# Love and Pain/2

We thus see that there are here two separate groups of feelings: one, in the masculine line, which delights in displaying force and often inflicts pain or the simulacrum of pain; the other, in the feminine line, which delights in submitting to that force, and even finds pleasure in a slight amount of pain, or the idea of pain, when associated with the experiences of love. We see, also, that these two groups of feelings are complementary. Within the limits consistent with normal and healthy life, what men are impelled to give women love to receive. So that we need not unduly deprecate the "cruelty" of men within these limits, nor unduly commiserate the women who are subjected to it.
Such a conclusion, however, as we have also seen, only holds good within those normal limits which an attempt has here been made to determine. The phenomena we have been considering are strictly normal phenomena, having their basis in the conditions of tumescence and detumescence in animal and primitive human courtship. At one point, however, when discussing the phenomena of the love-bite, I referred to the facts which indicate how this purely normal manifestation yet insensibly passes over into the region of the morbid. It is an instance that enables us to realize how even the most terrible and repugnant sexual perversions are still demonstrably linked on to phenomena that are fundamentally normal. The love-bite may be said to give us the key to that perverse impulse which has been commonly called sadism.
There is some difference of opinion as to how "sadism" may be best defined. Perhaps the simplest and most usual definition is that of Krafft-Ebing, as sexual emotion associated with the wish to inflict pain and use violence, or, as he elsewhere expresses it, "the impulse to cruel and violent treatment of the opposite sex, and the coloring of the idea of such acts with lustful feeling."[83] A more complete definition is that of Moll, who describes sadism as a condition in which "the sexual impulse consists in the tendency to strike, ill-use, and humiliate the beloved person."[84] This definition has the advantage of bringing in the element of moral pain. A further extension is made in Fere's definition as "the need of association of violence and cruelty with sexual enjoyment, such violence or cruelty not being necessarily exerted by the person himself who seeks sexual pleasure in this association."[85] Garnier's definition, while comprising all these points, further allows for the fact that a certain degree of sadism may be regarded as normal. "Pathological sadism," he states, "is an impulsive and obsessing sexual perversion characterized by a close connection between suffering inflicted or mentally represented and the sexual orgasm, without this necessary and sufficing condition frigidity usually remaining absolute."[86] It must be added that these definitions are very incomplete if by "sadism" we are to understand the special sexual perversions which are displayed in De Sade's novels. Iwan Bloch ("Eugen Duehren"), in the course of his book on De Sade, has attempted a definition strictly on this basis, and, as will be seen, it is necessary to make it very elaborate: "A connection, whether intentionally sought or offered by chance, of sexual excitement and sexual enjoyment with the real or only symbolic (ideal, illusionary) appearance of frightful and shocking events, destructive occurrences and practices, which threaten or destroy the life, health, and property of man and other living creatures, and threaten and interrupt the continuity of inanimate objects, whereby the person who from such occurrences obtains sexual enjoyment may either himself be the direct cause, or cause them to take place by means of other persons, or merely be the spectator, or, finally, be, voluntarily or involuntarily, the object against which these processes are directed."[87] This definition of sadism as found in De Sade's works is thus, more especially by its final clause, a very much wider conception than the usual definition.
The attempt to define sadism strictly and penetrate to its roots in De Sade's personal temperament reveals a certain weakness in the current conception of this sexual perversion. It is not, as we might infer, both from the definition usually given and from its probable biological heredity from primitive times, a perversion due to excessive masculinity. The strong man is more apt to be tender than cruel, or at all events knows how to restrain within bounds any impulse to cruelty; the most extreme and elaborate forms of sadism (putting aside such as are associated with a considerable degree of imbecility) are more apt to be allied with a somewhat feminine organization. Montaigne, indeed, observed long ago that cruelty is usually accompanied by feminine softness.
We are thus led to another sexual perversion, which is usually considered the opposite of sadism. Masochism is commonly regarded as a peculiarly feminine sexual perversion, in women, indeed, as normal in some degree, and in man as a sort of inversion of the normal masculine emotional attitude, but this view of the matter is not altogether justified, for definite and pronounced masochism seems to be much rarer in women than sadism.[88] Krafft-Ebing, whose treatment of this phenomenon is, perhaps, his most valuable and original contribution to sexual psychology, has dealt very fully with the matter and brought forward many cases. He thus defines this perversion: "By masochism I understand a peculiar perversion of the psychical _vita sexualis_ in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex, of being treated by this person as by a master, humiliated and abused. This idea is colored by sexual feeling; the masochist lives in fancies in which he creates situations of this kind, and he often attempts to realize them."[89]
In a minor degree, not amounting to a complete perversion of the sexual instinct, this sentiment of abnegation, the desire to be even physically subjected to the adored woman, cannot be regarded as abnormal. More than two centuries before Krafft-Ebing appeared, Robert Burton, who was no mean psychologist, dilated on the fact that love is a kind of slavery. "They are commonly slaves," he wrote of lovers, "captives, voluntary servants; _amator amicae mancipium_, as Castilio terms him; his mistress's servant, her drudge, prisoner, bondman, what not?"[90] Before Burton's time the legend of the erotic servitude of Aristotle was widely spread in Europe, and pictures exist of the venerable philosopher on all fours ridden by a woman with a whip.[91] In classic times various masochistic phenomena are noted with approval by Ovid. It has been pointed out by Moll[92] that there are traces of masochistic feeling in some of Goethe's poems, especially "Lilis Park" and "Erwin und Elmire." Similar traces have been found in the poems of Heine, Platen, Hamerling, and many other poets.[93] The poetry of the people is also said to contain many such traces. It may, indeed, be said that passion in its more lyric exaltations almost necessarily involves some resort to masochistic expression. A popular lady novelist in a novel written many years ago represents her hero, a robust soldier, imploring the lady of his love, in a moment of passionate exaltation, to trample on him, certainly without any wish to suggest sexual perversion. If it is true that the Antonio of Otway's _Venice Preserved_ is a caricature of Shaftesbury, then it would appear that one of the greatest of English statesmen was supposed to exhibit very pronounced and characteristic masochistic tendencies; and in more recent days masochistic expressions have been noted as occurring in the love-letters of so emphatically virile a statesman as Bismarck.
Thus a minor degree of the masochistic tendency may be said to be fairly common, while its more pronounced manifestations are more common than pronounced sadism.[94] It very frequently affects persons of a sensitive, refined, and artistic temperament. It may even be said that this tendency is in the line of civilization. Krafft-Ebing points out that some of the most delicate and romantic love-episodes of the Middle Ages are distinctly colored by masochistic emotion.[95] The increasing tendency to masochism with increasing civilization becomes explicable if we accept Colin Scott's "secondary law of courting" as accessory to the primary law that the male is active, and the female passive and imaginatively attentive to the states of the excited male. According to the secondary law, "the female develops a superadded activity, the male becoming relatively passive and imaginatively attentive to the psychical and bodily states of the female."[96] We may probably agree that this "secondary law of courting" does really represent a tendency of love in individuals of complex and sensitive nature, and the outcome of such a receptive attitude on the part of the male is undoubtedly in well-marked cases a desire of submission to the female's will, and a craving to experience in some physical or psychic form, not necessarily painful, the manifestations of her activity.
When we turn from vague and unpronounced forms of the masochistic tendency to the more definite forms in which it becomes an unquestionable sexual perversion, we find a very eminent and fairly typical example in Rousseau, an example all the more interesting because here the subject has himself portrayed his perversion in his famous _Confessions_. It is, however, the name of a less eminent author, the Austrian novelist, Sacher-Masoch, which has become identified with the perversion through the fact that Krafft-Ebing fixed upon it as furnishing a convenient counterpart to the term "sadism." It is on the strength of a considerable number of his novels and stories, more especially of _Die Venus im Pelz_, that Krafft-Ebing took the scarcely warrantable liberty of identifying his name, while yet living, with a sexual perversion.
A careful consideration of the phenomena of sadism and masochism may be said to lead us to the conclusion that there is no real line of demarcation. Even De Sade himself was not a pure sadist, as Bloch's careful definition is alone sufficient to indicate; it might even be argued that De Sade was really a masochist; the investigation of histories of sadism and masochism, even those given by Krafft-Ebing (as, indeed, Colin Scott and Fere have already pointed out), constantly reveals traces of both groups of phenomena in the same individual. They cannot, therefore, be regarded as opposed manifestations. This has been felt by some writers, who have, in consequence, proposed other names more clearly indicating the relationship of the phenomena. Fere speaks of sexual algophily[98]; he only applies the term to masochism; it might equally well be applied to sadism. Schrenck-Notzing, to cover both sadism and masochism, has invented the term algolagnia (algos, pain, and lagnos sexually excited), and calls the former active, the latter passive, algolagnia.[99] Eulenburg has also emphasized the close connection between these groups of perverted sexual manifestations, and has adopted the same terms, adding the further group of ideal (illusionary) algolagnia, to cover the cases in which the mere autosuggestive representation of pain, inflicted or suffered, suffices to give sexual gratification.[100]
A brief discussion of the terms "sadism" and "masochism" has imposed itself upon us at this point because as soon as, in any study of the relationship between love and pain, we pass over the limits of normal manifestations into a region which is more or less abnormal, these two conceptions are always brought before us, and it was necessary to show on what grounds they are here rejected as the pivots on which the discussion ought to turn. We may accept them as useful terms to indicate two groups of clinical phenomena; but we cannot regard them as of any real scientific value. Having reached this result, we may continue our consideration of the love-bite, as the normal manifestation of the connection between love and pain which most naturally leads us across the frontier of the abnormal.
The result of the love-bite in its extreme degree is to shed blood. This cannot be regarded as the direct aim of the bite in its normal manifestations, for the mingled feelings of close contact, of passionate gripping, of symbolic devouring, which constitute the emotional accompaniments of the bite would be too violently discomposed by actual wounding and real shedding of blood. With some persons, however, perhaps more especially women, the love-bite is really associated with a conscious desire, even if more or less restrained, to draw blood, a real delight in this process, a love of blood. Probably this only occurs in persons who are not absolutely normal, but on the borderland of the abnormal. We have to admit that this craving has, however, a perfectly normal basis. There is scarcely any natural object with so profoundly emotional an effect as blood, and it is very easy to understand why this should be so.[101] Moreover, blood enters into the sphere of courtship by virtue of the same conditions by which cruelty enters into it; they are both accidents of combat, and combat is of the very essence of animal and primitive human courtship, certainly its most frequent accompaniment. So that the repelling or attracting fascination of blood may be regarded as a by-product of normal courtship, which, like other such by-products, may become an essential element of abnormal courtship.[102]
Normally the fascination of blood, if present at all during sexual excitement, remains more or less latent, either because it is weak or because the checks that inhibit it are inevitably very powerful. Occasionally it becomes more clearly manifest, and this may happen early in life. Fere records the case of a man of Anglo-Saxon origin, of sound heredity so far as could be ascertained and presenting no obvious stigmata of degeneration, who first experienced sexual manifestations at the age of 5 when a boy cousin was attacked by bleeding at the nose. It was the first time he had seen such a thing and he experienced erection and much pleasure at the sight. This was repeated the next time the cousin's nose bled and also whenever he witnessed any injuries or wounds, especially when occurring in males. A few years later he began to find pleasure in pinching and otherwise inflicting slight suffering. This sadism was not, however, further developed, although a tendency to inversion persisted.[103]
Outbursts of sadism may occur episodically in fairly normal persons. Thus, Coutagne describes the case of a lad of 17--always regarded as quite normal, and without any signs of degeneracy, even on careful examination, or any traces of hysteria or alcoholism, though there was insanity among his cousins--who had had occasional sexual relations for a year or two, and on one occasion, being in a state of erection, struck the girl three times on the breast and abdomen with a kitchen knife bought for the purpose. He was much ashamed of his act immediately afterward, and, all the circumstances being taken into consideration, he was acquitted by the court.[104] Here we seem to have the obscure and latent fascination of blood, which is almost normal, germinating momentarily into an active impulse which is distinctly abnormal, though it produced little beyond those incisions which Vatsyayana disapproved of, but still regarded as a part of courtship. One step more and we are amid the most outrageous and extreme of all forms of sexual perversion: with the heroes of De Sade's novels, who, in exemplification of their author's most cherished ideals, plan scenes of debauchery in which the flowing of blood is an essential element of coitus; with the Marshall Gilles de Rais and the Hungarian Countess Bathory, whose lust could only be satiated by the death of innumerable victims.
It is enough here to emphasize the fact that there is no solution of continuity in the links that bind the absolutely normal manifestations of sex with the most extreme violations of all human law. This is so true that in saying that these manifestations are violations of all human law we cannot go on to add, what would seem fairly obvious, that they are violations also of all natural law. We have but to go sufficiently far back, or sufficiently far afield, in the various zooelogical series to find that manifestations which, from the human point of view, are in the extreme degree abnormally sadistic here become actually normal. Among very various species wounding and rending normally take place at or immediately after coitus; if we go back to the beginning of animal life in the protozoa sexual conjugation itself is sometimes found to present the similitude, if not the actuality, of the complete devouring of one organism by another. Over a very large part of nature, as it has been truly said, "but a thin veil divides love from death."[105]
There is, indeed, on the whole, a point of difference. In that abnormal sadism which appears from time to time among civilized human beings it is nearly always the female who becomes the victim of the male. But in the normal sadism which occurs throughout a large part of nature it is nearly always the male who is the victim of the female. It is the male spider who impregnates the female at the risk of his life and sometimes perishes in the attempt; it is the male bee who, after intercourse with the queen, falls dead from that fatal embrace, leaving her to fling aside his entrails and calmly pursue her course.[106] If it may seem to some that the course of our inquiry leads us to contemplate with equanimity, as a natural phenomenon, a certain semblance of cruelty in man in his relations with woman, they may, if they will, reflect that this phenomenon is but a very slight counterpoise to that cruelty which has been naturally exerted by the female on the male long even before man began to be.

## Original footnotes

[83] Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of tenth German edition, pp. 80, 209. It should be added that the object of the sadistic impulse is not necessarily a person of the opposite sex.
[84] A. Moll, _Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, third edition, 1899, p. 309.
[85] Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, p. 133.
[86] P. Garnier, "Des Perversions Sexuelles," Thirteenth International Congress of Medicine, Section of Psychiatry, Paris, 1900.
[87] E. Duehren, _Der Marquis de Sade und Seine Zeit_, third edition, 1901, p. 449.
[88] See, for instance, Bloch's _Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, part ii, p. 178.
[89] Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of tenth German edition, p. 115. Stefanowsky, who also discussed this condition (_Archives de l'Anthropologie Criminelle_, May, 1892, and translation, with notes by Kiernan, _Alienist and Neurologist_, Oct., 1892), termed it passivism.
[90] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part iii, section 2, mem. iii, subs, 1.
[91] "Aristoteles als Masochist," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. ii, ht. 2.
[92] _Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. 277. Cf. C.F. von Schlichtegroll, _Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus_, p. 120.
[93] See C.F. von Schlichtegroll, loc. cit., p. 124 et seq.
[94] Iwan Bloch considers that it is the commonest of all sexual perversions, more prevalent even than homosexuality.
[95] It has no doubt been prominent in earlier civilization. A very pronounced masochist utterance may be found in an ancient Egyptian love-song written about 1200 B.C.: "Oh! were I made her porter, I should cause her to be wrathful with me. Then when I did but hear her voice, the voice of her anger, a child shall I be for fear." (Wiedemann, _Popular Literature in Ancient Egypt_, p. 9.) The activity and independence of the Egyptian women at the time may well have offered many opportunities to the ancient Egyptian masochist.
[96] Colin Scott, "Sex and Art," _American Journal of Psychology_, vol. vii, No. 2, p. 208.
[97] It must not be supposed that the attraction of fur or of the whip is altogether accounted for by such a casual early experience as in Sacher-Masoch's case served to evoke it. The whip we shall have to consider briefly later on. The fascination exerted by fur, whether manifesting itself as love or fear, would appear to be very common in many children, and almost instinctive. Stanley Hall, in his "Study of Fears" (_American Journal of Psychology_, vol. viii, p. 213) has obtained as many as 111 well-developed cases of fear of fur, or, as he terms it, doraphobia, in some cases appearing as early as the age of 6 months, and he gives many examples. He remarks that the love of fur is still more common, and concludes that "both this love and fear are so strong and instinctive that they can hardly be fully accounted for without recourse to a time when association with animals was far closer than now, or perhaps when our remote ancestors were hairy." (Cf. "Erotic Symbolism," iv, in the fifth volume of these _Studies_.)
[98] Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, p. 138.
[99] Schrenck-Notzing, _Zeitschrift fuer Hypnotismus_, Bd. ix, ht. 2, 1899.
[100] Eulenburg, _Sadismus und Masochismus_, second edition, 1911, p. 5.
[101] I have elsewhere dealt with this point in discussing the special emotional tone of red (Havelock Ellis, "The Psychology of Red," _Popular Science Monthly_, August and September, 1900).
[102] It is probable that the motive of sexual murders is nearly always to shed blood, and not to cause death. Leppmann (_Bulletin Internationale de Droit Penal_, vol. vi, 1896, p. 115) points out that such murders are generally produced by wounds in the neck or mutilation of the abdomen, never by wounds of the head. T. Claye Shaw, who terms the lust for blood hemothymia, has written an interesting and suggestive paper ("A Prominent Motive in Murder," _Lancet_, June 19, 1909) on the natural fascination of blood. Blumroeder, in 1830, seems to have been the first who definitely called attention to the connection between lust and blood.
[103] Fere, _Revue de Chirurgie_, March 10, 1905.
[104] H. Coutagne, "Cas de Perversion Sanguinaire de l'Instinct Sexuel," _Annales Medico-Psychologiques_, July and August, 1893. D.S. Booth (_Alienist and Neurologist_, Aug., 1906) describes the case of a man of neurotic heredity who slightly stabbed a woman with a penknife when on his way to a prostitute.
[105] Kiernan appears to have been the first to suggest the bearing of these facts on sadism, which he would regard as the abnormal human form of phenomena which may be found at the very beginning of animal life, as, indeed, the survival or atavistic reappearance of a primitive sexual cannibalism. See his "Psychological Aspects of the Sexual Appetite," _Alienist and Neurologist_, April, 1891, and "Responsibility in Sexual Perversion," _Chicago Medical Recorder_, March, 1892. Penta has also independently developed the conception of the biological basis of sadism and other sexual perversions (_I Pervertimenti Sessuali_, 1893). It must be added that, as Remy de Gourmont points out (_Promenades Philosophiques_, 2d series, p. 273), this sexual cannibalism exerted by the female may have, primarily, no erotic significance: "She eats him because she is hungry and because when exhausted he is an easy prey."
[106] In the chapter entitled "Le Vol Nuptial" of his charming book on the life of bees Maeterlinck has given an incomparable picture of the tragic courtship of these insects.