sadomasochistic perversion and the theoretical foundations of the various positions. I was faced, therefore, with the problem of where to place the subject within the present-day spectrum of psychoanalysis—no easy matter in this age of "many psychoanalyses" existing side by side.

The attempt to outline the broad theoretical currents originating from a small number of founding fathers (or mothers) without oversimplification proved to be quite complicated. Nor did it seem useful, for the purposes of my specific subject, to reconstruct the complex geographical, cultural or historical reasons for the broad panoply of psychoanalytic theories with which we are confronted today.

My first finding was that theory reflects unchanged, but on a more abstract level, the divergences already encountered in clinical work. The theoretical standpoints underlying the various clinical approaches appear so remote from each other that radically differing developmental and prognostic meanings seem to have been assigned to perversion. Each psychoanalytic conception of perversion seems to cover only a part of its changing and multiform nature, so that, paradoxically, it may be useful and even desirable to adopt a multi-centred approach.

As I went on, another reason for the complexity and difficulty of investigating the nature of perversion emerged. Even though psychoanalysis has from the beginning attributed enormous importance to sexuality, to the extent of basing an entire theory of human development on it, psychoanalysts, like researchers in other disciplines, find themselves unable to penetrate in depth its intimate essence.

Human sexuality is generally held to be determined by not only biological but also psychological factors, and it is acknowledged that we still know very little about the role of the latter in the processes of an individual's love life and the development of his or her sexual imagination. It is hard to identify what is natural and what is learned in human sexual behaviour, just as it is not easy to comprehend the processes leading to sexual differentiation.

For example, if we were closer to comprehending the underlying causes of the diversity of the psychic and imaginative components of normal male and female sexuality, perhaps we should also come a little nearer to the understanding of perversion, whose mystery reflects the equally unfathomable enigma of desire and the choice of sexual object.

If we are to make significant progress in studying the subject of perversion, we must investigate the nature of sexuality in greater depth and arrive at a more exhaustive idea of the dynamics and context of orgasmic pleasure.

To gain a better understanding of the central importance of sexual pleasure and the power it exerts over the psychic life of the individual, I felt it essential to start from the experience of sexuality in itself, and initially to adopt a phenomenological and experiential approach, refraining as far as possible from any psychodynamic type of theorization. For it seems to me that such theorization can easily lead to a misunderstanding of the significance of human sexuality, which, whether included to excess in theories (in the form of psychosexuality) or, conversely, regarded as an epiphenomenon of the affective bond between persons (in theories of object relations or relational theories), has come to assume differing and irreconcilable psychoanalytic statuses.

Whereas extension of the concept of the sexual drive leads to denial of the differences between normal and pathological behaviour, excessive emphasis on the psychological dimension tends to obscure the specificity and autonomy of the sexual sphere.

I contend that the perverse experience, while retaining some continuity with shared sexuality, cannot be equated with or integrated in it. I therefore take issue with psychoanalytic theories that see perverse components as belonging to normal sexuality or consider perversion as including aspects potentially compatible with the affective and relational world.

As to the social field, in the last few decades perversion has emerged from the closet and become a group phenomenon in search of a seal of approval. Past phobic visions of sex, which relegated perverse sexuality to anonymity and secrecy, are no more, and seem to have now been superseded by a subtly ambiguous position that portrays a dose of "winking" transgression as the exercise of freedom. The aim of this communal organization is to remove perversion from the realm of solitary practice and, by strengthening the sexual identity of its protagonists, to increase their number. I do not regard perverse aspects in search of social confirmation as one of the variants of ordinary sexuality today. Perversion, in my view, remains the same, even if the form of social aggregation and the visibility of a long-submerged and misunderstood phenomenon have changed.

My own position avoids, on the one hand, the simple attribution of deviance to perversion and, on the other, the simplifying acceptance of "a measure of abnormality".¹

If new views are to be elaborated we must adopt an eccentric position with regard to established psychoanalytic theories and temporarily forget what has already been said. Moreover, my approach aims to purge the concept of perversion of a set of semantic accretions that have broadened its field disproportionately and sometimes denatured its meaning.

Metaphorically speaking, my aim is the isolation, within a complex organism, of a cell that I call the "sadomasochistic monad", in which I place the mental experience of destructive pleasure.

The sadomasochistic perversion thus emerges as a staging post on the way to a complex mental universe in which a certain type of pleasure is established as a single compulsive act. My description therefore emphasizes the dangerous and extreme aspect—the aspect that coincides with the sexualization of destructive pleasure. However, I do not neglect the fact that perverse behaviour or the acting out of fantasies often constitutes a transitional act symptomatic of other experiences, in which pleasure may be connected with the traumatic unpleasure of past negative experiences.

Another equally important issue is whether, among the numerous symptomatic and non-symptomatic expressions of sadomasochism, sexual perversion pure and simple can be distinguished. After all, analysts in their clinical practice encounter many manifestations of perverse fantasy in a variety of psychopathological contexts, but are seldom confronted with an actual, structured, sexual perversion.

The psychoanalytic study of the sadomasochistic perversion is hampered by the dearth of information based on clinical experience, since it is quite rare for a perverse individual to request psychoanalytic treatment.

The psychoanalyst is more likely to encounter perverse fantasies, especially of a masochistic type and sometimes confined to the moment of sexual intercourse, in persons (mainly women) who have to come to terms with their frigidity and whose lack of sexual pleasure is connected with traumatic infantile experiences. Although it is said that there is no such thing as sadism without masochistic aspects, I think it appropriate to isolate and distinguish a purely masochistic position, which may result from repeated traumatic experiences. Whereas in sadomasochism the positions may be constantly reversed, in these cases the only possible configuration is the erotization of submission, in which the subject never has any desire to assume the dominant position.

It is not unusual for a borderline patient, tormented by anxiety at the possibility of losing control over his mind in relation to the perverse experience that both attracts and terrifies him, to ask for psychoanalytic help. Here, too, however, the clinical picture is one in which the symptom of perversion is just one of the problems arising in a complex structure of balances and defences against anxiety.

One reason for the scarcity of relevant psychoanalytic case histories is that the customary grounds for confidentiality here become absolute, as a rule making it impossible to use the clinical material concerned where, as is often the case, it relates to highly secret and personal situations. The student of sadomasochism must therefore not only listen to his own patients but also be capable of utilizing documentary sources, such as autobiographical accounts, pornographic literature and certain types of films, which will help him to come into contact with those who are attracted by the link between the pleasure of domination and the pain of submission and have borne witness to it. My exposition thus also draws freely on literary testimony and autobiographical experiences.

The reading of such texts, not only corroborates and enriches the material we may hear and understand from patients during psychoanalytic sessions, but also bears out the fact that the perverse experience, notwithstanding the diversity of the characters involved and the complexity of each individual's imagination, takes the form of a "cell" possessing certain constant basic characteristics. This aspect not only characterizes perversion but also—despite the disguises it dons and the infinite variations accompanying it—gives it a repetitive, monotonous quality, invisible only to the pervert owing to the excitation that fuels it.

In this investigation, I emphasize the mysterious nature of the sadomasochistic perversion and the congruence of the psychoanalytic theories that attempt to explain it. Like other fields of knowledge, in which new scientific paradigms succeed each other or coexist in time, the present-day psychoanalytic landscape includes a number of mutually complementary models or parameters for the interpretation of clinical reality. I have done my best to examine exhaustively each of the successive psychoanalytic hypotheses on the subject, including those now current, as well as the premises underlying the ideas of the different authors who, despite their differing theoretical allegiances, agree on certain fundamental points.

In this connection, it should be recalled that the dynamic of perversion was used by Freud very creatively in his account of the early development of the infantile libido and in his hypothesis that there is a "background" of perversion in each of us; hence there remains the Freudian theory of the perversions according to which perversion is closely bound up with psychosexual development (cf. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905d; "A child is being beaten", 1919e; The economic problem of masochism, 1924c).

The Kleinian approach represents a departure from this theory. For its protagonists, the death drive underlies psychopathological structures, and perversion is one of the areas in which these structures operate and reinforce each other through sexualization, omnipotence and pleasure in the destructive domination of the other.

Other authors, who espouse relational theories, regard perversion—seen predominantly as an erotized form of relationship as a defence against catastrophic anxieties—as an existential strategy that may later develop into forms of integration of the personality.

In this book I shall review the principal theoretical contributions (those of Chasseguet-Smirgel (1984), Khan (1979) and Meltzer (1973) to mention only a few of the best known authors), because I believe that, notwithstanding the progress achieved in the psychoanalytic investigation of perversion, many areas of this phenomenon remain elusive and are not accounted for by our present-day conceptualization. Indeed, excessive dependence on theoretical models seems to preclude actual observation of the perverse experience, and may in some cases even lead to distortion of the sense of the observable data.

Although psychoanalysis is the discipline that allows the deepest understanding of the perverse experience, systematic observation of that experience is, as stated, rare in clinical practice. It is therefore not legitimate to generalize from individual psychoanalytic treatments, which should involve prolonged periods of well-structured therapy in addition to finely constructed theoretical models. The dynamic approach reveals the sexual perversions as coexisting with other underlying psychopathological structures, and shows how other pathologies can use mechanisms of the perverse type.

I have attempted to restrict the field of perversion to the sexual sphere, although I am aware that the symptom "perversion" is also manifested in other psychopathological experiences, such as, for example, sexualized states in psychosis, acting out in borderline pathologies, sexualized defences in depression, or disturbances of sexual life resulting from infantile traumas.

Finally, I have devoted particular attention to the areas of contiguity between perversion and other mental conditions, such as psychosis or criminality, and have attempted to identify a link between borderline structures and compulsive perversion.

Notes

1. An allusion to the title of a book on perversion by Joyce McDougall (1980).

Chapter Two
A precursor

The study of deviant sexuality began at the end of the nineteenth century with the publication of the first edition of Krafft-Ebing's voluminous treatise Psychopathia Sexualis (1886-1902), in which the sexual aberrations were for the first time deemed an object worthy of psychiatric study. The book contains an abundance of case histories covering the entire range of sexual deviations, including the most extreme.

It has been pointed out (Grossman, 1986) that the definition and scientific study of the sadomasochistic perversion predated the birth of psychoanalysis by a decade and decisively influenced the development of that discipline.¹

For Krafft-Ebing, whose oeuvre resembles a huge fresco many times revised and extended, the fundamental form of all deviations was reflected in sadism and masochism, which represented the active and passive aspects respectively of the drive of subjugation. The choice of perversion was always latent, even where its onset could be documented in specific episodes in infancy. Krafft-Ebing believed that an event in infancy, such as the young Rousseau's excitement when he was beaten (which Freud also mentions), was only a secondary factor in the aetiology of masochism—the occasion for its emergence rather than its cause.

Many passages in Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d) paraphrase some of Krafft-Ebing's generalizations—for example, those on the continuity between the normal and the pathological, the ubiquity of the influence of sexuality on human behaviour and thought, and the coexistence of primitive and adult levels of sexuality.

Endowed with an abundant psychological intuition that enabled him to penetrate deeper than his contemporaries (Kerr, 1993, p. 92f.), Krafft-Ebing drew attention to the importance of early infantile sexual exp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• FOREWORDS
• CHAPTER ONE Introduction
• CHAPTER TWO A precursor
• CHAPTER THREE Problems of terminology and definition
• CHAPTER FOUR Sadomasochism and depression
• CHAPTER FIVE Feminine masochism, or the case of the Wolf Man
• CHAPTER SIX Ascetic masochism
• CHAPTER SEVEN The clinical area of perversion
• CHAPTER EIGHT Theories of sadomasochistic perversion
• CHAPTER NINE After the theories
• CHAPTER TEN Areas of contiguity
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Infantile trauma and perversion
• CHAPTER TWELVE Final notes on the three paradigms
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN Psychoanalytic therapy of the perversions
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN Evil and pleasure: a psychoanalytic view
• REFERENCES
• INDEX