Man the Sick Animal (VI)

(Cont'd)

In the chapter entitled "Mechanisms of Escape," (FOF 117-178), Fromm tries to define what is a healthy and what is a neurotic person and analyzes how the neurotic deals with loneliness and his sense of powerlessness. He says that we are all aware that things may not always be what they seem. In particular people may not always act, feel and think from the kind of the motives they  believe may be involved. Fromm thinks that it may be useful to study the individual psychology of neurotics even when our intention is to understand the social psychology of normal people because the phenomena we observe in the neurotic person are in principle not that different from those we find in the normal, except that in the neurotic, such phenomena are more accentuated, clearcut and more accessible to awareness. From the society's point of view, a person is "healthy" or "normal" if he is able to fulfill the social role assigned to him e.g as a father, mother, worker, student, a husband or wife etc and ultimately to raise a family. From the individual point of view however, a person is "healthy"  if he can achieve maximum personal growth and happiness. If the structure of a society were such as to to permit the optimum possibility for the growth of individual happiness, that would be ideal but in reality the goals of society (social harmony) may conflict with that of the individual (the fullest personal development and the achievement of individual happiness). The social concept of health is governed by the need for social harmony whilst the concept of individual health is set by how fully the individual "self"  may develop. In practice, however, most psychiatrists take the structure of their own society for granted to such an extent that to them any person who is not "socially well adapted" is assumed to be "less valuable" than the socially well-adapted person according to whether the latter satisfies a scale of human values (FOF 119). The result, according to Fromm, is often that a "socially well-adapted" person may well be "less healthy" than the "neurotic" in terms of those human values because often the socially well-adpated person may be well adapted at the expense of giving up his individual "self" so that he may become more or less the kind of person he believes he is "expected" to be and often in that process, "all genuine individuality and spontaneity" may have been lost whereas the neurotic is "not ready to surrender completely his self" to meet with the requirements of society. Of course, the neurotic is not successful  in his mal-adapted approach because instead of expressing his self productively in  socially acceptable ways, he is seeking salvation through expressing "neurotic symptoms" and often by withdrawing within himself. However, from the point of view of full human development, he is less crippled than the socially adapted person who has completely lost his individuality. To the extent that a society cripples the full development of its members, it may be described as "neurotic" but to Fromm, it is better to describe such a society as "adverse to human happiness and self-realization" because "neurotic" usually  means "socially mal-adapted" and a society as such cannot be "socially mal-adapted".(FOF 120)

Psychologically, once the security given to a person by his primary bonds (those available to him during childhood and in a static medieval society) are broken, he has to face the world as a completely separate entity and in consequence, he feels an unbearable sense of aloneness and powerlessness. He can overcome it in one of two ways: positively, he can relate himself spontaneously and genuinely to the world in love and work with all his emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities and thus become one again with man, nature and himself ,without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self or negatively, in the hope of eliminating that painful gap between the desires of his individual self and aims of the relevant society, he may give up his personal freedom and independence through a kind of compulsive surrender of the individuality and the integrity of his self. In the second case, he hopes to acquires a little of the strength which his individual self lack by merging his self with somebody or something outside of himself which he considers to be much more powerful. He hopes through this secondary bond to recover the security of the primary bond of which it is the surrogate. But in choosing this strategy, he does not really solve the underlying problems. All he succeeds in doing is to relieve himself of part of the immediate pain of loneliness and insecurity and only for a while. To Fromm, he may do so by striving either for submission and/or domination ie. by a sado-masochistic response. He says that his observation shows that whilst people obsessed by such feelings of inferiority, powerlessness and insignificance may consciously complain about such feelings and say they want to get rid of them but subconsciously, they allow themselves or even want to be driven by forces that belittle themselves, make themselves weak and not to master things. Quite regularly, such people show a marked dependence on powers outside themselves: other people, institutions or Nature. They tend not to assert themselves, not to do what they themselves want but to submit themselves to the factual or alleged orders of these outside forces. Often they are quite incapable of experiencing the feelings "I want" or "I am"  and they may feel that life as whole is something overwhelmingly powerful and is something which they cannot master or control. In extreme cases, they may even show a tendency to hurt or mutilate themselves and unconsciously to make themselves suffer.They would indulge in such self-accusation and self-criticism that are even more severe than those meted out to them by their worst enemies or they may torture themselves with compulsory rites and thoughts or wait to be ill or actually become ill as if illness were a secret godsend or they would somehow get themselves involved in mysterious or otherwise inexplicable "accidents" e.g some would be unable to answer questions in exams even when the answers are well known to them or they would say things which antagonize those on whom they are dependent despite their conscious desire to befriend them. It looks as if they were doing what their enemies most welcome. Often such behavior are felt as plainly pathological or irrational but more frequently, they are rationalized by the patients: masochistic dependency is thus conceived of as "love" or "loyalty" and inferiority feelings as expressions of "true" shortcomings and one's suffering as being due entirely to unchangeable circumstances. The opposite of such masochistic tendencies are sadistic tendencies.Such tendencies may vary in strength and are more or less conscious. In practice, three tendencies may occur as a cluster: firstly, they would manipulate others so that the latter would become or continue to be dependent on them; they may exercise absolute and unrestricted power over them; secondly, they may use them, exploit them,  steal from them, and disembowel them emotionally or intellectually; and thirdly, they may wish to actively make others suffer or to enjoy seeing others suffer mentally or physically and generally to humiliate and embarrass them.

For obvious reasons, sadistic tendencies are usually less conscious and more rationalized than the socially more harmless masochistic tendencies. Often they are rationalized as "over-goodness" or "over-concern" for others. They'd say things like" I rule over you because I know what is best for you." or "You should follow me without opposition in your own interest." or "I am so wonderful and unique that I have a right to expect that other people become dependent on me." or "I have done so much for you that I am entitled to take from you what I want." or "I have been hurt by others and my wish to hurt is but retaliation." or "By striking first, I am defending myself or my friends against the danger of being hurt."  Much to our surprise, close analysis of such sadistic persons shows that contrary to our expectations, the strong and domineering sadistic person may actually "need" the weak and submissive object of his sadism very badly! But for the continued existence of their "victims", they can no longer be "masters". There is thus a kind of paradoxical symbiotic relationship between the pair sadist/masochist. "The sadistic person needs his object just as much as the masochistic needs his. Only instead of seeking security by being swallowed, he gains it by swallowing somebody else" (FOF 136). The destructive person wants to destroy the object and do awy with it and get rid of it. The sadist merely wants to dominate his object and therefore suffers a loss if his object is destoyed or disappears. (FOF 137). Thus a man who previously tells his wife repeatedly that she can leave the house any day and that he would only be too glad if she were to do so might beg her not to do so and declare that he would not be able to live without her and how much he "loves" her etc. if the latter, no longer being afraid of asserting herself, actually takes steps to do so. But then, once her tormentor does so, she will be prone to believe him, change her mind and stay and at that point, the whole sado-masochistic game will start all over again. He would then resume his old dominating behavior, she would find it increasingly difficult to stay with him, explodes again and he breaks down again and so on ad infinitum. According to Fromm, there are thousands of marriages and personal relationships in which this type of cycle is repeated again and again and where the magic circle is never broken through: those between a man with his wife, his child, an assistant, a waiter, a beggar on the street. There is frequently a feeling of "love" and even gratitude for those objects of his domination. The sadist may think that he wishes to dominate them because he "loves" them so much and he actually "loves" them because he dominates them. He would bribe them with material things, praises, assurances of love, display wit and brilliance or by showing concern and may give his victims everything except one thing: the right to be free and independent". To Fromm, this constellation is often to be found particularly in the relationship of parents and children, where the attitude of domination, of ownership, is often covered up by what appears the "natural" concern or feeling of protectiveness for a child. "The child is put into a golden cage: it can have everything provided it does not want to leave the cage" . If so, when the child grows up, the child may develop a profound fear of love because being "loved" implies being caught and blocked in his own quest for freedom. 

How do we explain the fact that people want not only to belittle and weaken and hurt themselves but apparently even enjoy doing so? Haven't we been taught by the Utilitarians that all rational people will work towards the increase of their own pleasure and the reduction of their pain and suffering? How come they would be attracted to something everyone would go to such length to avoid: pain and suffering? Whether they should or not, in fact, we do find neurotics engaging in masochistic perversion: they quite consciously want to suffer in one way or another and enjoy it! In such a perversion, a person feels sexual excitement when experiencing the pain inflicted upon them by the sadist. Fromm discovers that this is not the only form of masochistic perversion. Often, what the masochist is looking for is not the actual suffering of pain itself but the excitement and satisfaction aroused by being physically bound, made helpless and weak. Often "all that is wanted in the masochistic perversion is to be made weak 'morally', by being treated and spoken to like a little child or by being scolded or humiliated in different ways whereas its mirror opposite, the sadistic perversion, the sadists derive pleasure and excitement from hurting others physically, from tying them with ropes and chains or from humiliating them by action or words. In fact, sado-masochism perversions are two sides of the same coin. Freud originally thought the sado-masochistic practices as essentially a sexual phenomenon by observing sado-masochism in little children. He considered it a "partial drive" and thought that sado-masochistic tendencies in adults are due to a fixation of the victim's psycho-sexual development at an early stage and a later regression to it but later discovered the need of the victim to suffer, not just physically, but mentally too. He found that sado-masochism are always found together and thought later that it was due to what he calls the death instinct: a biologically given tendency to destroy, directed both against others and the self and suggested that that masochism is essentially the result of the death instinct, which we cannot observe directly, but which amalgamates with the sexual instinct and further that if directed against one's own person, it becomes masochism but if directed against others, it becomes sadism. However, since it is often coupled to sex, it protects man from its otherwise fatal effect. "In short, according to Freud, man has only the choice of either destroying himself or destroying others, if he fails to amalgamate destructiveness with sex." (FOF 128). Later, Alfred Adler put this non-sexual aggression at the centre of his system but interprets it not in the context of sado-masochism but as "inferiority feelings" and as "the wish for power".  However, instead of dealing with 'ïnferiority feelings' as irrational, he thinks that they result from actual inferiority e.g. the true helplessness felt by children and that the ¨wish for power¨rationally protects a person against dangers springing from his insecurity and inferiority. Wilhem Reich thinks that the masochistic person ultimately seeks pleasure and that the pain incurred is a by-product but not an aim in itself. Karen Horney was the first to recognize the fundamental role played by masochistic strivings in the neurotic personality, gives it a full description and explains it theoretically as the outcome of the whole character structure. Like Fromm, she thinks that the expression of masochism in sexual relationship stems from a deeper psychic tendencies of neurotic personality structure of the masochist and that the character structure is primary and its sexual expression secondary.

What is the common root of sadism and masochism? To Fromm, they both help the individual escape from the unbearable feeling of aloneness and powerlessness. Both the sadists and the masochists are filled with a terror of loneliness, often not conscious, but is covered up by compensatory feelings of eminence and perfection. "The individual finds himself free in the negative sense, that is, alone with his self and confronting an alienated, hostile world and as described by Dostoievski in The Brothers Karamazov, he has "no more pressing need than the one to find somebody to whom he can surrender, as quickly as possible, that gift of freedom which he, the unfortunate creature, was born with."  The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self." (FOF 130). Masochism is one way towards this goal. "the different forms which the masochistic strivings assume have one aim: to get rid of the individual self, to lose oneself; in other words, to get ride of the burden of freedom."! The twisted logic of the neurotic is this: " As long as I struggle between my desire to be independent and strong and my feeling of insignificance or powerlessness I am caught in the tormenting conflict. If I succeed in reducing my individual self to nothing, if I can overcome the awareness of my separateness as an individual, I may save myself from this conflict. To feel utterly small and helpless is one way towards this aim; to be overcome by the effects of intoxication is still another. The fantasy of suicide is the last hope if all the other means have not succeeded in bringing relief from the burden of aloneness."  Are those followers of Christ who prostrate themselves before the Almighty God and who emphasize excessively or exaggerate their own "sinfulness" not secretly "enjoying" this  forbidden and "sweet sorrow"?  Will the fact that their individual "sickness"  is shared by many others somehow render them any less "sick"? To Fromm, these masochistic strivings may actually succeed under certain conditions: "If the individual finds cultural patterns that satisfy these masochistic strivings (like the submission under the "leader" in Fascist ideology), he gains some security by finding himself united with millions of others who share these feelings." (FOF 131). W Yet, to him, these masochistic "solution" is no more of a solution than neurotic manifestations ever are: the individual succeeds in eliminating the conspicuous suffering but not in removing the underlying conflict and the silent unhappiness." (FOF 132). As he says, " the irrationality of masochism, as of all other neurotic manifestations, consists in the ultimate futility of the means adopted to solve an untenable emotional situation." ( FOF 132). In rational activity, the result corresponds to the motivation of the activity--one acts to attain a certain expected result whereas in neurotic strivings, "one acts from a compulsion which has essentially a negative character: to escape an unbearable situation". (FOF 133). The solution is a fictitious solution, a false solution! The compulsion may be so strong that it actually prevents the neurotic from finding any solution other than that fictitious or false or delusional solution! The neurotic tries to overcome the unbearable loneliness and sense of powerlessness by getting rid of his psychological not physiological self. His method is to belittle himself, sufer and make himself utterly insignificant. But pain and sufferings are not what he wants. They are the price he pays for an aim which he compulsively tries to attain! But "he has to pay more and more and like a peon, he only gets into greater debts without ever getting what he paid for: inner peace and tranquility." (FOF 133) In both masochistic sexual perversion and moral masochism, suffering is not the real aim: "in both cases, it is the means to the an aim: forgetting oneself" (FOF 133) There is a difference between the two forms of masochism according to Fromm: "In the perversion the trend to get rid of one's self is expressed through the medium of the body and linked up with sexual feelings. While in moral masochism, the masochistic trends gets hold of the whole person and tend to destroy all the aims which the ego consciously tries to achieve, in the perversion the masochistic strivings are more or less restricted to the physical realm; moreover by their amalgamation with sex, tney participate in the release of tension occurring in the sexual sphere and thus find some direct release." ((FOF 133) But the annihilation of the individual and the attempt to overcome the unbearable feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other side according to Fromm  is "the attempt to become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience or a psychic compulsion. By becoming part of a power which is felt as unshakably strong, eternal, and glamorous, one participates in its strength and glory. One surrenders one's self and renounces all strength and pride connected with it, one loses one's integrity as an individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges. One gains also security against the torture of doubt...The masochistic person,...is saved from making decisions, saved from the final responsibility for the fate of his self, and thereby saved from the doubt of what decision to make. He is also saved from the doubt of what the meaning of life is or who "he is"...The meaning of his life and the identity of his self are determined by the greater whole into which the self has merged". Isn't this the "fatal attraction" of religion?  To Fromm, the primary bonds exist before the process of individuation has reached its completion. The individual is still part of "his" natural and social world, he has not yet completely emerged from his surroundings. The primary bonds give him genuine security and the knowledge of where he belongs. The masochistic bonds are escape. The individual has emerged, but it is unable to realize his freedom; it is overwhelmed by anxiety, doubt, and a feeling of powerlessness. The self attemtps to find security in secondary ( masochistic) bonds but this attempt can never be successful....He and the power to which he clings never become one, a basic antagonism remains and with it, an impulse, even if it is not conscious at all, to overcome the masochistic dependence and to become free." (FOF 134-135)

Fromm points to a common fallacy. Sado-masochism is often confounded with love! A masochist, especially, is often looked upon as the truest lover! "An attitude of complete self-denial for the sake of another person and the surrender of one's own rights and claims to another have been praised as examples of "great love.". It seems that there is no greater proof for "love" than sacrifice and the readiness to give oneself up for the sake of the beloved person. Actually, in these case, 'love' is essentially a masochistic yearning and rooted in the symbiotic need of the person involved. If we mean by love the passionate affirmation and active relatedness to the essence of a particular person, if we mean by it the union with another person on the basis of the independence and integrity of the two persons involved, then masochism and love are opposites. Love is based on equality and freedom. If it is based on subordination and loss of integrity of one partner, it is masochistic dependence, regardless of how the relationship is rationalized."!  Sadism also appears under false pretences as "love". "To rule over another person, if one can claim that to rule him is for that person's own sake, frequently appears as an expression of love, but the essential factor is the enjoyment of the domination." (FOF 138)

(To be cont'd)