Pain, Love and Fear

The problem of the relation of pain to sexual pleasure has puzzled psychoanalysts. That some relation exists between both the inflicting and the enduring of pain and sexual excitement is established beyond all doubt clinically, most strikingly in the extreme form of some of the perversions, but also running through the sexual manifestations of people whose make-up is more or less pathological though their sexual aims are the normal heterosexual ones, and even playing a not inconsiderable part in the love life of people well enough adjusted to be called normal.

It has been felt to be almost a contradiction in terms to suggest that pain can have any real part in its own right in love pleasure, and various theories have been put forward to explain its undoubted presence there. The most outstanding of these are Freud's “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and “The Economic Problem in Masochism,” which will be discussed in a moment. A good many psychoanalytic writers have attempted to explain away the apparent seeking of pain in the love life as an end in itself by pointing out the various ways in which a need for pain might accompany the sexual drive without in any way being itself the goal actually sought. Thus pain may be sought for the sake of punishment, to satisfy guilt, or again pain may be accidentally attached to sexual pleasure by early conditioning experiences, e.g., beating by a loved parent; or owing to early childish misconceptions concerning the nature of sexual activity conceiving it on the sadistic-masochistic model from observing animals, seeing menstrual blood, and, most important of all, probably, the recognition of unwillingness or even abhorrence on the part of the mother for the father's sexual advances.

The readiness with which even apparently sheltered “wellbrought-up” children adopt the notion of there being something cruel and terrible in sexuality must, I think, very often be a reflection of the feelings, conscious or unconscious, of their parents or