From the Top Shelf - Highlights IV

Today I have another highlighted excerpt to share with you from S-M: The Last Taboo, by Gerald and Caroline Greene.


Another of Havelock Ellis's female correspondents wrote: "Actual pain gives me no pleasure, yet the idea of pain does, if inflicted by way of discipline and for the ultimate good of the person suffering it... I only get pleasure in the idea of a woman submitting herself to pain and harshness from the man she loves when the following conditions are fulfilled:

1. She must be absolutely sure of the man's love.
2. She must have perfect confidence in his judgment.
3. The pain must be deliberately inflicted, not accidental.
4. It must be inflicted in kindness and for her own improvement, not in anger or with any revengeful feelings, as that would spoil one's ideal of the man.
5. The pain must not be excessive and must be what when we were children we used to call a "tidy" pain; i.e., there must be no mutilation, cutting, etc.
6. Last, one would have to feel very sure of one's own influence over the man."

The authors conclude "The passage is particularly compelling since it suggests so much control. A Sadean fantasy frequently has the infliction of punishment accompanied by a mandatory smile on the victim's face. Outside the sexual sphere pain is condemned.

So s-m is a personification of the imagination."