Naïve, Clichéd Look at D/s & S&M in Psychology Today
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Roy Baumeister’s Bizarre Behavior: The Social Animal at the Outer Limits is a friendly but often naïve and sloppy look at the psychology of BDSM.
If masochism is about contradicting one’s identity, then socioeconomic status reveals masochists for what they are. “Masochists seem to be drawn largely from the privileged classes,” Baumeister finds. They are above average in education and income. “Society’s real victims do not seek out masochistic sex. Rather it is often the rich, powerful, and successful, the people with the heaviest burdens of selfhood, who need the escape of masochism.”
I don’t think wealth and power particularly impose a stronger burden of ‘selfhood.’ And the view expressed above is an old cliché.
Affectional and erotic orientation towards submission, dominance, sadism and masochism develop in childhood. Not much selfhood and few responsibilities in that age range.
Any concentrated erotic experience can give a person that obliviousness to self often sought after by religious ascetics. But it needn’t involve S&M.
And there are plenty of broke masochists.
That’s why Baumeister thinks female masochistic fantasies hold the key to understanding submissive behavior in general. “If anything, female masochists desire to be turned into an extreme caricature version of femininity, something far removed from their normal selves.”
Perhaps he has a male heterosexist bias? This is probably more true of submissive men who want to be made into “sissies.”
Via Mistress Maitesse.
Comments
Pity that I didn’t notice that it is a ten year old article.
Posted by: Richard | November 9, 2005 1:45 PM
LOL yes, that one is an old cliche indeed. In libraries I often consulted various books by ‘experts’ which ranged from the midly annoying to the plain outreageous. You’d be surprised how backwards the field of psychiatry really is, even today.
I truly pity the young adolescent who is curious about his sexuality, and might end up being diagnosed with a mental disorder when all he/she was seeking was therapy. Knowing what I know now, I for one am really glad I never had to ‘seek help’.
You see, something as common as shoe fetishism is classified as ‘paraphilia’, a mental disorder where the patient sexual attraction for uncommon items cause “marked distress or interpersonal difficulty”.
This might look amusing for us who live that ‘scene’ day after day, but pedophilia is in that list, too. Of course a psychologist probably won’t call the cops on you if you enjoy licking shoes, but it’s still terrifying that as far as the medical profession goes, we are in the same category as those degenerates.
Still not convinced? Homosexuality WAS classified as paraphilia until not so long ago in the DSM-1. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-I). But due to public outcry it eventually got removed. So now, if you are gay and enjoy leather, you’re just a half-freak! How nice is that?
Truly discouraging…
Posted by: shoelicker | November 10, 2005 5:23 PM
Pity about the term paraphilia. Wish they had some fancy jargon for benignly atypical sexuality.
Don’t know there’s any psychiatric wackiness or wickedness that would surprise me. Just read a review of a book about one doctor who removed people’s intestines as therapy. And there was all that awful falsified data used to justify lobotomies.
Or, hell, the junk work behind the heavy but profitable prescription of SSRIs.
The rotten shrinks who treated my dead friend and ex-lover.
The way they’ve been handling Alexandra.
Grrrrr …. !!!!!
Posted by: Richard | November 11, 2005 2:53 PM
Psychiatry is voodoo. I’ll take a loving torturer over a shrink any day.
Posted by: futura crucifaxum | December 24, 2005 12:45 PM