Journal of Analytical Psychology 1987, 32, 227-240 MASOCHISM: THE SHADOW SIDE OF THE ARCHETYPAL NEED TO VENERATE AND WORSHIP ROSEMARY GORDON, London INTRODUCTION Tuts PAPER is essentially speculative. The reactions, behaviour, and phantasies of several patients have led me to reflect whether there might be a connection between masochism on the onc hand and, on the other, the belief in, worship of, and surrender to, a deity, albeit in its perverted, its shadow form. FIVE CASES OF MASOCHISM A man whom I will call Richard had been in analysis with me for cighteen months. He was in his early fifties, a lecturer in a theological college, and marricd with three grown-up children: two sons and a daughter. He was of average height, sported some middle-aged spread, and always wore dark and very conventional suits. He complained of finding it very difficult to be alone, to find satisfaction in his profession, and to have the right sort of relationship with both his junior and his senior colleagucs. The main theme in many scssions was his preoccupation with death, his fear of death, his anger with death. And closcly related to this battle with death was his anxious concern about the existence of God. Indeed, he felt angry and resentful that God did not seem to deign to prove to him that He exists. He did not give him the sign, the evidence for which he craved. For in spite of a life ruled by his beliefin God, he was a man of the age of scientific and concrete proof, a man dependent on belief because unable to give himsclf over to faith. As time went on his belief became more and more threadbare, and the 0021 -8774/87/030227 + 14 $03.00/0 © 1987 The Society of Analytical Psychology228 ; R. Gordon existence of God seemed to him more and more = unlikely and unconvincing. And then phantasics of being beaten, phantasies that excited him sexually, began to possess him, As these phantasies grew in intensity he found himself driven to act them out with women he picked up here and there and who were willing to do as bidden. He was intensely disturbed and guilty and very angry with analysis, with me, his analyst, and with God, in the way that Sartre had expressed it when he cried out, through one of his characters: II n’existe pas, le Salaud (He does not exist, the bastard). I then remembered a number of patients who had described to me masturbation phantasies in which religious rituals had taken on a markedly masochistic quality. One woman had described lying on an altar and being solemnly whipped. Another woman saw herself also on an altar in a convent being held fast, hands and feet by four nuns while a fifth nun, the mother superior, whipped her, and this had to happen in full view of all the sisters. A third woman patient dreamed of being beaten somewhere in a dark church and woke up to find that she was having an orgasm. And there was the male patient, Patrick, whom I described in Dying and Creating (Gorpon 1). He had told me soon after he had started analysis with me that he was much involved with Artemis, the Greck goddess. For the worship of Artemis involved an annual event in which the most beautiful, most intelli- gent, most courageous and most perfect youth was chosen to be her sacrificial victim by being beaten to death. Patrick was a schoolmaster. The masochistic experience of this rite governed his masturbation phantasies, that is to say, he then experienced himself as this perfect youth-victim; while the sadistic role of the sacrificer tended to be enacted in his relationship to one of the boys in his class to whom he was attracted, and whose qualities he admired and idealised. THESIS These experiences and reflections led me to the hypothesis, expressed in the title of this paper, that masochism is closely related to man’s need, probably an archetypal need, to venerate and to worship some object, some existence that transcends one’s personal being; but that masochism, that impulse to want to expose oneself to pain and to suffering, is the inferior, the shadow-side, of the need to worship and to venerate. Masochism, though not often seen in these very stark, extreme and perverse forms, in which they showed themselves in the patients I have just described, is nevertheless a frequent and pervasive factor in clinical work, affecting the process and the outcome of analysis. | have, therefore, thought it worthwhile to explore it in this paper.Masochism and the need to worship 229 LITERATURE ON MASOCHISM The phenomenon of masochism seems to figure very little in Jungian literature. In fact, there is not a single reference to it in the Index to Jung’s Collected Works. It is true Jung had thought and written a good deal about sacrifice, pain and suffering and cruelty. For instance in his paper, “Transforma- tion symbolism in the mass’, he makes the point that ‘... for the neophyte it would be a real sin if he shrank from the torture of initiation. The torture inflicted on him is not a punishment but the indispensable means of leading him towards his destiny (JUNG 7, para. 410). But in the case of punishment, initiation and sacrifice, pain is not self-chosen, nor is it the primary objective, as it is in the case of masochism. Rather it is an imposed and inescapable part of the larger task or goal. However, in the writings of one or two followers of Jung I have found it mentioned and discussed more directly. For instance Erich Neumann, in his Origins and History of Consciousness, relates it to his concept of ‘uroboric incest’ in which a weak ego dissolves in the self, and this unconscious identity with the stronger solvent, the uroboric mother, brings pleasure, which must be called masochistic in the later perverted form (NEUMANN 12). The other valuable contribution has been made by Mary Williams in her articles, ‘The fear of death’, published in The Journal of Analytical Psychology, She writes: will now make the assumption that there are two main ways of avoiding the fear of death. In the sadistic method the individual forms a counter-phobic identification with death as the destroyer. The victim is then the mortal who must dic in fear and pain while the destroyer experiences the cestasy of immortality ... The masochistic method derives from the sadistic method and must be understood in terms of the latter, for masochism is a counter-phobic reaction to unconscious sadism. The sadist identifies with the invulnerable destroyer and projects his mortality on to his victim. The masochist identifies with the mortal victim and projects the invulnerable destroyer; thus the destroyer is sought as the saviour who will rescue him from his mortality (Witttams, 13, 14). Thus, like Neumann, Mary Williams talks of the ultimate aim of masochism as ‘death in ecstasy’, or ‘the ecstasy of immortality’. Scarching out Freud's thinking about masochism, I found that he distinguishes primary masochism from secondary masochism. And while he regards secondary masochism as a reversal, a turning upon oneself of the sadistic impulses and feelings experienced towards another, primary masochism is the direct expression of Thanatos, the death drive, when its object is still one’s own self; it is not yet the consequence of aggression, which in defence of one’s ego ideal has been directed outwards.