Sadomasochism can be defined as the giving or receiving of pleasure, often sexual, from the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation. It can feature as an enhancement to sexual pleasure, or, in some cases, as a substitute or sine qua non. The infliction of pain is used to incite sexual pleasure, while the simulation of violence can serve to form and express attachment. Indeed, sadomasochistic activities are often initiated at the request of, and for the benefit of, the masochist, who often directs activities through subtle emotional cues.

Consensual sadomasochism should not be confounded with acts of sexual aggression. Moreover, while sadomasochists seek out pain and humiliation in the context of love and sex, they do not do so in other situations and dislike simple, unfettered violence or abuse as much as the next person. In short, and in general, sadomasochists are not psychopaths. While psychopathy, or antisocial personality disorder, is a diagnosable mental disorder, sadomasochism is not diagnosable unless it causes significant distress or impairment to the individual or harm to others.

Some surveys have suggested that sadistic fantasies are just as prevalent in women as in men. However, it seems that men with sadistic urges tend to develop them at an earlier age. While some sadomasochistic people are purely sadistic and others purely masochistic, many are varying degrees of both, and may describe themselves as ‘switchable’.

Origins

Sadomasochism is a portmanteau of sadism and masochism, terms coined by the 19th century German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who spoke of basic, natural tendencies to sadism in men, and to masochism in women.

Krafft-Ebing named sadism for the 18th century Marquis de Sade, author of Justine ou les Malheurs de la Vertu and other books. The film Quills, starring Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, and Michael Caine, is inspired by the story of Sade.

How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold. —Marquis de Sade, Les prospérités du vice

Masochism he named for the 19th century Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs.

Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman’s entire but decisive advantage. Through man’s passions, nature has given man into woman’s hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise. —Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs

While the terms sadism and masochism are from the 19th century, the phenomena they describe are not so recent. In his Confessions (1782), Jean-Jacques Rousseau bravely speaks of the masochistic sexual pleasure he derived from his childhood beatings, adding that ‘after having ventured to say so much, I can shrink from nothing’. In a different time and place, the Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola described a man who needed to be flogged to get aroused. And the Kama Sutra, which dates back to the 2nd century, makes mention of consensual erotic slapping.

Early theories

The German physician Johann Heinrich Meibom introduced the first theory of masochism in his Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Medicine and Venery (1639). According to Meibom, flogging a man’s back warms the semen in his kidneys, which leads to sexual arousal when it flows down into his testicles. Other theories of masochism spoke of the warming of blood or the use of sexual arousal to mitigate physical pain.

In Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a compendium of sexual case histories and sex-crimes, Krafft-Ebing did not amalgamate sadism and masochism, understanding them as stemming from different sexual and erotic logics. In Three Papers on Sexual Theory, Freud observed that sadism and masochism are often found in the same individuals, and, accordingly, he combined the terms. He understood sadism as a distortion of the aggressive component of the male sexual instinct, and masochism as a form of sadism against the self—and a graver aberration than simple sadism.

Freud remarked that the tendency to inflict and receive pain during intercourse is ‘the most common and important of all perversions’, and ascribed it—as so much else—to incomplete or aberrant psychological development in early childhood. He paid scant attention to sadomasochism in women, either because sadism was thought to occur mainly in men, or because masochism was thought to be the normal and natural inclination of women.

In Studies in the Psychology of Sex, the British physician Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) argued for the absence of a clear distinction between aspects of sadism and masochism, and, moreover, restricted sadomasochism to the sphere of eroticism, thereby divorcing it from abuse and cruelty.

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) begged to differ. In his essay Coldness and Cruelty, he contended that sadomasochism is an artificial term, and that sadism and masochism are in fact distinct phenomena. He provided fresh accounts of sadism and masochism, but, unfortunately, I seem unable to fully understand them.

Explanations 

The same can be said for sadomasochism in general. Sadomasochism is hard to understand. Here, I propose several understandings. While some may hold in some circumstances and not others, none are mutually exclusive. Indeed, many of our strongest emotions result from more than just one impulse.

Most obviously, the sadist may derive pleasure from feelings of power, authority, and control, and from the ‘suffering’ of the masochist.

The sadist may also harbour an unconscious desire to punish the object of sexual attraction for having aroused his desire and thereby subjugated him, or, in some cases, for having frustrated his desire or aroused his jealousy.

By objectifying his partner, who is thereby rendered subhuman, the sadist does not need to handle the partner’s emotional baggage, and can deceive himself that the sex is not all that meaningful: a mere act of lust rather than an intimate and pregnant act of love. The partner becomes a trophy, a mere plaything, and while one can own a toy and perhaps knock it about, one cannot fall in love with it or be hurt or betrayed by it.

Sadism may also represent a kind of displacement activity or scapegoating in which uncomfortable feelings such as anger and guilt are displaced and projected onto another person. Scapegoating is an ancient and deep-rooted impulse and practice. According to Leviticus, God instructed Moses and Aaron to sacrifice two goats every year. The first goat was to be killed and its blood sprinkled upon the Ark of the Covenant. The High Priest was then to lay his hands upon the head of the second goat and confess the sins of the people. Unlike the first goat, this lucky second goat was not to be killed, but to be released into the wilderness together with its burden of sin, which is why it came to be known as a, or the, scapegoat. The altar that stands in the sanctuary of every church is a symbolic remnant and reminder of this sacrificial practice, with the ultimate object of sacrifice being, of course, Jesus himself.

For the masochist, taking on a role of subjugation and helplessness can offer a release from stress or the burden of responsibility or guilt. It can also evoke infantile feelings of dependency, safety, and protection, which can serve as a proxy for intimacy. In addition, the masochist may derive pleasure from earning the approval of the sadist, commanding his full attention, and, in a sense, controlling him.

For the dyad, sadomasochism can be seen as a means of intensifying normal sexual relations (pain releases endorphins and other hormones), regressing to a more primal or animal state, testing boundaries, or playing. In her recent book, Aesthetic Sexuality, Romana Byrne goes so far as to argue that S&M practices can be driven by certain aesthetic goals tied to style, pleasure, and identity, and, as such, can be compared to the creation of art.

Et tu

Many ‘normal’ behaviours such as infantilizing, tickling, and love-biting contain definite elements of sadomasochism. It is possible to read this article and think that this sort of stuff only applies to a small number of ‘deviants’, but the truth is that each and every one of us harbours sadomasochistic tendencies. In the words of the Roman playwright Terence, ‘I am human, and consider nothing human to be alien to me.’

In almost every relationship, one partner is more attached than the other, leading the less attached partner to become dominant, while the more attached partner becomes infantilized and submissive in a bid to pacify, please, and seduce. Eventually, the less attached partner feels stifled and takes distance, but if he ventures too far, the more attached partner may simply go cold and shut-out or leave. This in turn provokes the less attached partner to flip and become the more enthusiastic of the partners. Eventually, the balance re-establishes itself, until it is upset again, and so on ad infinitum. Domination and submission are elements of most relationships, but that does not prevent them from being tiresome, sterile, and, to echo Freud, immature.

Rather than playing at cat and mouse, lovers need to have the confidence and the courage to rise above that game—and not just by getting married. By learning to trust each other, they can dare to see each other as the fully-fledged human beings that they truly are, ends-in-themselves rather than mere means-to-an-end. True love is about respecting, sharing, nurturing, and enabling, but how many people have the capacity and the maturity for this kind of love?

And, of course, it takes two not to tango.

Lust can be defined as the strong, passionate longing or desire for certain things, not only sex, but also food, drink, money, fame, power, and knowledge, among others. But owing to the resonance of Matthew 5:27-28, lust has come to be particularly associated with sexual desire.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

There are many reasons for which we can desire sex, for example, to be close to someone, to maintain or manipulate that person, to make a child, or, in the case of prostitution, to make money. However, with lust, sex is sought out for itself.

Yet, it is possible to seek out sex for itself without this desire being lustful. For the desire to be lustful, it has to be disordered, that is, disproportionately or inappropriately strong, or directed at an inappropriate object.

If lust is not acted upon, it is possible to be lustful without being lecherous; but if the lust is acted out, especially repeatedly and habitually, then one is both lustful and lecherous (although, depending on usage, ‘lust’ and ‘lechery’ can be synonymous).

Bible and Church

For Dante, lust was the ‘excessive love of others’, excessive in that it rivalled and surpassed even the love of God. Romanesque art depicted lust, or carnal luxuria, as a siren or naked woman with snakes biting at her nipples. According to the Church Doctors, luxuria had several daughters, among whom blindness, haste, and self-love.

The Church distinguishes lust from fornication, which is having sex with one’s husband or wife for enjoyment rather than procreation, or having sex outside of wedlock, which is even worse. In Corinthians 7:7, St Paul famously says that, to avoid fornication, every man should be allowed to have his own wife, and every woman her own husband.

But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

While St Paul permits (but does not command) marriage, King Solomon, who is the apocryphal author of Ecclesiastes, warns against it, as well as against lust.

I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness: And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.

Solomon may be warning against lust and marriage, but he is certainly not warning against misogyny. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the fear of lust and of its effects contributed a great deal to his, and the Church’s, attitude towards women.

Force

King David was undone by his lust for Bathsheba (Solomon’s mother, although Solomon was not by David), and Bill Clinton, while still the most powerful man in the world, was almost undone by his lust for a young White House intern. Lust is such a strong and subversive force that it can be very difficult to reason clearly about it. There are many people out there who couldn’t organise a two-ticket tombola, but who suddenly become impressively industrious when it comes to acting out their lust. In Dante’s Inferno, souls who have committed the sin of lust are blown around in a hurricane that represents their own lack of self-control. And although MRI scanners were not available in Dante’s time, what they show is that the same area of the brain lights up in lusting people as in addicts receiving their cocaine fix.

According to mediaeval lore, when Alexander the Great found Phyllis (by some accounts, his wife) riding Aristotle around the garden, Alexander exclaimed, ‘Master, can this be?’ Whereupon Aristotle replied, ‘If lust can so overcome wisdom, just think what it could do to a young man like you.’

Lust is so powerful that it is often beyond the power of reason to contain.

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had, Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait.

These verses are from Shakespeare, who here (Sonnet 129) and elsewhere, goes so far as to aliken lust to madness.

No wonder, then, that in Greco-Roman mythology Eros/Cupid is depicted as a blind child, and the ithyphallic (erect) Satyrs are only half-human.

But it is not just that reason can sometimes be overcome by lust. For Schopenhauer, lust ultimately directs all human behaviour. This is certainly borne out by advertising, which seems mostly about suggesting that buying a particular product will excite the lust of others. In contrast, no one ever made a fortune by peddling restraint or wisdom. It is sometimes said that everything is about sex, except for sex, which is about power. Even the Church, when it needed to express the ecstatic communion with God, could do little better than to paint it in terms of an orgasm.

Consequences

Schopenhauer, who was heavily influenced by Eastern traditions, also notes the misery that will almost certainly result from lust.

In the Hindu Bhagavad Gita (‘Song of God’), Lord Krishna declares that, along with anger and greed, lust is one of the three gates to Naraka or hell. When Arjuna asks him by what one is impelled to sinful acts ‘even unwillingly, as if engaged by force’, he replies, ‘It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material mode of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring sinful enemy of this world … Therefore, O Arjuna, best of the Bharatas, in the very beginning curb this great symbol of sin—by regulating the senses, and slay this destroyer of knowledge and self-realization…’ (See Bhagavad Gita 3.36-43 for the full quotation.)

For the Buddha, lust, in the broader sense of coveting or craving, is at the centre of the Four Noble Truths, which are as follows,

1. Suffering (dukkha) is inherent in all life.
2. The cause of all suffering is lust.
3. There is a natural way to eliminate all suffering from one’s life.

4. The Noble Eightfold Path is that way.

For the Buddha, lust is controlled or eliminated through attaining a higher consciousness. This idea can also be found sporadically in the Western canon; indeed, Baudelaire goes so far as to suggest that the artist, who is consciousness personified, should never have sex.

The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes… Only the brute is good at coupling, and copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another—and the artist never emerges from himself.

The other

As well as being destructive to its subject, lust is also destructive to its object. Lust is the only appetite that is for a person rather than an object, but a person qua object rather than a person qua person. Either the other is seen as an object, or as other than they truly are. Through the subconscious processes of idealization and projection, the other becomes what is wished for or needed—quite literally, a fantasy.

It’s not just that the other is treated as an object of lust, but that he or she is shorn of uniquely human qualities and, in particular, of dignity and agency. Thus, the lustful person is not only unconcerned about the fulfilment of the other (and perhaps also of the ‘old’ partner to whom he is being unfaithful), but will act against her best interests to feed his appetite, and with his appetite sated, discard her as ‘one throws away a lemon that is sucked dry’. These sharp words belong to Kant, who asserted that a person should never be treated as a means to an end, but always as an end in herself.

It is perhaps in the nature of lust that it seeks to possess the other, to incorporate and degrade the other by destroying his dignity and autonomy. In the novel One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis, the protagonist says that, when it comes to sex, his aim is ‘to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature who is the opposite of these: to demonstrate to an animal which is pretending not to be an animal that it is an animal.’ Of course, there are some people with rather low self-esteem who consciously or unconsciously want to be hurt, degraded, and sabotaged, but that is a topic for another blog post.

Because it is so inhibiting, destructive, and subverting, lust is, in the words of Shakespeare, ‘a waste of shame’. So as to hide that shame, many cultures made use of a male demon who lay upon sleepers, especially women, to have sex with them. This incubus (and the less prevalent female equivalent, or succubus) could then be blamed for embarrassing nocturnal emmissions, disturbing claims of adultery and abuse, and even unexplained children.

Lust or love?

Another way of dealing with the shame of lust is to deceive ourselves into thinking that our lust is in fact love or underpinned by love. While lust is shameful, love is respectable, even commendable. Thus, while we may look warmly upon a couple holding hands or hugging (particularly if they are very young or very old, on the presumption that these groups are asexual), we look around for the police if they start acting out their lust. Love is the acceptable face of lust, but the love that is not love is even more perverse and destructive, and in that sense, even more shameful, than the lust that knows its game.

How to tell lust and love apart? Often, with difficulty. But while, in general, lust is hasty, furtive, and ashamed, love is patient, measured, and constant. While lust subverts propriety, love is thoughtful and nurturing. While lust is all about taking, love is all about sharing. Lust can lead to love, but it is a poor start, and a poor basis, akin to choosing your favorite book by the picture on the cover.

The ladder of love

Of course, there is nothing wrong with sexual desire in itself, and none of us would be here without it. Sexual desire is a life force, to be enjoyed and even celebrated. But, as with wine, the problems arise when it becomes the master rather than the servant. It is very important to be able and ready to recognize lust for the blind and destructive force that it is. That’s why lust is particularly unattractive in the elderly, because, as the saying goes, there is no fool like an old fool.

Lust is by definition hard to suppress, but it can more readily be redirected or sublimed. If a person feels angry with her boss, she may go home and act out her anger by kicking the dog, or she may instead go out and play a good game of tennis. This second instance (playing a good game of tennis) is an example of sublimation, the channelling of unproductive or destructive forces into socially condoned and often constuctive activities. As Baudelaire said, the more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes.

For Plato, lust is not something to be shunned, but the first step on his so-called ladder of love. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates say that a youth should first be taught to love one beautiful body. By loving one beautiful body, he comes to realize that this beautiful body shares beauty with other beautiful bodies, and thus that it is foolish to love just one beautiful body. In loving all beautiful bodies, the youth learns to appreciate that the beauty of the soul is superior to the beauty of the body, and begins to love those who are beautiful in soul regardless of whether they are also beautiful in body. Once the physical has been transcended, he gradually finds that beautiful practices and customs and the various kinds of knowledge also share in a common beauty. Finally, he is able to experience beauty itself, rather than the various apparitions of beauty. In so doing, he exchanges the various apparitions of virtue for virtue itself, gaining immortality and the love of the gods.

In sum, for Plato, so long as one is willing to learn, lust can be its own cure.

Further reading: Lust, by Simon Blackburn