In normal individuals, love and suffering are antithetic terms, love meaning joy and pleasure, (sexual and egotistical), suffering being only conceivable when the craving4 for love is ungratified, when the lonely lovers are parted by life, when one of them has been robbed by death of his mate, etc.
Algolagnists. There are abnormal human beings, however, known technically5 as algolagnists (from algos, pain, and lagneia, enjoyment), who cannot imagine or enjoy love when it is entirely6 dissociated from some form of suffering.
The active algolagnists must inflict7 some pain,[Pg 189] physical or mental, upon their mate in order to enjoy the pleasures of love to their full extent. The passive algolagnists only attain8 the highest degree of amorous satisfaction when they are submitted by their mate to painful or humiliating treatment.
Active algolagnists are known more commonly as "sadists," an expression created by Moreau de Tours. Krafft-Ebing, the most famous writer on sexual perversions9 coined for passive algolagnists the expression "masochists."
The word sadist is derived10 from the name of Marquis de Sade, a French pervert11 of the eighteenth century, whose life and writings well illustrate12 the form of love which is constantly associated with acts of cruelty.
Donatien Alphonse Fran?ois de Sade was born in Paris, June 2 1740, the offspring of an aristocratic family of Provence. Among his ancestors was the Laura of Petrarca's sonnets13.
At fourteen, he joined a cavalry14 regiment15. He went thru the Seven Years War during which he witnessed the most ruthless atrocities16. On his return, at the age of twenty-seven, he married, but soon after his marriage was arrested for some deed of cruelty committed in a house of prostitution.
[Pg 190]
His father's death left him heir to an important government position but his life of excesses gave him little time to attend to his duties.
At twenty-eight, he attracted much attention by a scandal in which he played a prominent part. He lured17 a shopkeeper's wife, Rose Keller to a house in the suburbs of the French capital where he used to hold revels18.
Threatening the woman with a pistol, he bound her hands and feet and whipped her to the blood.
The next morning, Rose Keller managed to free herself, jumped out of the window and summoned help. De Sade was arrested but the affair was soon hushed up by powerful friends at the court of Louis the Fifteenth.
That incident is characteristic of sadism in love's relations. His victim's sufferings supplied De Sade with the artificial stimulation19 which normal desire would produce in a normal man.
Soon after this, De Sade eloped to Italy with his wife's sister.
On his way to Italy, he stopped in Marseille and organized an orgy in the course of which he gorged20 his guests with candy containing some poisonous aphrodisiac drug. Two of them died.
This time, a court rendered a death sentence[Pg 191] against the murderous pervert, who eluded21 the police for a time and was finally confined in the fortress22 of Vincennes for thirteen years.
It was said at the time that a woman had been found in a house where he indulged in all sorts of debauches, unconscious and bleeding from a hundred scalpel wounds which had severed23 many veins24.
De Sade devoted25 his enforced leisure to writing. His published works fill up ten volumes. They contain a description of the most atrocious sexual cruelties. The author makes a childish attempt at establishing a "satanic" morality based on the fact that "virtue26 is always punished by the world and vice27 always rewarded." His atheism28 is no more than a satanic ritual.
De Sade's literary output, which is devoid29 of any artistic30 merit and is only of interest to the student of abnormal psychology31, bears the stamp of hopeless intellectual inferiority trying to justify32 itself by representing the entire world as a combination of a brothel and a torture chamber33 and mankind as a herd34 of blood-thirsty and sex-crazed lunatics. A sinister35 autobiography36 and wish fulfilment.
The revolutionists of 1789 who opened the doors of all jails and insane asylums38 gave De Sade his freedom on July 14. He sided politically with his[Pg 192] deliverers but after a while, became suspicious to them and again spent one year in prison (1793-1794).
What Bonaparte Thought of Him. De Sade, who had been very liberal in presenting free copies of his obscene novels to men prominent in the days of the Revolution and the Terror, made the mistake of sending a set of his works to Bonaparte.
The Corsican caused the entire edition to be suppressed and diagnosed the author very accurately39 as a murderous pervert, unfit to be at large. De Sade was committed to an insane asylum37 where he remained until his death on December 2, 1814.
Sadism is a morbid40 phenomenon which remained mysterious until recently, when the experimental work of physiologists41 like Cannon42, Sherrington and others, revealed to us the close connection existing between mental states, muscular tensions and the secretions43 of ductless glands44 of the body.
Adler's "individual psychology" also has thrown much light upon many morbid actions which are simply attempts at compensation for a feeling of inferiority. The neurotic45, briefly46 speaking, feels inferior, that is, afraid of some imaginary danger.[Pg 193] He casts about for something which can be done quickly, simply, with the least effort, and which will restore his peace and safety by filling him, were it only temporarily, with a sense of actual or imaginary superiority.
Glandular47 Drunkenness. Wulffen suggests an interpretation48 of sadism which is ingenious but unconvincing. He considers every act of violence as provoked by the faulty functioning of some glands.
He compares the effect of the gonadal hormones49 (one of the secretions of the sex glands issuing from the interstitial cells) with that of alcohol. Alcohol destroys the inhibitions and allows unconscious cravings of an inacceptable sort to express themselves thru overt50 acts.
The drunken man loses all shame and all fear, becomes boisterous51 and, at times, murderous. Likewise, Wulffen says, oversecretion of the gonadal hormones creates a sort of sexual drunkenness in the course of which the individual is forced into violent or cruel behavior.
This would be acceptable if all the sadists were strong healthy specimens52 of manhood and womanhood. Most of them, on the contrary, show plainly signs of glandular insufficiency.
[Pg 194]
Wulffen's thesis is not confirmed as some writers assume by a study of the mating habits of many animals. Cocks during the act of mating peck cruelly the back of the hen's head. Tomcats bite the necks of their mates. Toads53, at times, choke the female to death in their clinging embrace.
In those acts of animal "cruelty" there is probably another element to be considered. The tomcat, digging his teeth into the female cat's neck, may not so much relieve his sadistic54 impulses as produce in his mate some welcome sensation of pleasurable pain. We know how willingly the most rebellious55 cats allow any one to grab them by the backs of their necks, making no effort at freeing themselves and apparently56 enjoying that partial strangulation. (Remember the aphrodisiac influence of hanging.)
Atavism. Eulenburg considers that sadism is an atavistic trait. "Not only animals," he says, "but primitive57 races associate mating with violence."
The caveman is supposed to have beaten the female he captured into insensibility before dragging her to his cave.
We do not know, however, whether it was THE caveman or SOME cavemen who indulged in that practice, the existence of which may be merely a sub[Pg 195]ject for speculation58. It goes without saying that whenever females were carried off by victorious59 tribes after armed conflicts the "wooing" of the captives must have been synonymous with violence and rape60.
Old documents offer many examples of the combination of love and violence. There is the old legend of Griseldis in which a sadistic man tested in the cruellest way the woman who was to be his life mate.
The epic61 poem Gudrun recites one of the prehistoric62 struggles between male and female. The unfortunate male in this case is overpowered by the Nordic Valkyrie who binds63 him with her girdle and keeps him lashed64 to the wall till morning.
The modern honeymoon65 trip is undoubtedly66 a survival of the primeval habit of carrying off the bride.
Primitive Religions constantly associate sadism with love. In fact the Goddess of Love, in the Greek mythology67, owed her existence to an act of sadism. Kronos' male organ, cut off by his Zeus, fell into the sea, fertilized68 it, and Aphrodite was born.
Many primitive gods demanded the sacrifice of virgins69, primitive goddesses decapitated or cas[Pg 196]trated men with whom at times they consorted70. The priests and priestesses of certain religions could only please their gods by submitting to sexual indignities71, the priestesses of Cybelea prostituting themselves to every one, the priests castrating themselves.
Some of those acts of violence, however, must be considered from an entirely different point of view.
In Primitive Races real achievement was always associated with violence. The "real man" was the victorious fighter and killer72. Even in Roman days, gladiator duels73 terminated with the death of the defeated man, unless he were a popular ring idol74 whom the mob saved for further encounters.
The robber, designated by more flattering names, of course, gained more glory by stealing goods or gold than the merchant who, in ways more socially acceptable, accumulated goods and gold.
Civilisation75 has changed those things. In neurotic states, however, we always observe a return to archaic76 modes of action which are more direct. We nowadays kill off a competitor thru advertising77. Instead of levying78 tribute on the defeated rival, we compel him to sell out to us at our price, etc. The neurotic kills or steals, as archaic heroes did.
Animal Love Fights. Also, as far as animals[Pg 197] are concerned, the more or less playful fights with which they prelude79 their mating is not, as Wulffen suggests, due to gonadal drunkenness. On the contrary, it is meant to produce a stronger outpouring of gonadal secretions in both male and female, thereby80 increasing the energy of the male and assuring the pregnancy81 of the female.
Fights preceding animal mating increase, among other things, the secretions of the adrenal cortex which impart to all the muscles (among them the sexual muscles) a considerable tension.
Let us bear in mind that physiological82 detail while interpreting the fact that many neurotics83 are only potent84 sexually with women who resist them. We see how a certain amount of struggle, producing perhaps slight anger (and possibly leading to acts of violence), would strengthen the sexual faculties85 of the weak neurotic and enable him to possess his mate. From that type of neurotic, who requires glandular excitement of the adrenal type, to the sadist, typified by the famous Marquis, and up to the Ripper who disembowels his victims we see merely a series of gradations in glandular insufficiency, not as Wulffen said, in glandular hyper-secretion.
A Neurotic Trait. Furthermore, sadism should[Pg 198] not be considered as a phenomenon of purely86 sexual character. Sadism is merely a detail of the neurotic make up. It is one of the neurotic short cuts whereby an inferior individual acquires a temporary superiority.
The section foreman who takes pleasure in driving his men at a killing87 pace, the detective engaged daily in the task of man hunting, the so-called "strict" parent who beats his children, the surgeon who never tires of performing operations, the futile88 reformer who is constantly trying to deprive some one of some form of enjoyment, the jealous husband who deprives his wife of many pleasures, the jealous wife who relishes89 the thought that her husband is giving up his club or his former associates for her sake, are sadists, some of them partly normal and useful, some of them morbid or ridiculous.
The Mob. Sadism is one of the great "mob characteristics." Why do we run to fires and to the scene of an accident? To help? No. To enjoy the sight of some one's life or property being destroyed. If our impulses were humane90 or charitable we should be relieved, nay91 exultant92, when we learn that the conflagration93 has only destroyed a curtain or a shade, when we see the man bowled[Pg 199] over by a taxi getting up and walking away, little the worse for the experience.
Notice on the contrary the indignation of the average man when the fire "does not amount to anything", when the "victim" of an accident escapes unharmed.
Is the Male More Cruel? It has been said that sadism was a masculine trait, masochism a feminine characteristic. Like the majority of generalisations on the subject of sex differences, it is inaccurate94.
Man, the hunter, is more aggressive in love, but his aggressiveness need not include cruelty. His strength, in modern life, is put to quite a different use, to protect the weaker female, not to overwhelm her.
Woman is supposed to be more submissive but mythology, legend and history present to us thousands of cases in which the female of the human species betrayed many sadistic instincts, not infrequently associated with her love activities. Even in the animal world, while we behold95 males apparently submitting the female to much suffering, we find not a few cases, for instance in the insect world, of females killing or even devouring96 their mate immediately after the love communion.
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1
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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7
inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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perversions
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| n.歪曲( perversion的名词复数 )；变坏；变态心理 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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pervert
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| n.堕落者，反常者；vt.误用，滥用；使人堕落，使入邪路 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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sonnets
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| n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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atrocities
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| n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪 | |
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lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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revels
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| n.作乐( revel的名词复数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉v.作乐( revel的第三人称单数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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stimulation
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| n.刺激，激励，鼓舞 | |
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gorged
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| v.（用食物把自己）塞饱，填饱( gorge的过去式和过去分词 )；作呕 | |
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eluded
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的过去式和过去分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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25
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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atheism
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| n.无神论，不信神 | |
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devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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asylums
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| n.避难所( asylum的名词复数 )；庇护；政治避难；精神病院 | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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physiologists
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| n.生理学者( physiologist的名词复数 )；生理学( physiology的名词复数 )；生理机能 | |
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cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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secretions
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| n.分泌（物）( secretion的名词复数 ) | |
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glands
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| n.腺( gland的名词复数 ) | |
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neurotic
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| adj.神经病的，神经过敏的；n.神经过敏者，神经病患者 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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glandular
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| adj.腺体的 | |
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48
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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49
hormones
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| n. 荷尔蒙，激素 名词hormone的复数形式 | |
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50
overt
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| adj.公开的，明显的，公然的 | |
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51
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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52
specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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53
toads
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆( toad的名词复数 ) | |
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54
sadistic
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| adj.虐待狂的 | |
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55
rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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56
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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57
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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58
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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59
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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60
rape
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| n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸 | |
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61
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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63
binds
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| v.约束( bind的第三人称单数 )；装订；捆绑；（用长布条）缠绕 | |
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64
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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65
honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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67
mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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Fertilized
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| v.施肥( fertilize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69
virgins
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| 处女，童男( virgin的名词复数 )； 童贞玛利亚（耶稣之母） | |
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70
consorted
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| v.结伴( consort的过去式和过去分词 )；交往；相称；调和 | |
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71
indignities
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| n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
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72
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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73
duels
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| n.两男子的决斗( duel的名词复数 )；竞争，斗争 | |
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74
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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75
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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76
archaic
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| adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的 | |
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77
advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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78
levying
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| 征（兵）( levy的现在分词 )； 索取； 发动（战争）； 征税 | |
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prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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80
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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pregnancy
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| n.怀孕，怀孕期 | |
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physiological
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| adj.生理学的，生理学上的 | |
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neurotics
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| n.神经官能症的( neurotic的名词复数 )；神经质的；神经过敏的；极为焦虑的 | |
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84
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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85
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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86
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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relishes
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| n.滋味( relish的名词复数 )；乐趣；（大量的）享受；快乐v.欣赏( relish的第三人称单数 )；从…获得乐趣；渴望 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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exultant
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| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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94
inaccurate
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| adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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