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Part I
The magical imperative
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Chapter 1
The sexual illusionist
Sleeping with a fantasy
Sex is, directly or indirectly, the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the magician.
Aleister Crowley (1973)
From the cradle to the grave, human sexuality is infused with magic and fantasy and possesses an omnipotent dimension. The mystery of sexuality involves the secrets that desire keeps and the illusions it fosters. Whether we know it or not, our sex lives are crowded with relationships from the past: those who loved us, abused or deprived us, humiliated us, treated us with kindness, seduced us, or were forbidden to us. Representations of these people, their functions in our lives, and the relationships we had with them enter into the intrigue of the adult sexual theater. Every temptation, every choice of stimulation, every ritual of excitement, and every climax is influenced by the past and cloaked in its shadow. Adult sexuality is the way we master, act out against, and make reparation to the figures from our past. Since these relationships psychologically constitute sexuality’s hidden agendas, participants are usually completely unaware of the symbolic sorcery operating just beneath the surface of their most passionate, concrete acts.
Freud (1905/1953; 1930/1961d) placed human sexuality at the center of psychoanalytic theory, proposing that civilization subjugates human drives in the service of culture. He further explained why human sexuality is infused with fantasy. Freud believed children to be polymorphously perverse – that is, able to be excited by anyone or anything – and to express their sensuality through a variety of erogenous zones (1911/1958a). Moreover, since human beings have no direct outlet for their sexual drives until much later in their development, they learn to seek satisfaction by turning inward toward fantasy rather than outward toward reality (Freud 1911/1958a). Thus, it is not surprising that people attribute magical powers to their sexuality, making it more than an instinctual act by imbuing it with secret uniqueness. This can even become a cultural practice, as in the case of female foot binding in China, which sacrificed the woman to permanent handicap in the service of a defensive chimera. The foot, the body part closest to the ground and easily soiled, is altered through crippling mutilation and recast as fetish of exotic splendor and highly charged eroticism. Sex, the act of an animal, is transformed through the power of human imagination and banished – by concealing it in the fetish.
Sex can elevate mood (Goliszek, 2014) and boost self-esteem (Mastro and Zimmer-Gembeck, 2015) and has a major role in sustaining or dissolving relationships (Perel, 2006). The uses of sex can be constructive or destructive: address trauma, enact revenge, heal an injured psyche, avoid intimacy, cultivate love, foster addiction, and challenge mortality. For example, suicide missions are sometimes driven by fantasies of sexual rewards in the afterlife (72 virgins in heaven promised to the faithful by the Quran). More pedestrian fantasies are reproduction missions in which children fulfill an omnipotent fantasy for parents who hope to gain immortality through their progeny (Wisman & Goldenberg, 2005).
Unlike animals, human beings are both sexual and erotic. As a result, imagination plays a central role in human sexual congress, which carries the burden of symbolic meaning and unconscious expression. Morin (1995) wrote that our “erotic landscape is vastly larger, richer, and more intricate than the physiology of sex” (p. 2). The erotic refers to the meaning people attach to their sexuality, including their objects of attraction and what they find arousing. Indeed, it is the mind that creates, intensifies, focuses, or limits our sexual passions. Sex is a drive, but Eros – “the source of attraction and the craving for sexual love” – is highly individual and animated by the totality of human drama (p. 2).
Ernest Becker (1973), saw an inherent problem in human sexuality because the animal body and the ephemeral and highly symbolic self cannot be fully integrated. The erotic transformation of the animal act can never successfully banish the vulnerable and doomed animal, destined for death. In addition, sexual behaviors are often taboo and, therefore, intimately connected with the morals and mores of society. Most cultures historically have forbidden sexuality until adulthood, and then often only within a heterosexual marital relationship. Paglia (1990) claimed that these limits on sexuality result in the near impossibility of an anxiety-free human sexual act.
Further complicating matters is the observation that sexual mores and morals change over time and place. Homosexuality, for example, once labeled a perversion, is no longer considered so by many in the United States; it was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and gay marriage has been legalized. Once thought taboo, sadomasochism has gone mainstream with the popularity of E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, a romantic S&M trilogy. Sex dolls and sex robots are proliferating (Knafo & Lo Bosco, 2017). And a third of young Japanese have chosen to forgo intimate relationships in favor of celibacy or technology-based relating, claiming relationships are mendokusai, simply too much trouble (Haworth, 2013).
All of these factors contribute to the complexity of Eros. Whereas the sexual act is simple and straightforward, Eros – enigmatic and paradoxical – raises endless questions. How do our childhoods influence the sexual beings we become? Why do many people not desire the partner they love? Why is forbidden love so alluring? Why are relationships less sexually charged when partners share equal power? How does our unconscious shape our sexuality? Sexual perversion is even more mysterious, a veritable Pandora’s box of erotic secrets.
In perversion, sex can be an outlet for creativity and aggression (Bach, 1994; Knafo & Lo Bosco, 2017; Chasseguet-Smirguel, 1984; Stoller, 1975); it can also be used to defend against anxiety, fear, and trauma (Stoller, 1974, 1975). Knafo & Lo Bosco (2017) define perversion as a universal tendency among human beings, a repeated enactment of a scripted behavior whose purpose is mastering trauma. Usually (but not always) sexual, this behavior casts a grand illusion showcasing the actor’s uniqueness and specialness while hiding the conquest of the trauma. Thus, the actor becomes a magician who transforms misery into pleasure (Knafo & Lo Bosco, 2017). Perversion is found in any human system whose aim, purpose, or meaning is – by the very operation of that system – reversed, undermined, violated, or destroyed (Knafo & Lo Bosco, 2017).
Every person engaging in a perversion spins a magical illusion masking an underlying psychic stalemate. The word magic is used intentionally; like the illusionist who creates an impression that the laws of nature have been suspended (e.g. cutting a woman in half; levitating), the sexual illusionist is compelled to conceal pain in a magic show in which psychological pain suddenly disappears. This chapter examines how sexuality and creativity are used to cast an illusion of omnipotence. Sexual perversion best illustrates the connection between Eros and omnipotent fantasies, which is why it is the focus of this discussion.
Perversion and spell casting
Perversion is related to unconscious fantasies that disavow reality and create illusions that impart fake power. Perversions may grant an illusory penis to a woman, render a child an equal sexual partner, or bring a corpse back to life. The magic is found in the duality of the deception: the show of power and control conceals powerlessness and terror; the avoidance of intimacy hides a terrible longing for human closeness; and the heights of excitement veil an inner deadness.
For many, the term “perversion,” calls to mind the derogatory label of “pervert” – a pejorative designation loaded with moral judgment and righteous condemnation. The verb pervert is defined as “an effort to alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended” (Oxford University Press, 2009), but the noun pervert came to mean a person engaging in abnormal or unacceptable sexual behavior and is associated with sin and evil. Not surprisingly, psychological theory examining the phenomenon was tainted with prior religious ideas about perversion (Knafo & Lo Bosco, 2017). Although sin was replaced with pathology, perverts were still seen as sinners, monsters, devils, and abominations, and their acts were characterized as filthy, evil, and sick. The most commonplace images associated with this term include the “dirty old man” in a raincoat flashing young women on the street, or the “creep” waiting on the playground to prey on an innocent child. Thus, “normal” people stood on one side, viewing and judging them – the “perverts” – who stood on the other side. This clearly delineated binary is a religious inheritance that does not properly recognize the ubiquity of perverse proclivities and perverted sexual and social enactments.
Neither life nor human sexuality conforms to either/or, this or that, good or evil. Many people may enjoy productive, happy, intimate relationships, yet sometimes engage in consensual “kinky” sex, basking for a time on a small island of ecstasy with their lovers, as far from the madding crowd as one can get. But when perverse behaviors become the mainland, centering on a rigid script necessary to produce excitement, then they enter the realm of what Knafo and Lo Bosco (2017) call perversion proper. These authors propose that sexuality exists on a spectrum, with the far end associated with behavior that is increasingly imbued with objectification, compulsion, hostility, vengeance, and even danger. In this context, perversion may be fueled by omnipotent fantasies that overlap with those driving addictions to substances, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and even psychopathy.
Perversion theory helps explain how the repression of loss, tragedy, and grief becomes pitched to an intolerable level. Psychosexual scripts that disguise trauma behind the veil of a pleasurable and highly symbolic act attempt to master that trauma through the pleasure itself. Keep in mind that such a script may even preclude physical sex, as in the case of some mothers who pervert their relationship with their child by treating their offspring as an extension of themselves (Welldon, 1988). A stereotypical example of this behavior is stage mothers who enroll their children in beauty pageants from a very young age. The son or daughter is now a mere self-object, a symbolic phallus expressing power and freedom the mother lacks. For such a female, the perverse illusion is about overcoming the trauma of incompleteness, of not being and not having, of replacing ugliness with beauty, powerlessness with power, emptiness with meaning, boredom with excitement, and mediocrity with excellence. (Knafo, 2010). Because the script fails to completely resolve the underlying issue of injury and loss, it must be continually repeated, which is similar to the way in which an addict must return to their drug.
Perhaps the deepest problem in perversion is the struggle with intimacy – experiencing the other as a living and whole self, a unique subject with their own desires, wishes, and dreams. All human beings hunger for intimate relationships and want to be deeply connected and essential to another, whether sex is involved or not. And therein lies the difficulty, for the more deeply joined we are to another person – that is, the greater the intimacy – the more the possible loss of the other becomes a threat to our existence, and thus the greater our need to shape them into a desirable object. People necessarily objectify others to some degree to satisfy their needs, which always involves a fantasy. How ironic that the need to be close, to be joined, is central to the very disconnection that erodes intimacy. The slide toward perversion occurs in the intensification of this objectification and the narrowing of its scope, such that the psycho-emotional encounter with the other must occur through an increasingly rigid script, subjecting the other to an object only status. For example, Bach’s (1994) theory of sadomasochistic relations centers on the omnipotent defenses enlisted against the experience of object loss. He believed that sadomasochists choose to suffer and live in pain rather than experience object loss. Sadists deny dependence on objects who have failed them in the past. They identify with an idealized version of the mother who gave them pain while at the same time denying their need for her. Bach (1994) imagined the sadist’s fantasy as: I can do anything I want to you, and you won’t leave me. His script is: If I make you feel as badly as I do, then I know you love me, and we can retrieve our lost togetherness. The sadist experiences sexual satisfaction from recapturing the lost love object and punishing it for straying. Conversely, the masochist’s script is: You can do anything you want to me as long as you don’t leave me. In both cases, the pain of suffering is a defense against the greater pain of loss. In exchange, control results in dehumanization and a master–slave relationship. The case study that follows further illustrates how perversion is used to defend against the mental anguish of object loss.
Perversion as a cover-up: Yaffa’s dilemma
Yaffa, a patient of DK (Knafo), met Lenore in Paris at a small café in view of the Eiffel Tower looming darkly under a graying sky. Each was alone at her small table, Lenore sipping Merlot and Yaffa nursing her coffee. A game of subtle flirtation began between the two women, until Lenore beckoned with her forefinger. Soon the two women were talking with great animation, leaning forward toward each other, already assuming the posture that suggested they would soon cross intimate boundaries.
Yaffa, an Israeli woman in her 30s, was on vacation from her job as a schoolteacher, but she quickly left her life behind to follow Lenore, an American woman in her 50s, to the United States to help her with her yoga center. For a short while, Yaffa felt the happiest she had ever been in her life. This gradually changed, as Lenore became critical of Yaffa, teasing her about her accent and fashion sense, correcting her grammar and posture, disapproving of the time she spent on the phone with family members, and offering increasingly harsh feedback on Yaffa’s meditation classes. Yaffa reacted by trying to please her host, but this only seemed to incur even more criticism. By degrees, criticism became rebuke and rebuke became mockery.
This same pattern of change also played out in the bedroom. Lenore had been the dominant partner from the beginning, but now she began to command her partner throughout the sex act and gradually incorporated rough play – spankings and bondage – into their lovemaking. At first Yaffa was hesitant but she soon surrendered to the demands that transformed Lenore from her lover into her mistress. She excitedly submitted to the demands of her mistress, drawing her pleasure from pleasing Lenore. Under Lenore’s tutelage she wore the “slave” clothing of the older woman’s choosing, allowed herself be tied at the ankles and wrists to the bed frame, and became completely obedient to erotic direction.
As the days passed, Lenore shaped Yaffa into a live-in slave. She took classes away from Yaffa, who was relegated to the role of house cleaner. Lenore’s mockery turned into humiliation and bondage, with shrill and demeaning criticism of Yaffa’s every word and behavior. She told her she could no longer call her family, took away two of the three rooms she had initially given her for use in the large house, and provided a long list of menial chores for Yaffa to perform daily. Yaffa’s mind became totally centered on her mistress’s desires; she thought of nothing else and believed that Lenore would soon warm to her and again return some of the great love she felt for her partner. Yet each evening when Lenore returned home, she criticized Yaffa’s work and even punished her if she was deeply displeased. The punishments varied, depending on Lenore’s moods; Yaffa might be spanked, or sent to her room, or made to kneel in the middle of the floor and ask for forgiveness, or be stripped of her clothing for the rest of the evening. Sex would sometimes take place at this time. Whereas once Lenore returned the pleasure given to her by Yaffa, she was now told to pleasure herself. Eventually, she was disallowed even this pleasure, and her desire for Lenore was mocked. Lenore might brush against her or display her breasts or derrière, or talk suggestively to indicate she wanted sex. “Beg me for it,” she’d say, and Yaffa would comply, only to be laughed at and ridiculed for her desire. Sometimes when she reacted to the ridicule with tears, Lenore became excited.
“What are you, Yaffa?” Lenore asked.
“I am your lover,” she responded.
Lenore grabbed her hard by the hair and pulled her close. “No, you are something else. Tell me what it is.”
“I am your slave.”
“Yes. Now you may pleasure me.”
Yaffa felt stripped of her dignity, but her attachment to her mistress was unbreakable. The thought of Lenore abandoning her took her breath away, and many a night she lay awake wondering how she might encourage an exchange of real love. In one part of herself, she knew that her lover would never treat her with anything but cruelty and indifference. She’d become a willing slave, yet she felt depressed and ashamed. Even if she could call her family, what could she tell them? She had no job, no money, no friends, and she had become completely dependent on Lenore. In another part of herself, she believed that Lenore truly loved her and reasoned that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t continue the relationship.
Many of us have trouble understanding how an intelligent and talented woman like Yaffa would agree to submit to so much abuse. Why do battered women stay in relationships with abusive husbands? Common sense tells us that punitive behavior will lessen the likelihood of a behavior being repeated. It would seem that when we are punished, we wish to avoid or escape the behaviors that would result in additional punishment. But punishment can at times create a paradoxical effect by maintaining or even increasing the undesired behavioral response. This is usually the case when punishment is paired with affection (Reid et al., 2013). As a result, the punished person learns to associate pain with love. By degrees Lenore had convinced Yaffa to become a slave, to draw pleasure from degradation and humiliation, a dark magic – indeed a kind of spell from which Yaffa could not free herself. Yaffa carried responsibility for her plight in that she colluded in this perverse pact (Stein, 2005). Here, two magicians staged a show, not one.
Fantasies of omnipotence were central to the relationship between these two necromancers. In the beginning, they created a show that seemed to them unique and transcendent, an erotic wonderland of exquisite pleasure seemingly founded on love. Their relationship felt extraordinary, beyond the grasp of mere mortals. Yet, even when that illusion became tattered, omnipotent strivings did not cease. Yaffa still granted her mistress total control and co...
