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Michael bader's “adaptive sadomasochism and psychological growth,” a contribution to current thinking about adult sexuality, also provides the opportunity to examine the place of feminist theory in what amounts to a revision of the classical interpretation of sadomasochism as perversion. Recent writings argue that what was once regarded as perverse is in fact acceptable, necessary, desirable. Stoller (1979), for example, thinks aggression is sexuality's core. Bollas (1989) links ruthlessness to mutual orgasm. Kernberg (1991) argues that sadism and masochism are run-of-the-mill components of adult sexuality. And, in a yet unpublished paper, Aron (1991) construes the internalized primal scene as a source of creativity, not trauma.
Michael Bader's intervention contends that sadomasochistic sexual fantasy and enactment can loosen desire and expand sexual possibility. If they are experienced as achievements, not pathological compulsions, sadomasochistic scenarios can also nourish mastery of developmental dilemmas. One such dilemma, according to Bader, is the guilt many women feel about their sexual desire. Women, he says, tend to experience their sexual potency as damaging to their mothers' narcissism. The ensuing guilt inhibits their ruthlessness and aggression and thereby damps their sexual pleasure and agency. This inhibition may intensify in relation to fathers who, unable “to accept and appreciate” their daughters' sexuality, are “either sexually threatened or overstimulated by it.”
In sadomasochistic play, Bader says, women can learn that their sexual power endangers neither parent but is even exciting and desirable