An e-mail of one of our gentle visitors (thanks, Gabriela) inspired me to write this article.
The final letters from the BDSM acronym belong to Sadism and Masochism. But has Sadomasochism something to do with our games?
Psychology says that masochism consists on getting sexually excited by suffering. Any person looks naturally for pleasure. How can somebody enjoy suffering?
Psychoanalytic literature ignores something that for us is obvious: people can endure pain in order to get something pleasurable. We believe pain is secondary to our BDSM games and that the reason for playing them is looking for pleasure, as everybody else does. For a simple solution see Can somebody enjoy pain?.
And the same can be said of the "sadist". The game is frequently played by very closely connected couples. Can somebody enjoy making the loved person suffer? Nobody sane. But our partner suffers only as a way to get his/her pleasure . What we want is to give him/her that pleasure.
There is an old joke showing a true sadist/masochist relationship. The masochist asks "Please hit me" and the sadist, enjoying the other's suffering, answers "No". For sure it is not our way.
We can't resist the temptation from quoting a modern article on this area, trying to explain why somebody can be a masochist. (Just in case you are not used to read psychoanalytic literature, we assure you that we didn't make it and that it is no joke. We've translated it from Spanish(1))
"When we are children, the life instinct derives the death instinct to the exterior: the redirected part which services the sexual satisfaction becomes the sadism and the other part is fixed and becomes the erogenous masochism. Even though, the death instinct can be introjected again for producing the secondary masochism.
1. Erotic sadism: the subject can only be excited when he can do to others what he is afraid of having done to himself. He confronts the anxiety of castration and the fanatic impulses he directs to others. This act's purpose is getting the victim to love and forgive the aggressor, to release the guilt; accordingly, this act is primitive and narcissist.
2. Criminal sadism: it arises as a the outcome of the de-fusion of the Eros and the Thanatos, with the deflection of the last, which is expressed without a libido modification.
3. Masochism: avoidance of feared pain from castration by the real suffering, due to experiences that joined pleasure to pain, belief that auto-castration substitutes the real castration, anticipation of the expected damage for being able to control it, and submission as an unconscious way of getting the father's protection.
4. Feminine masochism: The desire of being loved by the father shows in the fantasy of being punished by him, with origin in the precocious states of the Oedipus. It has two purposes: transferring to the exterior the feared damage of the "bad" introjected penis and that it will destroy the bad things in the subject's interior, opposing the action of the dangerous objects incorporated.
5. Moral masochism: There is an unconscious guilt feeling, that drives the search for punishment and the effect named "negative therapeutic reaction" (opposition to change). The masochism arises from the Ego, that asks to be punished by the Superego, the father, or by external elements
We think that our articles about pain (cited above) give a more reasonable and less contrived explanation.
If you feel reflected by what is said above, bad for you. I don't think I have an unconscious guilt feeling, I'm not afraid of castration, as a man my penis is not "introjected" and, of course, I don't think I've suffered from a de-fusion of the Eros and the Thanatos, supposing those things actually exist. (Of course, a psychoanalyst would say that I'm negating the problem. I have a "negative therapeutic reaction". They don't need to prove what they say. As it was said by Freud, Carl Rogers, Lacan, or any other Master, it has to be true. Of course, They don't have to prove anything either. They are They).
We believe, then, that BDSM relationships have nothing to do with sadomasochist relations, (if they actually exist), and that the acronym is wrong, but they are relations among normal people, that enjoy giving and receiving pleasure, as anybody else, and that have discovered (or born with) a different way of getting it.
If you feel that, even when enjoying our games, you are not a masochist or a sadist is because you probably are not one.
And, finally, who cares about labels? If you believe that what you do and enjoy is not BDSM, and you don't feel represented by the acronym, we grant you our permission (?) to enjoy it anyway, (and you are welcome for visiting our site if something of which it is said here interests you).
A label is a label is a label. What's truly important is enjoying yourself.
(1) Perversiones (The page is not in this address anymore. Sorry) (back)
Published: 03/07/03
Rev: 01/23/04; 06/08/05
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