Sadomasochism in Everyday Life


Book Description

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Reflecting on a Set of Personal and Political Criteria 1 Pt. 1 Expanding the Scope of Sadomasochism Ch. 1 Exploring Sadomasochism in the American Context 15 Ch. 2 Defining a Basic Dynamic: Parodoxes[sic] at the Heart of Sadomasochism 43 Ch. 3 Combining the Insights of Existentialism and Psychoanalysis: Why Sadomasochism? 69 Pt. 2 Sadomasochism in Its Social Settings Ch. 4 Employing Chains of Command: Sadomasochism and the Workplace 93 Ch. 5 Engendering Sadomasochism: Dominance, Subordination, and the Contaminated World of Patriarchy 125 Ch. 6 Creating Enemies in Everyday Life: Following the Example of Others 155 Ch. 7 A Theoretical Finale 187 Epilogue 215 Notes 223 Index 231




The Sadomasochism of Everyday Life


Book Description

Why do men and women lock themselves in painful intimacies, continue to work for tyrannical bosses, and put up with people who humiliate them? Exploring the self-inflicted suffering of everyday life, this book sheds light on a widespread psychological phenomenon of our time--and points the way to breaking that pattern of unhappiness.




Battling the Life and Death Forces of Sadomasochism


Book Description

This book examines the forces of sadomasochism in the clinical domain where transference and countertransference reside. Psychoanalysts write in depth about cases where sadomasochism is present for both analysand and analyst. Four cases present the unfolding analytic exchange where life and death forces collide. Each case is accompanied by three discussions illuminating the complex phenomena that often include lifelong perversions and painful narcissistic difficulties. Through the case presentations and discussions, psychoanalytic therapists will find maps for guiding their own work with sadomasochistic processes. Treatments where sadomasochism is prominent abound with dramas containing control and denigration, domination, and submission. Often there is a history of over stimulation and under stimulation from infancy and childhood influencing the formation of object relations and unconscious fantasy. Since Freud first introduced the concepts of component instincts and psychosexual development, psychoanalysts have been exploring sadomasochism in its various forms. The belief that togetherness involves tormenting pain creates a sense of life and death struggle that is imbued with powerful instinctual gratification. Unconscious sexualized scenes of both dyadic and triadic forms carry humiliation and conquest.




Social Sadomasochism


Book Description

Explains the subtle but pervasive aspects of sadomasochism that affect everyday relationships across our lives, detailing when the power and control dynamics become neurotic and describing actions that can be taken to better individuals and improve society. For most people, a whip-wielding, leather-clad sexual subculture comes to mind when they hear the phrase "sadomasochism." But as psychiatrist Martin Kantor explains in this book, sadomasochism is generally about power, control, dominance, and submission, dynamics that are subtle and pervasive in all of our lives, from home life to work life to social interactions including political arenas. The bottom line: sadomasochism is about the giving or receiving pleasure from the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation and both pain and pleasure can be purely emotional, no sexual or physical context necessary. Kantor deconstructs sadomasochism to show us how it affects each of us, consciously or not. He explains the "life phases" of sadomasochism, the role early trauma plays in this self-defeating action when it reaches a neurotic level, and the damage it does to individuals, loved ones, and society. This ground-breaking book will appeal to psychology students and researchers, as well as general readers with an interest in psychology.




Sadomasochism


Book Description

Sadomasochism is explored from three distinct vantage points in this volume. First, there is an extensive critical overview of the etiology of the clinical syndrome that singles out specific parent-child interactions responsible for its causation. Second, the author presents a sociological perspective tracing the sadomasochistic elements existing in all basic interactions between men and women and argues compellingly that sexism is ultimately an expression of a sadomasochistic arrangement between the sexes. Finally a detailed and specific treatment plan is offered. Richly illustrated with four case histories, this plan integrates the developmental phases of normal infancy with specific phases of the therapeutic process.




Sadomasochism in Art and Politics


Book Description

Dr Estela V. Welldon contests the view that sadomasochism is an isolated 'perversion'. Using numerous examples from literature, film, opera and other media, she undertakes an exploration of the psychodynamic aspects of sadomasochism that carries us from the writings of de Sade and von Sacher-Masoch to the contemporary underground S & M club scene. Challenging our expectations that S & M is concerned only with 'bizarre' activities, Dr Welldon illuminates the dynamics of power and control in everyday family life and sexual relationships. Her investigation deepens to include the downward spiral of domestic violence and child abuse, and the 'malignant bonding' between couples in cases such as Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and Fred and Rosemary West. Is sadomasochism invariably present in the victim-perpetrator cycle? Is it learned or innate? Are sadism and masochism complete opposites or do they complement one another? Are they specifically related to the genders? Dr Welldon asks these questions and many more in a fluent, thought provoking essay.




Sexual Myths of Modernity


Book Description

The notion of sexual sadism emerged from nineteenth-century alienist attempts to imagine the pleasure of the torturer or mass killer. This was a time in which sexuality was mapped to social progress, so that perversions were always related either to degeneration or decadence. These ideas were internalized in later Freudian views of the drives within the self, and of their repression under the demands of modern European civilization. Sadism was always presented as the barbarous past that lurked within each of us, ready to burst forth into murderous violence, crime, anti-Semitism, and finally genocide. This idea maintained its currency in European thought after the Second World War as Freudian-influenced accounts of the history of philosophy configured the Marquis de Sade as a kind of Kantian “superego” in a framework that viewed the Western Enlightenment as unraveled by its own inner demons. In this way, a straight line was imagined from the late eighteenth century to the Holocaust. These ideas have had an ongoing legacy in debates about sexual perversion, feminism, genocide representation, and historical memory of Nazism. However, recent genocide research has massively debunked assumptions that perpetrators of mass violence are especially sexually motivated in their cruelty. This book considers how the late twentieth-century imagination eroticized Nazism for its own ends, but also how it has been informed by nineteenth-century formulations of the idea of mass violence as a sexual problem.




Kink


Book Description

A New York Times Notable Book Kink is a groundbreaking anthology of literary short fiction exploring love and desire, BDSM, and interests across the sexual spectrum, edited by lauded writers R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, and featuring a roster of all-star contributors including Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado, and more. A Most-Anticipated book of 2021 as selected by * Marie Claire * O, The Oprah Magazine * Cosmopolitan * Time * The Millions * The Advocate * Autostraddle * Refinery29 * Shape * Town & Country * Book Riot * Literary Hub * Kink is a dynamic anthology of literary fiction that opens an imaginative door into the world of desire. The stories within this collection portray love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. The collection includes works by renowned fiction writers such as Callum Angus, Alexander Chee, Vanessa Clark, Melissa Febos, Kim Fu, Roxane Gay, Cara Hoffman, Zeyn Joukhadar, Chris Kraus, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Mountford, Larissa Pham, and Brandon Taylor, with Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon as editors. The stories within explore bondage, power-play, and submissive-dominant relationships; we are taken to private estates, therapists’ offices, underground sex clubs, and even a sex theater in early-20th century Paris. While there are whips and chains, sure, the true power of these stories lies in their beautiful, moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires, as portrayed by some of today’s most exciting writers.




Dark Eros: Curing the Sadomasochism in Everyday Life


Book Description

In this eye-opening book Thomas Moore, the author of the national bestsellers Care of the Soul and Soul Mates, turns to the dark side of love: its cruelties, perversions, and appalling tortures. Bravely and with brilliant insights, Moore re-imagines the repulsive fictions of the Marquis de Sade to learn what they can teach about the horrors hidden deep inside the human soul, revealing unsuspected poetic and imaginative powers within violence and sexual victimization. The book also shows the sadomasochism that lies unseen in many aspects of everyday life. With a foreword by Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig and a new afterword by the author.




The Slave Soul of Russia


Book Description

Why, asks Daniel Rancour-Laferriere in this controversial book, has Russia been a country of suffering? Russian history, religion, folklore, and literature are rife with suffering. The plight of Anna Karenina, the submissiveness of serfs in the 16th and 17th centuries, ancient religious tracts emphasizing humility as the mother of virtues, the trauma of the Bolshevik revolution, the current economic upheavals wracking the country-- these are only a few of the symptoms of what The Slave Soul of Russia identifies as a veritable cult of suffering that has been centuries in the making. Bringing to light dozens of examples of self-defeating activities and behaviors that have become an integral component of the Russian psyche, Rancour-Laferriere convincingly illustrates how masochism has become a fact of everyday life in Russia. Until now, much attention has been paid to the psychology of Russia's leaders and their impact on the country's condition. Here, for the first time, is a compelling portrait of the Russian people's psychology.