The PLEASURE of the PAIN Why Some People Need S & M - Sadomasochistic Sex

Continued

Marina didn't feel the desire for S & M until she was an adult and had outgrown her eating disorder. "One night I asked my partner to put his hands around my neck and choke me. I was so surprised when those words came out of my mouth," she says. If she gave her partner total control over her body, she felt, she could allow herself to feel like a completely sexual being, with none of the hesitation and disconnection she sometimes felt during sex. "He wasn't into it, but now I'm with someone who is," Marina says. "S & M makes our vanilla sex better, too, because we trust each other more sexually, and we can communicate what we want."

Escaping the Modern Western Ego

"Like alcohol abuse binge eating and meditation, sadomasochism is a way people can forget themselves." Roy Baumeister, Ph.D., professor of psychology, Case Western Reserve University

It is human nature to try to maximize esteem and control: Those are two general principles governing the study of the self. Masochism runs contrary to both, and was therefore an intriguing psychological puzzle for Baumeister, whose career has focused on the study of self and identity.

Through an analysis of S & M-related letters to the sex magazine Variations. Baumeister came to believe that "masochism is a set of techniques for helping people temporarily lose their normal identity." He reasoned that the modern Western ego is an incredibly structure, with our culture placing more demands on the self than any other culture in history. Such high demands increase the stress associated with living up to expectations and existing as the person you want to be. "That stress makes forgetting who you are an appealing escape," Baumeister says. That is the essence of "escape" theory, one of the main reasons people turn to S & M.

"Nothing matters except you, me and the sound of my voice," Lily Fine tells the tied-up and exposed businessman who begged to be spanked before breakfast. She says it slowly, making her slave wait for every sound, forcing him to focus only on her, to float in anticipation of the sensations she will create inside him. Anxieties about mortgages and taxes, stresses about business partners and job deadlines are vanquished each time the flogger hits the flesh. The businessman is reduced to a physical creature existing only in the here and now, feeling the pain and pleasure.

"I'm interested in manipulating what's in the mind," Lily says. "The brain is the greatest erogenous zone."

In another S & M scene, Lily tells a woman to take off her clothes, then dresses her only with a blindfold. She commands the woman not to move. Lily then takes a tissue and begins moving it over the woman's body in different patterns and at varying speeds and angles. Sometimes she lets the edge of the tissue just barely brush the woman's stomach and breasts; sometimes she bunches the tissue and creates swirls on her back and all the way down. "The woman was quivering. She didn't know what I was doing to her, but she was liking it," Lily remembers with a smile.

Escape theory is further supported by an idea called "frame analysis," developed by the late Irving Goffman, Ph.D. According to Goffman, despite its popular conception as darkly wild and orgiastic, S & M play has complex rules, rituals, roles and dynamics that create a "frame" around the experience.

"Frames suspend reality. They create expectations, norms and values that set this situation apart from other parts of life," confirms Thomas Weinberg, Ph.D., a sociologist at Buffalo State College in New York and the editor of S & M: Studies in Dominance & Submission (Prometheus Books, 1995). Once inside the frame, people are free to act and feel in ways they couldn't at other times.

S & M: Part of the Sexual Continuum

S & M has inspired the creation of many psychological theories in addition to the ones discussed here. Do we need so many? Perhaps not. According to Stephanie Saunders, Ph.D., associate director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, "a lot of behaviors that are scrutinized because they are seen to be marginal are really a part of the continuum of sexuality and sexual behavior."

After all, the ingredients in good S & M play--communication, respect and trust--are the same ingredients in good traditional sex. The outcome is the same, too--a feeling of connection to the body and the self.

Laura Antoniou, a writer whose work on S & M has been published by Masquerade Books in New York City, puts it another way: "When I was a child, I had nothing but S & M fantasies. I punished Barbie for being dirty. I did Bondage Barbie, dominance with GI Joe. S & M is simply what turns me on."

READ MORE ABOUT IT

Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism, Philip Miller and Molly Devon (Mystic Rose Books, 1995)

S & M: Studies In Dominance and Submission, Thomas S, Weinberg, editor (Prometheus Books, 1995)

Dark Eros: The Imagination of Sadism, Thomas Moore (Spring Publications, 1996)

RELATED ARTICLE: Whip Smart: Beyond the Boundaries of Safe Play

While S & M can be a psychologically healthy activity--its motto is "safe, sane and consensual"--sometimes things do get out of hand:

Abuse It is rare, but some "Tops" get too involved in power and forget to monitor their treatment of the "Bottom." "I call them 'Natural Born Tops,'" says dominatrix Lily Fine, "and I don't have time for them." Also, some bottoms want to be beaten because they have low self-esteem and think they deserve it. They are forlorn, absent and unresponsive during and after a scene, in this case, S & M ceases to be play and becomes pathological.

Boundaries A small percentage of people inappropriately bring S & M power play into other facets of their life. "Most people in S & M circles are dominant or submissive in very specific situations, while in their everyday life they can play a whole range of roles," says psychology Professor Luc Granger. But, he continues, if the only way a person can relate to someone else is through a kind of sadomasochistic game, then there is probably a deeper psychological problem.

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The Use of S & M as Therapy People often confuse the fact that they feel good after S & M with the idea that S & M is therapy, says psychology Professor Roy Baumeister. "But to prove that something is therapeutic, you have to prove that it has lasting beneficial effects on mental health ... and it's hard to prove even that therapy is therapeutic." In mental health terms, S & M doesn't make you better and it doesn't make you worse.

RELATED ARTICLE: Excerpts from an S & M Glossary

Sadomasochism (S & M): An activity involving the temporary creation of highly unbalanced power dynamics between two or more people for erotic or semi-erotic purposes.

Bondage and Discipline (B & D): A subset of S & M not involving physical pain.

Top: The dominant person in a scene; synonyms: dominant, dom, master/mistress.

Bottom: The submissive person in a scene; synonyms: submissive, sub, slave.

Switch: A person who enjoys being a Top in some scenes and a Bottom in others.

Sadist: A person who derives sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on others.

Masochist: A person who derives sexual pleasure from being abused by others. Sadist and masochist are sometimes used playfully in the S & M community, but are generally avoided because of psychiatric denotation.

Scene: An episode of S & M activity; the S & M community.

Negotiating a Scene: The process of loosely outlining what the players want to experience before they begin a scene.

Play: participation in a scene.

Toy: Any implement used to enhance S & M play.

Safe Word: A prearranged word or phrase that may be used to end or renegotiate a scene. This is a clear signal meaning "Stop, this is too much for me."

Dungeon: A place designated for S & M play.

Dominatrix (pl. Dominatrices): A female Top, usually a professional.

Lifestyle Dominant/Submissive: A person involved in a relationship in which S & M is a defining dynamic.

Fetish: An object that is granted special powers, one of which is the ability to sexually gratify. It is often wrongly confused with S & M.

Vanilla Sex: Conventional heterosexual sex.

Marianne Apostolides is author of Inner Hunger: A Young Women's Struggle through Anorexia and Bulimia (W..W. Norton, 1996). Her last article for PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, "How To Quit the Holistic Way," was published in October 1996.

Written in 1996. Last reviewed: 10/05

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