From the Top Shelf - Highlights III

Here's another interesting highlighted excerpt on the subject of pain, from S-M: The Last Taboo, by Gerald and Caroline Greene.

Pain, Ellis wrote, should be differentiated completely from cruelty. Sadism and masochism could be seen "as complementary emotional states"... "Any impulse of true cruelty is outside the field altogether... In algolagnia*, as in music, it is not cruelty that is sought; it is the joy of being plunged amongst the waves of that great primitive ocean of emotions which underlies the variegated world of our everyday lives." Pain then becomes "intense emotional excitement", a stimulus sought as well as given: "the real object throughout was to produce strong emotion and not to inflict cruelty." Just as some birds call out courtship cries at sight of an enemy (some women find anger in a man turning-on), so our parched sexual instincts could be aroused to new heights by a recognition of the true relationship between love and pain.

*Taking pleasure in inflicting or enduring pain.

Cruelty in music? Certainly music produces great extremes in emotion, as does pain. I love the comparison.


A woman correspondent wrote to Havelock Ellis:

The fascination of whipping, which has always greatly puzzled me, seems to be a hankering after the stimulus of fear... Excessive fear is demoralizing, but it seems to me that the idea of being whipped gives a sense of fear which is not excessive. It is almost the only kind of pain (physical) which is inflicted on women by persons whom they can love and trust, and with a moral object."

The association of pain, fear and sex is one I find fascinating. How about you?