Masochism as a spiritual journey
It has only been in the last hundred years that masochism has been viewed as a perversion. When the 19th century psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing placed the term masochism under the rubric “General Pathology” in his famous book “Psychopathia Sexualis”, masochism began to get a bad press. A few decades later, Freud wrote about masochism based on infantile sexuality, incomplete development, stunting, and infantile irresponsibility. Since then, masochism has been irrevocably assigned to the ghetto of “perversion” and has been viewed by the clinical community as a pathological aberration that must be cured.
However, in the thousands of years before that, a spiritual-masochistic connection prevailed throughout most of civilization. While psychology viewed masochism as a disease, pre-19th century religion viewed it as a cure. The ancients were in touch with the spiritual, physical and emotional value of masochism. For them, it was an essential part of reality; a combination of the tortured soul, ravishing delight, exquisite pain, and excruciating passion that brought them closer to experiencing union with something greater than their individual egos.
In the Western religious tradition, the desire to be beaten and flogged reflected the desire for “penance” that often involved humiliation, shame, pain, adoration, and submission. In monasteries and churches, the bowed head, the bent knees, the clasped hands, the covered head, and the prostration of the whole body reflected the basic masochistic posture. The New Testament writers frequently mentioned flogging and physical pain. The entire “work of the passion” of Christ, a narrative that has been embedded in our collective psyche for thousands of years, involves slavery, scourging and crucifixion as part of being subject to the will of a higher power and subsequent resurrection to a transcendent consciousness. . The psalmists had the practice of spanking each other every day. It was part of the Jewish tradition, 500 years after Christ; whipping each other with scourges after they have finished their prayers and confessed their sins.
Flagellation in monasteries and convents was the order of the day. Saints like San Guillermo, San Rodolfo and Santo Domingo used to order their disciples to whip their bare backs. From flagellating themselves, the priests began to flagellate their penitents as part of their penance. It came to be regarded as a necessary act of submission to God. Some holy men held that the lashes had the power to rescue souls from hell. They believed that humiliation and physical pain provided a way in which one could become fully human.
All early Christian orders used flagellation as part of their spiritual discipline. Saint Teresa, founder of the Carmelites, used severe flogging as part of her daily practice. Through the birch and the scourge, he entered states of ecstatic mysticism. The Carmelite nun, Catalina de Cardona, continually wore iron chains that cut her lightning. He flogged himself with chains and hooks as often as possible and sometimes flogged for two to three hours at a time. Through these practices, it was said, she was subjected to mystical ecstasies and visions of heavenly grace. Similar stories abound among the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits. Apparently a heavy dose of masochism was an essential part of Christian monastic life.
In the early 11th century, the monastic hermits of Italy adopted the practice of self-flagellation and fled monasteries to take over public streets and churches. Called the sect of the Flagellants, and organized by Saint Anthony, these monks were aroused to frantic desire and could only achieve consummation in torn flesh and self-degradation. The Flagellants marched from one town to another in procession, collecting new penitents as they passed. Sometimes, numbering in the tens of thousands, they would march to a church, form a circle in front of it, and perform a highly ritualized penitential ceremony. Naked to the waist, the penitents sang hymns and prostrated in contrition. The ritual culminated in a severe flogging of all participants, sometimes lasting for hours. In the end, these gaunt figures, their faces pressed to the ground in shame and ecstasy, their backs turned to raw meat, their whips stained blood red, rose to ecstasy. It seemed to work a spiritual transformation in those who participated.
Western culture does not have exclusive control over the use of subjugation and pain as part of spiritual discipline. Zen Buddhist monasteries are known for the master’s use of the wand on disciples and for the Zen “slap” that is said to awaken a person to a higher level of consciousness. Zen students often sit cross-legged on a cushion for 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and undergo the physical agony of remaining completely immobile in the face of unrelenting pain for long periods of time. Hindu disciples submit their wills to the will of the Guru; Tibetan Buddhists unquestionably follow the will of their Lama. An ancient Tibetan saint, Milarapa, was forced by his future teacher to undergo hard, painful and arduous physical work without questioning the teacher’s will before being accepted as a student.
If, indeed, the history of civilization is full of stories of masochistic / spiritual connection, how is it that the masochistic attitude is connected to spiritual transformation? What exactly has been the appeal of masochistic submission to spirit characters throughout the centuries?
One possible answer is that modern society has been heavily influenced by Horatio Alger’s “tough individualism” mentality. The goals of contemporary psychotherapy have been aimed at building strong, rational, problem-solving egos. Take responsibility, take control. Assert yourself. But at what cost? Building a strong ego is only one side of the coin. To experience the fullness of the human experience, we need passivity and receptivity, as well as assertiveness. We need a sense of mystical wonder, as well as rational problem solving. We need to be in touch with what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called “the shadow”: the weak, limited, degraded and sinful side of ourselves, as well as the strong, loving, compassionate and competent side. We need to get out from under the burden of our egocentric way of looking at life; abdicate control as well as take it. Masochistic submission, by focusing on lack, insufficiency, and weakness, puts us in touch with the whole of our humanity. Full humanity requires surrendering to both the negative side of life and the positive side. Religious penitents knew of the soul’s need to suffer. They knew that it prevents us from having arrogance, or the pride that keeps us in the limited perspective of having too much faith in our competence and abilities. Christian and Eastern mystics knew it. “Humiliation is the way to humility and without humility nothing pleases God”, says Saint Francis of Assisi.
A scene strips the ego of its defenses, ambitions, shyness, and successes. The ego becomes subordinate to the master, the dominant, the soul or God. Whether we call it submission to the dominant or to the will of God, submission remains one of the hallmarks of the masochistic stance. The masochistic components: the desire to serve, to submit, to abandon oneself sexually, emotionally and physically, makes one a slave to a man, a woman or God. Submission to that passion is divine degradation.
Another similarity between masochism and mystical ecstasy is that both are motivated by the desire for forgetfulness and liberation; to get rid of the burden of the self with all its conflicts, burdens and limitations. In earlier, less secular times, this could be called a struggle for mystical ecstasy in which the individual is pulled out of himself in such a way that his individual identity is extinguished in sublime union with something higher.
In submission, one is pulled out of personal limitations and transcends social sanctions while being reduced, weakened, and humiliated. With noses pressed against the ever-present reality of human suffering, it is both an agonizing defeat and a magnificent spiritual journey.
Other readings
Bertram, J. Bertram, J. (May 2001) Flagellations and Flagellenat: a history of the rod in all countries from the earliest period to the present. fredonia books
Cowan, L (1988) Masochism: A Jungian View. Spring posts
Selenqut, C. (February 2004) Sacred fury: understanding of religious violence. Alta Mira Press