¿How can somebody enjoy pain?(1)

 

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"Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure"
"de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) Cicero, 45 BC.

 

Even 2000 years after Cicero explained it, this is the basic question that puzzles the outsiders about our games. This is the  reason for erotic spanking to be seen as a perversion. Pain is bad. Normal people doesn't enjoy pain. How can you?

 

The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (who didn't read Cicero) wrote in "The Economic Problem of Masochism" (1924) that:

"The existence of a masochist tendency in the instinctive life of human beings can be correctly descript as mysterious from an economic point of view. Because if mental processes are governed by the pleasure principle in such a way that its main objective is avoiding displeasure and obtaining pleasure, masochism is not comprehensible. If suffering and displeasure can be not only warnings but, actually, objectives, the pleasure principle is paralyzed - is as if the watchman of our mental life has been taken out of action by action of a drug"

(Our translation) (no, not from German, but from Portuguese).

 

Pain, of course, doesn't feel good. It can't, because it is a mechanism developed to alert on danger, and to make the body avoid it. As they taught us at school, if you just put a hand near a flame, pain is what makes you to take it off for preventing more damage.

 

Question: How can then a normal person accept  somebody submitting him/her to pain and find it arousing, as it happens in the BDSM games?

 

Answer: Nobody enjoys pain for the pain, or looks for it for pleasure, but...

 

We will see the biochemistry of pain, and how we perceive it. 

 

Biochemistry of pain

The BDSM games often include an element of (faked) aggression that has two pleasant physical results caused by the biochemistry.

 

First, even when you know that it is fantasy, that you are not in danger, that you will not be actually hurt, the body reacts as if the threat were real. The heart beats faster, the breathing also accelerates, the bottom feels the danger. And that happens because under the perceived aggression, the body releases adrenalin, for preparing the individual to fight or flight.

 

Adrenalin gives a feeling of alertness and euphoria that is in the root of many human pleasures. It is the body reaction that man looks for in sports. And not only in extreme sports, because you can feel the adrenalin when making physical effort, when going downhill in skies, in the tension of a game. Adrenalin is also involved in the addiction to roller coasters and terror movies.

 

But there is more. As a reaction to pain, the body releases other substances of pleasurable effect, the endorphins. The endorphins are used by the body for stopping the pain after its effects are not needed anymore. They are stimulants and natural pain killers, and they are the reason why many drugs are effective. Morphine and other opiates work because they mimic the shape of the endorphins, and they can connect to the nerve terminals in the same way and with the same function as them. Only the endorphins, being specifically developed for the task, are a lot more powerful.

 

The adrenalin and the endorphins change the pain's perception. Much more can be endured, and blows that would be painful in other conditions are barely felt. (Remember the love kisses. The bruises are there, but the subject doesn't remember how or when it happened).

 

An erotic spanking, that should begin slowly and softly, increasing gradually the intensity for giving time to the body for releasing adrenalin and endorphins, get the same results as a drug high. 

 

If all goes right, the punished will enter an state that is called the sub-space, the space of the sub, that is equivalent to that produced by drugs, and that has also being compared with religious ecstasy. The contact with the reality slips, and the punished feels like floating, in peace with himself and with the universe. 

 

But even if that state, that is not easy to reach, is not reached, the punished will feel the euphoria produced by the adrenalin and the endorphins. 

 

So, even when most of the people we know do not enjoy pain, a lot of them enjoy the results of the pain.

 

But that is only part of the story..

 

 

 

Published: 12/23/02

Rev: 02/07/04; 06/08/05