To each his suff'rings
Teresa Waugh
A DEFENCE OF MASOCHISM by Anita Phillips Faber, £9.99, pp. 307 It is not easy to envisage the readership at which Anita Phillips is aiming in A Defence of Masochism, for it would take more than her slim volume to persuade many people of the positive benefits of this perverse behaviour, reinterpreted though it is by Phillips. The liberal-minded, non- interferers of this world (among whom your reviewer would wish to be counted) need no convincing that people may do as they wish in private, bearing in mind that one man's meat may well be another's poison. Perhaps some analysts or psycho- therapists might benefit from the insights of this book, but Phillips herself takes the talking-it-out theory of therapy to task, seeing it as leading the patient inexorably towards a dull norm dictated by society as being best for everyone, whereas masochism itself has more to offer, being artistic, creative and liberating, whilst also putting the masochist in touch with the hidden depths of his real self.
Sexual pain, Phillips claims, can be psy- chologically healing, transforming inner pain, into something your body can survive. Those of us who do not share her self-confessed perversion have no business to disagree with what is clearly a tenable argument, but much of her reasoning is less convincing. She has a tendency to extrapolate from the particular and to use specious arguments resulting in, for instance, the statement that `the self-abasement involved in masochism is a memento mori [and] one of the reasons why masochists arouse general disdain'.
One of the most interesting aspects of this book is Phillips's account of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch whose novel, Venus in Furs, published in 1870, dealt with his own fantasy life which involved his wanting to act as a servant to women dressed in furs — a harmless enough desire you might think. But then along came the great psychiatrist, Krafft-Ebing, obsessed with sexual perver- sion (physician heal thyself) and claiming to have discovered a new male one, which he linked to sadism and which he saw as feminine and concerned with morbidity. For his purpose he hijacked half of Sacher- Masoch's name and, as they say, the rest is history.
Phillips argues that we are all masochists in some form or another — perhaps it would be truer to say that we all bear the seeds of masochism — but in her attempt truly to define what masochism is, she leaves the reader somewhat confused. She sees it as being involved intrinsically with art, with the relationship between one person and another, with love and with the masochist's need to be entirely absorbed by his or her lover. Yet somewhere there is a feeling that this kind of love would be better described as erotic obsession. Masochism, she says, is not concerned with violence, but sexual pleasure can be equated with pain. It brings sensation to a state of unfeeling, yet the masochist is generally a highly sensitive being. It could be argued that the hyper- sensitive might not need such extremes for their sensitivities to be awakened. Above all, she argues, and this is an important part of her thesis, that a masochistic relationship requires a contract before it can be entered into. The masochist, and not the dominator, controls the situation and there is a firm line between masochism and abuse which must not be crossed.
To support her theories Phillips draws widely on literature and cinema — from Baudelaire to Trainspotting — but she fails entirely to convince, unless what she is really saying is, 'what I'm doing is all right for me'. Few of us would quarrel with that, but still she will find it hard to allay the outsider's instinctive dislike of masochism which arises, not as she imagines, from reactionary prejudice and a lack of under- standing, but in many cases, no doubt, from a straightforward horror at the idea of pain being inflicted. We may understand her apologia, written as it is, in a slightly arch, flirtatious manner, we may accept that some people need pain and want to be hurt, that they have therefore to find someone who will comply with their wishes, and that they have every right so to do. It is the image of that dominator, standing there, whip in hand, ready to act the part of torturer for it is all about acting — that many people will find wholly unacceptable.
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