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.