Sadomasochism: the Individual in Society
By Kari Ann Owen

 
Is there such thing as a political psychosis? One of my students, a Vietnam veteran, thought we should consider war a political psychosis, a failure of the sane body politic to solve an acute and very pressing problem with reason and compromise. These two conditions can only exist if there is at least a fragment of empathy with the opponent’s condition.

Is war against oneself a psychosis of sorts?

Popular understanding of the word “psychosis” is expressed in words like “total meltdown”, which envisions the human mind as a sort of nuclear reactor which no longer releases energy according to prediction, but disintegrates into its deadly multiplicity of elements. Thus, there is a good deal of fear and mockery in the popular phrase, and very little empathy.

Since the release of atomic energy via the atomic bomb, our species has lived with the possibility of total annihilation: the death of our planet as a product of strategic nuclear war, resulting in the quick incineration of millions and the slower murder of billions through radiation poisoning, starvation and disease in a “nuclear winter” induced by planet-size clouds of fallout blocking out the sun.

How have we as a species reacted generally to this political condition?

We Americans have generally denied the existence of this universal guillotine by ignoring it, believing it unalterable and therefore behaving like hostages rather than citizens. We have identified with political leaders who advocate nuclear weapons as a form of self-defense, and we have permitted force to be used in our name against defenseless people both in the United States and abroad. We have, in psychological terms, chosen to “identify with the aggressor” rather than unite to change our politicians’ pursuit of universal death, and our identification has taken many forms in our exultation of a basic American value: the worship of both individual and the state’s wealth and power over human needs.

Adaptation to this hostage-type condition is reflected in many personal expressions, several of which I have managed to transcend. One such condition and adaptation to violent, even murderous authority, which I worry can presage adaptation to political authoritarianism, is sadomasochism.

My own story must be told briefly: I was born the youngest of two daughters into a family of people who were either violent or complicit in violence toward me. There was constant emotional abuse from the beginning by my older sister, and savage emotional rejection by my mother. My father, a brilliant narcissist, was emotionally rejecting and verbally violent, and incestuous with me by age seven; psychologists in California told me in 2002 that I was probably molested in infancy, which I do not remember.

Like many imaginative and vulnerable children, I retreated into solitary play with master/slave images drawn from historical reading; like many children hated for their appearance (my sister, also genetically stocky, ridiculed me on a constant basis), I began mutilating myself with cutting instruments. A forced interrogation about grades by my father at ages eleven and twelve, followed once by my father chasing me through the house as I fled his anger, not knowing if he would kill me, resulted in inevitable sexualization of the interrogation setting, which had profound effects on my writings’ themes for many years as well as my extreme fear in social situations.

My sexualization of violence, of victimization was almost certainly a response to abuse within society as well as my family: considered overweight, I could not safely walk on the streets without insult, sometimes violent insult like spitting, nor was I safe from peer persecution in a society which teaches even young children to evaluate each other as failed or successful objects of desire.

Self-mutilation and starvation/bingeing appeared and reappeared sporadically during my early adult years, as did sexual fantasies of bondage and discipline. No attempts at personal eradication of these forms of self-destruction and escape from horrible memories succeeded in helping me free myself.

Success was attained after titanic spiritual and psychotherapeutic efforts in my forties when newly discovered anti-depressant medication gave me a greater mental balance. Spiritual work with Native American teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area and a family adoption by members of the Paiute Nation of Schurz, Nevada helped me see a less contentious spirituality and less punishing approach to sexual differences. Questioning whether absorption in bondage/discipline was an unalterable condition or something I could change allowed me finally emerge a free person: I realized that the Great Spirit my Native American friends and family and I understood as a moving force of love did not create us to be whipped, either literally or figuratively.

Rejection of humiliation as an inevitable condition freed the internal hostage, the terrified little girl born as Karen Iris Bogen. Confronting bullies in the community through mediation reinforced this new-found confidence, as did my marriage to the brilliant and compassionate Silas S. Warner. Pursuit at any weight of modern dance, including performance, helped me feel a sense of bodily acceptance (always a struggle, even now), and when I loss one hundred and eighteen pounds through gastric bypass surgery, my true physicality emerged as I became a better horseback rider and, in June 2004, a certified riding instructor.

Perhaps the most important breakthrough in my journey from self-abuse to greater emotional strength came in a therapy session, when I confided to the therapist that I blamed myself for my father’s incestuous behavior because “fat girls are early developers”. While release of many years of internal sexual shame did not come in that one session, I learned over several more years of psychological acceptance that a child cannot motivate an adult to either sane or monstrously sadistic and mad behavior, and that neither my intellectual resistance to my father’s Unclothed Emperor’s reign nor my physical condition, such as it was age at seven, caused the incest. Or my family’s emotional rejection and ridicule. Or the spitting and screaming on the street.

Confronting and healing the horrifying wounds of child abuse may be one productive path toward rejecting an “inevitable” fate as nuclear war or global warming casualties, or inevitable victims of a “Christian” fascist state. And we can reclaim our citizenry and alter the course of planetary annihilation.

One way we can do this is to use our power responsibly, in all situations. Needless to say, if parents in the home reject violence and practice limit-setting through non-violent means, they will model responsible citizenry to their children. A child who is treated with affection, who learns not to bully through compassionate adult intervention, who is considered a growing individual with their own talents and dreams will probably not hate themselves enough to have strangers physically assault them with whips and whip-like words in order to bring about an orgasm.

In my three year sojourn through the bondage/discipline community, I met some of the most supportive, intelligent and imaginative people I have ever met anywhere. They helped me cope with the deaths of friends, with the wounds of child abuse and, most importantly, accepted my imagination. I wrote several plays while enjoying the acceptance and encouragement of one beloved “master” and mentor, and it is possible that the acceptance my now-articulated secret life helped me emerge from the worst consequences of what I had experienced in childhood.

Had this acceptance of my imaginative life occurred, had there been a societal structure where the imaginative and creative life could find expression, it is possible that the fantasies would have been transitory and not so long-lasting. Recognition of my family’s many sadisms, and their trials and sentencing, would have undoubtedly ended much of my social and emotional isolation. But no one, even psychiatrists who were informed of the incestuous assault in a signed letter by a psychiatrist, resulted in any actions against my parents and sister.

My personal journey out of sadomasochism/bondage and discipline gave me a future. What might our world community's future hold?

I envision a society that will protect and value its most vulnerable citizens, whatever the condition of their parents. Such a society would reject the worship of violence and our constant insistence on personal power as our most important aspiration. If such a change in values can occur within families and in schools, and in the media, a child whose gifts are empathetic, loving, creative will be valued as much as a child whose different gifts nominate him or her as a potential killing or dominance symbol. If our media can cease extolling hard bodies which look like weapons primed to either kill or merely succeed in the “wars of each against all” for status in a killing society, we may find some sanity. And if we can cease our obsession with “gay” vs. “straight” and accept that each individual experiences creative and empathic qualities as well as assertive qualities, and not see less aggressive male children as doomed social failures expressive of our fears of “losing” the social wars, we may find the road out of self-abuse and the creation of self-abusing children.

Let us reject every adaptation to annihilation. Let us reject our seeming acceptance of inevitable victimization, which is permitting political authoritarianism in religious guise to acquire dominance amid the unraveling of our free society.

Let us become citizens.

This essay is dedicated to Dr. William Henkin; Sybil Holiday; Robin Stewart; Uncle Abdul and the beloved memory of Don Miesen.