in normal individuals the idea of love is inseparably associated with tenderness, caressing gestures, words or glances, readiness on the part of either mate to go to extremes in order to enhance the loved one's enjoyment of the amorous relationship, or to protect him against all dangers or suffering.
in normal individuals, love and suffering are antithetic terms, love meaning joy and pleasure, (sexual and egotistical), suffering being only conceivable when the craving 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 technically as algolagnists (from algos, pain, and lagneia, enjoyment), who cannot imagine or enjoy love when it is entirely dissociated from some form of suffering.
the active algolagnists must inflict 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 attain 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 perversions coined for passive algolagnists the expression "masochists."
the word sadist is derived from the name of marquis de sade, a french pervert of the eighteenth century, whose life and writings well illustrate 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 sonnets.
at fourteen, he joined a cavalry regiment. he went thru the seven years war during which he witnessed the most ruthless atrocities. 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 lured a shopkeeper's wife, rose keller to a house in the suburbs of the french capital where he used to hold revels.
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 stimulation 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 gorged 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 eluded the police for a time and was finally confined in the fortress 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 severed many veins.
de sade devoted 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 "virtue is always punished by the world and vice always rewarded." his atheism is no more than a satanic ritual.
de sade's literary output, which is devoid of any artistic merit and is only of interest to the student of abnormal psychology, bears the stamp of hopeless intellectual inferiority trying to justify itself by representing the entire world as a combination of a brothel and a torture chamber and mankind as a herd of blood-thirsty and sex-crazed lunatics. a sinister autobiography and wish fulfilment.
the revolutionists of 1789 who opened the doors of all jails and insane asylums 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 accurately as a murderous pervert, unfit to be at large. de sade was committed to an insane asylum where he remained until his death on december 2, 1814.
sadism is a morbid phenomenon which remained mysterious until recently, when the experimental work of physiologists like cannon, sherrington and others, revealed to us the close connection existing between mental states, muscular tensions and the secretions of ductless glands 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 neurotic, briefly 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.
glandular drunkenness. wulffen suggests an interpretation 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 hormones (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 overt acts.
the drunken man loses all shame and all fear, becomes boisterous 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 specimens of manhood and womanhood. most of them, on the contrary, show plainly signs of glandular insufficiency.
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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. toads, 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 sadistic impulses as produce in his mate some welcome sensation of pleasurable pain. we know how willingly the most rebellious cats allow any one to grab them by the backs of their necks, making no effort at freeing themselves and apparently 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 primitive 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 speculation. it goes without saying that whenever females were carried off by victorious tribes after armed conflicts the "wooing" of the captives must have been synonymous with violence and rape.
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 epic poem gudrun recites one of the prehistoric struggles between male and female. the unfortunate male in this case is overpowered by the nordic valkyrie who binds him with her girdle and keeps him lashed to the wall till morning.
the modern honeymoon trip is undoubtedly 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 mythology, owed her existence to an act of sadism. kronos' male organ, cut off by his zeus, fell into the sea, fertilized it, and aphrodite was born.
many primitive gods demanded the sacrifice of virgins, primitive goddesses decapitated or cas[pg 196]trated men with whom at times they consorted. the priests and priestesses of certain religions could only please their gods by submitting to sexual indignities, 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 killer. even in roman days, gladiator duels terminated with the death of the defeated man, unless he were a popular ring idol 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.
civilisation has changed those things. in neurotic states, however, we always observe a return to archaic modes of action which are more direct. we nowadays kill off a competitor thru advertising. instead of levying 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 prelude 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, thereby increasing the energy of the male and assuring the pregnancy 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 physiological detail while interpreting the fact that many neurotics are only potent 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 faculties 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 purely 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 killing 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 futile 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 relishes 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 humane or charitable we should be relieved, nay exultant, when we learn that the conflagration 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 inaccurate.
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 behold 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 devouring their mate immediately after the love communion.
