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Sadomasochism can be defined as the taking of pleasure, often sexual in nature, from the inflicting or suffering of pain, hardship, or humiliation. It can feature as an enhancement to sexual intercourse, or, less commonly, as a substitute or sine qua non.

The infliction of pain incites pleasure, while the simulation of violence can serve to express and deepen attachment. Indeed, sadomasochistic activities are often instigated at the behest, and for the benefit, of the masochist, who orchestrates the activities through subtle cues.

Consensual sadomasochism should not be confused with acts of aggression. While sadomasochists seek out pain in the context of love and sex, they do not do so in other situations, and abhor uninvited aggression or abuse as much as the next person.

Sadomasochistic practices are very diverse, although one study identified four distinct patterns or clusters: hypermasculinity, infliction and reception of pain, physical restriction, and psychological humiliation. Interestingly, the study found that homosexual males tended more to hypermasculinity, whereas heterosexual males tended more to humiliation.

Origins

‘Sadomasochism’ is a portmanteau of ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’, terms coined, both of them, by the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a compendium of sexual case histories and sex-crimes, Krafft-Ebing spoke of basic tendencies to sadism in men, and to masochism in women. Modern surveys suggest that sadistic fantasies are just as prevalent in women, although it remains that men with sadistic urges tend to develop them at an earlier age.

Krafft-Ebing named ‘sadism’ after the Marquis de Sade, author of Justine, or The Misfortune of Virtue (1791) and other erotic novels; and ‘masochism’ he named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs (1870):

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

The terms ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’ may be of the nineteenth century, but the activities they denote are as old as the rocks. In his Confessions (1782), the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau admits to the pleasure that he derived from childhood beatings, adding that ‘after having ventured to say so much, I can shrink from nothing’. And shrink he did not: ‘To fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments…’

The Kama Sutra, which probably dates back to the second century, contains an entire chapter devoted to ‘blows and cries’. ‘Sexual relations’ according to this Hindu sacred text, ‘can be conceived as a kind of combat… For successful intercourse, a show of cruelty is essential.’

Early theories

The physician JH Meibom formulated 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 the kidneys, which then flows down into the testicles, leading to sexual arousal. Other early theories of masochism centred upon the warming of the blood, or the benefits of sexual arousal in mitigating physical pain.

Krafft-Ebing never connected sadism and masochism, because he understood them as stemming from different sexual and erotic logics. But in Three Papers on Sexual Theory (1905), Freud observed that sadism and masochism often come together (no pun intended), and, accordingly, combined the terms. Freud understood sadism as a distortion of the aggressive component of the male sexual instinct, and masochism as a form of sadism directed against the self—and a graver ‘aberration’ than simple sadism. He remarked that the tendency to inflict and receive pain during intercourse is ‘the most common and important of all perversions’ and ascribed it (as much else) to arrested or disordered psychosexual development. He paid scant attention to sadomasochism in women, either because he thought of sadism as a problem of men, or because he thought of masochism as the normal and natural inclination of women.

In Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1895), the physician Havelock Ellis argued along similar lines that there is no neat divide between sadism and masochism. By restricting the use of the term ‘sadomasochism’ to the sphere of eroticism, he severed the historical link with abuse and cruelty.

The philosopher Gilles Deleuze pushed back against Freud and Havelock Ellis. In his essay Coldness and Cruelty (1967), he contended that sadomasochism is an artificial term, and that sadism and masochism are in fact separate and distinct phenomena. Deleuze provided fresh accounts of sadism and masochism, which, despite being fluent in French, I struggled to comprehend.

Explanations 

And I could say the same for sadomasochism more generally. Sadomasochism is hard to understand, one of those great mysteries of the human condition. Here, I propose a number of explanations, none of which are mutually exclusive.

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 a conscious or unconscious desire to punish or desecrate the object of sexual attraction (or a stand-in for the object of sexual attraction, or for an original object of sexual attraction) for having aroused his desire and thereby subjugated him, or for having frustrated his desire or aroused his jealousy.

Sadism can also serve as a defence. By objectifying a partner, the sadist does not need to handle his or her emotional baggage, and is able to discount the sex as next to meaningless: 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 knock it about, one cannot fall in love with it or be hurt or betrayed by it. In some cases, sadism might also represent a species of displacement, or scapegoating, in which uncomfortable feelings such as anger, shame, and guilt are discharged onto a third party.

For the masochist this time, 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 vulnerability and dependency, which can serve as a proxy for intimacy. Moreover, the masochist may derive gratification from earning the approval of the sadist, fulfilling his fantasies, commanding his undivided attention, and, in that sense, controlling him.

For the couple, sadomasochism can be seen as a means of intensifying normal sexual relations (pain releases endorphins and other hormones), leaving a mark or memory, testing boundaries, rebelling against social norms and expectations, giving form and expression to psychological realities, building trust and intimacy, or simply playing.

Et tu

And what about you, dear reader? It’s easy to think that this sort of stuff only applies to a handful of ‘deviants’, but the truth is that we all harbour sadomasochistic tendencies. Just think, for example, of casual, ‘normal’ behaviours such as love-biting, tickling, or teasing. In the words of the playwright Terence (d. 159 BCE), ‘I am human, and consider nothing human to be alien to me.’

Sadomasochism can also play out on a psychological level. In every relationship or almost, one partner is more attached than the other. Characteristically, the more attached partner is ‘the one who waits’. Thus, the philosopher Roland Barthes (d. 1980): 

Am I in love? —yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn’t wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.

The likely outcome of this asymmetry of desire is that the less attached partner (A) becomes dominant, while the more attached partner (B) becomes submissive in a bid to please and seduce. Sooner or later, A feels stifled and takes distance, but if he or she ventures too far, B may threaten to go cold or give up. This in turn prompts A to flip and, for a time, to become the more enthusiastic of the pair. But the original dynamic soon re-establishes itself, until it is once again upset, and so on ad vitam æternam. 

Domination and submission are elements of every relationship or almost, but that does not mean that they are not tedious, sterile, and, to echo Freud, immature. Instead of playing at cat and mouse, lovers need to be able 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, nurturing, and enabling, but how many people have the capacity and maturity for this kind of love?

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

Adapted from For Better For Worse

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Antiquity’s best arguments for philosophy.

According to the historian Suetonius, the emperor Augustus wrote an invitation (or exhortation) to philosophy. If this is true, it would have been inspired by Cicero’s famous Hortensius, which was, in turn, informed by Aristotle’s Protrepticus. Tragically, all three protreptics have been lost, except for fragments of the Hortensius and Protrepticus—depriving us of antiquity’s most popular, and improving, genre of philosophy.

This short, readable book is an imaginative reconstruction of the first Roman emperor’s invitation to philosophy, based on arguments and anecdotes gleaned from other ancient authors, including Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. It features Augustus in conversation with his two young grandsons (who were also his adopted sons and heirs), Gaius and Lucius, in the forlorn hope that they might one day rise into philosopher-emperors.

At his trial, Socrates declaimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what are the arguments behind this slogan, and why should we, today, take up the study of philosophy?

Find out more: http://mybook.to/invitationtophilosophy

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The true aim is not to come back, but to have a proper death.

Northern gateway to the Great Stupa at Sanchi, carved with scenes from the previous lives of the Buddha.

Whenever I tell people that I’ve written a book on Indian thought, the conversation often turns to reincarnation. “How wonderful,” said a neighbour, “if people never really die.” I replied: “Actually, reincarnation, even into a higher station, is a kind of punishment. The aim is not to come back. The aim, you might say, is to have a proper death.”

Even Hindus and Buddhists sometimes forget this, and hope, modestly, to be reincarnated into a slightly easier life. The principal bears explaining, and one way to do that is through the prism of Buddhist thought.

The Doctrine of Dependent Origination

The Buddha was struck by human suffering and spent years trying to understand its causes and the means to overcome them.

An early insight that led to his enlightenment is the Doctrine of Dependent Origination, according to which life is a continuous process of change, with every instance of change having manifold causes and effects. This means that all things are conditioned by other things, so that all things are interconnected.

Suffering arises from a craving for permanence; but all permanence is an illusion that, in time, can only lead to pain and disappointment.

The other, brighter side of the coin is that, if all things all conditional, and subject to change, then so too is suffering.

The Four Noble Truths

It is said that, upon enlightenment, the Buddha understood the Four Noble Truths, which he outlined in his first sermon in the deer park at Sarnath:

  1. Suffering (dukkha) is inherent in all life.
  2. The cause of all suffering is desire.
  3. There is a natural way to eliminate all suffering.
  4. The Noble Eightfold Path is that way.

The first truth, dukkha, acknowledges the unsatisfactory nature of existence. The second truth, samudaya (origin), attributes a cause to this suffering, namely, desire. The third truth, nirodha (cessation), posits a state that is free from suffering. And the fourth truth, marga (path), points to the method for achieving that state.

Although usually translated as “suffering,” dukkha refers more broadly to the inherently impermanent and unsatisfactory nature of all things, including the pleasant ones—for, really, it is on account of them that we suffer most.

Nirodha is also referred to as nirvana (“blown out,” as in a candle), indicating that, rather than a positive state, nirvana is more of a negative state of absence of desire. Nirvana is the state of wishing for nothing, not even nirvana—a state akin, in that respect, to the deepest sleep, or death.

Wisdom and Liberation

If the cause of dukkha is desire, the cause of desire is ignorance—pointing to knowledge or wisdom as the way forward. With proper perspective, there would be no desire, and so no suffering—and no (re)birth, which is the outcome of desire, and the source of all suffering. “Rebirth” is a misleading term: had it been called “re-death,” people would look upon it very differently.

Does this mean that people ought to refrain from having children? No, insofar as being born is an opportunity to escape being born. The purpose of life is to provide us with an opportunity to escape it, by achieving wisdom. Otherwise, we shall have to try again, and again. It is said that on the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha remembered hundreds of thousands of his former lives. The world is either an aberration or created for the edification or purification of soul or consciousness.

Unfortunately, wisdom is hard to attain, because it runs counter to everything we have learned and everything we love, including the thing we love most, our self. On top of that, it skirts with everything we fear, not least death and impermanence. For these reasons and more, it takes long practice and training to attain wisdom, and even longer practice and training to hold on to it in the face of temptation, fragility, and adversity.

Concluding Remarks

With desire firmly under control, everything becomes a lot better and a lot easier. In an absence of desire, why lie or steal, or be envious or greedy? Or why be anxious, or angry, or depressed? The opposite of envy is not merely an absence of envy, but shared joy and admiration. The opposite of greed is not merely an absence of greed, but decency and generosity. The opposite of anger is not merely an absence of anger, but compassion. The opposite of anxiety is not merely an absence of anxiety, but tranquillity. The opposite of depression is not merely an absence of depression, but wisdom.

Read more In Indian Mythology and Philosophy.

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Did the philosopher-king live up to expectations?

In Plato’s Republic (c. 375 BCE), Socrates says that his vision of the ideal state could not exist “until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy…”

Here he was at last, more than five hundred years later, rarer even than the Ethiopian phoenix, the fabled philosopher king—and not just any vassal or kinglet, but the Emperor of Rome.

So, how did it work out?

How Marcus Became Emperor

Marcus Aurelius was born in 121 CE as Marcus Annius Verus, into a prominent senatorial family with intimate imperial ties. He began from an early age to evince signs of virtue, so that the emperor Hadrian noticed him and even punned on his name, Verus [‘True’], calling him ‘Verissimus’ [‘The Truest’].

In 136, Hadrian, having no male heir, adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who now became Lucius Aelius Caesar. But Lucius died in 138, and Hadrian had to choose again.

This time, Hadrian adopted Titus Aurelius Antoninus, the husband of Marcus’ aunt Faustina the Elder, on condition that Antoninus in turn adopt Marcus and the son of the late Lucius, also Lucius.

The intricacy of these machinations suggests that Hadrian intended Antoninus as a simple placeholder for Marcus, and the much younger Lucius as a spare.

Whatever the case, by the age of 17, Marcus had already been marked out as a future emperor.

Childhood and Education

Whereas most would have been overjoyed, Marcus was not.

In 132, under the influence of Diognetus, the eleven-year-old Marcus had taken up the dress and habits of a philosopher, and his mother had had to talk him out of sleeping on the floor. In the Meditations, the grown-up Marcus thanks Diognetus, a Stoic and painter, for introducing him to “the Greek lifestyle—the camp-bed and the cloak.”

His other tutors came to include the lawyer and orator Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the rhetorician Herodes Atticus, and Plutarch’s grandson, Sextus of Charonea.

As an orator, Fronto was second only to Cicero, and had something of the Cicero about him when he purchased the fabled Gardens of Maecenas. Much of the extensive and years-long correspondence between Marcus and Fronto is still with us.

Herodes Atticus, one of the richest men in the empire, funded several public works including, in Athens, the Panathenaic Stadium and the odeon known as the Herodeon, both of which, remarkably, are still in use.

But although Marcus had for tutors the greatest men of his age, it is the dog-eared copy of Epictetus that he received from the Stoic Junius Rusticus that made the greatest impression upon him.

Marriage and Children

In 136, Marcus had been betrothed to the daughter of Lucius Aelius Caesar.

But after the death of Hadrian, the engagement was annulled, and Antoninus, the new emperor, bethrothed him to his daughter Faustina (even though Marcus and Faustina were legally brother and sister).

Marcus married Faustina seven years later, in 145, while serving out his second term as consul.

After the birth of their first child, a daughter, in 147, Antoninus gave Marcus the imperium and the tribunicia potestas, thereby elevating him, in effect, to the rank of junior emperor.

Faustina the Younger would bear Marcus at least thirteen more children, including two sets of twins, over the next 23 years.

Relationship with His Co-Emperor

As Antoninus began to age and ail, Marcus took over more of his responsibilities, so that he was already well worn in upon his accession to the imperial throne in 161.

He could easily have ruled alone, but instead insisted upon making his adoptive brother Lucius co-emperor.

In truth, Marcus would rather have remained a philosopher, or private citizen, but considered it his Stoic duty to take up the purple. In the Meditations, he compares philosophy and the court to a mother and stepmother: “you would pay your respects to your stepmother, yes… but it’s your real mother you’d go home to. The court… and philosophy. Keep returning to it, to rest in its embrance. It’s all that makes the court—and you—endurable.”

In practice, Lucius—now Lucius Verus—deferred to Marcus, who was ten years older and, by experience and temperament, better suited to the role.

The Antonine Plague

But now Marcus’ luck would run out.

Towards the end of 161, the Tiber broke its banks and flooded much of Rome, bringing about a famine.

At around the same time, the Parthians invaded the client state of Armenia and began destabilizing the East.

Lucius nominally led the Roman response from Antioch, assisted by able generals such as the Assyrian Roman, Gaius Avidius Cassius.

As the war wore on, Lucius made a trip to Ephesus to wed Marcus’ daughter Lucilla.

The Romans prevailed, but the returning armies brought back a plague, possibly of smallpox. The so-called Antonine plague raged for many years throughout the empire and quite literally decimated [killed one in every ten] the population.

The Marcomannic Wars

In 167 or 168, Marcus and Lucius set out on a punitive expedition across the Rhine and Danube, while a horde of German tribes invaded Italy from behind their backs.

In 169, Lucius suddenly died, perhaps of a stroke, or from the plague.

Marcus battled on for three more years to secure the north-eastern border, while other parts of the empire suffered smaller scale rebellions or invasions. It is at around this time that he kept the diary which we now know as The Meditations.

Threat to His Throne

By 175, Avidius Cassius had taken control of the East, including Egypt, the granary of Rome.

In that year, he heard rumours of Marcus’ death and proclaimed himself emperor.

Marcus set off for the East, rejecting offers of assistance from some of the German tribes. But three months after his proclamation, Cassius was murdered by one of his own centurions.

His head was sent to Marcus, but the philosopher-king refused to see it, and pardoned Cassius’ co-conspirators in the Senate.

Eastern Tour

Marcus then felt obliged to shore up the East, visiting Antioch, Alexandria, and Athens, where he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. 

In Athens, he endowed the first ever university chairs, one for each of the four major schools of philosophy, the Platonic, Peripatetic (Aristotelian), Stoic, and Epicurean.

His beloved Faustina, who had come with, died in Cappadocia, and he honored her service by having her deified.

Death and Succession

In 177, Marcus proclaimed his 16-year-old son Commodus co-emperor, breaking with the Nerva-Antonine dynasty’s remarkably successful practice of succession by the best man available—a tradition which, in truth, owed more to necessity than to enlightened principle.

This, with the benefit of hindsight, or even without, was a grave error, but what else could Marcus have done short of planting the seed of a civil war, or ordering the throttling of his own son?

In 180, Marcus, who had been sickly all his life, possibly with a stomach ulcer, passed away at his military headquarters in Sirmium, Pannonia, thereby bringing to an end the long period of relative peace and prosperity now known as the Pax Romana (27 BCE—180 CE).

In 192, Commodus was strangled in the bath by his wrestling partner Narcissus, acting in concert with other palace insiders, and with the retrospective approval of the Senate.

The demise of Commodus brought the Nerva-Antonine dynasty to a close, to be followed by the chaotic Year of the Five Emperors.

Assessment

I’ll leave the last word on Marcus to the historian Cassius Dio, who lived through his entire reign:

[Marcus Aurelius] did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign. But for my part, I admire him all the more for this very reason, that amid unusual and extraordinary difficulties he both survived himself and preserved the empire. Just one thing prevented him from being completely happy, namely, that after rearing and educating his son in the best possible way he was vastly disappointed in him. This matter must be our next topic; for our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.

Read more in Stoic Stories.