“The sadist doesn’t create a masochist, he finds him ready made.”
– Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
Masochism in Modern Man explores the psychological roots of masochism from an interesting perspecitve. When I read the final chapters of The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, I was struck by an interesting discussion about sadomasochism, and how it relates to his argument.
In Becker’s view, mankind’s primary repression is the fear of death. A person is both animal and god and finds it impossible to reconcile this paradoxical nature to himself. On one hand, he feels omnipotent and capable of inventing ingenious things, but on the other hand, he feels powerless in the face of his weak and vulnerable nature.
There are some people who manage to repress this anxiety better than others, but even they repress this primal fear by finding refuge in social fictions such as money and art and relationships with others. The repression of this fear of mortality is a fundamentally human feature (animals don’t go through existential crises). And to describe the extreme example of the human being who finds brilliant ways of repressing this anxiety, Becker points to the masochist, and how by finding enjoyment in pain, they relieve themselves of their anxiety associated with total pain (death).
The masochist administers small doses of pain to themselves, vaccinations against their own anxiety of their mortality. Kierkegaard is given as an example of a religious thinker who embraced this ethic, in the form of moral masochism, and willingly subjects himself to pain, in the anticipation of a higher reward.
This discussion inspired me to learn more about the nature masochism. I found a helpful but old book on the subject, Masochism in Modern Man.
Theodor Reik, a psychologist, says that masochism is not what it appears to be. To Freud, the masochist is a weak, submissive person, who finds pleasure in pain and humiliation, either to repress guilt feelings or other socially unacceptable desires. He exists because the human being has two fundamental drives: Eros (life) and Thanatos (destruction). In their behavior, the sadomasochist represents Thanatos, the death drive.
But Reik argues that this idea is wrong, and contradicts what his clinical experience and his personal analysis tells him. He contends that the psychoanalysts, because of a combination of lack of independent thinking and a lack of patience, jumped to the simplest, but least accurate conclusion.
To him, the masochist does not, in fact, find pleasure in humiliation. The masochist, like the rest of us, finds pain to be undesirable, but the difference is that he has redirected his aggressive instincts towards his own ego, because he believes that pain must be a prerequisite to pleasure – that he can only deserve pleasure after going through pain.
In this way, the masochist is a powerful character, who shows a resilient, even mocking attitude to pain. Unlike the passive weak person, who avoids the unpleasantness of pain, the masochist seeks pain intentionally and demands it, as if to show that despite the highest forms of discomfort, they will prevail and get their reward (pleasure).
To understand why the masochist inflicts pain on themselves, remember that the other side of masochism is sadism. That is, the other side of the same coin – the masochist is a sadist inverted.
At some point in the past, the sadomasochist experienced a painful emotional event, that severely wounded his pride. This caused him to redirect his sadistic impulses – his aggressive, asocial, destructive desires – towards his own ego.
There are two kinds of masochism. The first is sexual masochism and the second is social masochism.
In sexual masochism, the masochist reenacts the event(s) that led to his wounded pride with a partner, and in this way, he is able to confront his fear and anxiety in controlled doses, and he gets his pleasure, he is able to triumph in spite of the anxiety. In social masochism, the end goal is less precise than sexual masochism – it is a formless masochism.
That is, instead of concentrating pain in a ritualistic sexual encounter, the masochistic tendency sabotages the entire life of the person, dooming him to perpetual failure. The social masochist, instead of being repulsed in this defeat, takes a defiant attitude, he says to himself, that “one day, they will appreciate me” or that “despite the pain I am suffering now, I will be rewarded with exactly what I want” or “I will get my revenge against this person who wronged me.”
Reik points out there is a peculiar pattern that he found in his patients, which led him to conclude that the masochist exhibits either sexual masochism or social masochism but never both.
For example, a masochist who enjoys degradation and humiliation sexually, is very aggressive and successful in his profession and social life. Whereas a masochist who enjoys a more traditional sexual life, suffers socially and professionally.
Victory in Defeat
In both cases, there is a common desire, and that is to be victorious in defeat. The religious display this ethic in the form of the renunciation of earthly pleasures, or in sacrificing their lives, or undergoing extreme torment for their beliefs. The patriot displays it when he goes to war and sacrifices his life for his nation.
The idea is that by accepting pain and suffering, the masochist overcomes his biggest anxieties, and triumphs. Take for example, the people who delight in sharing stories about their defeats and hardships, how they subjugated themselves to the most miserable conditions of life.
These social masochists do not see their bad luck or failure as a negative experience, they find pleasure in it, they are proud of it, they feel as if it elevates them above the rest of mankind. It is important to understand the role of pride, as it plays an important role in the lives of masochists. The masochist is deluded by his pride, by his over-exaggeration of his superiority to animals. He exaggerates his own morality – a result of an all-powerful conscience.
Pride
This line of thinking reminds me of the points Ernest Becker makes in his book. That something like pride can only exist in the paradoxical animal that believes himself to a god, and not just an animal. The masochist is an extreme version of the human being, but the masochist thinks that he is not just superior to animals, but superior to other people. To him, others are weaker or lesser beings, because they cannot suffer the way he can.
The masochist is less capable of truly loving others, because his deep narcissism and self-delusion. It is also unlikely that he grew up in harsh conditions – to inflict pain upon oneself is a luxury that few can afford.
Recall that it was his injured ego in the first place that made him masochistic. His sadism turned his ego only after he was punished by society.
The masochist needs to restore this lost pride, and does so by voluntarily suffering pain – this suffering conceals the sadistic side that lurks in the background to the casual observer.
Finally, the pride is restored through the defiance of suffering. In the case of the sexual masochist, it is temporarily restored after the sexual act, before new aggressive energy resurfaces. For the moral masochist, the end goal is undefined, but Reik speculates that it may be a vague hope in an afterlife, an attitude of “I am defeated now, but they will remember me when I am dead.”
The essential feature of masochists is not weakness or passivity, it is relentless aggression, strength, and a deadly pride. There is no simple cure to masochism, but the one suggested by Reik is to accept one’s own darker aggressive impulses and thoughts. It is to diminish pride in yourself by accepting your own imperfections, your animalistic side, and your need for destruction and aggression – by accepting that these thoughts are just thoughts, and it is acceptable to have them.
This idea echoes the Jungian shadow.
And in that way, I believe there is a clear connection between Becker’s premise in The Denial of Death, Masochism in Modern Man, and the ideas of Jung on individuation.
But beyond the cure, there is wisdom in masochism. The idiom”nothing is bad without being good for something” is given to us by Reik, he reminds us that the animal that is protected too much from pain is unprotected from the external world.
At the bottom of pleasure is pain, this is obvious – the warnings of abusing pleasure are given to us in the form of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride – but the opposite is also true, that at the bottom of pain, is pleasure – a point suggested in Civilization and its Discontents by Freud.