Living with frustration

Ponies survive the sometimes harsh environment of North Uist.

Masochism, sadism, sexual fantasy, voyeurism and mutual relationship

This blog charts a developmental journey. To fully live with frustration. Accumulating the coping strategies of masochism, sadism, sexual fantasies, voyeurism and mutual relationships. Inspired by psychoanalytic thinkers (Phillips, 2013, Benjamin, 2017 & Erikson, 2022.) A developmental journey beginning in infancy.

Infant experience

'The early flood of sensations, the infant must passively experience, can be conceptualised as [our first] masochism' (Benjamin, 1995, p192.)

Masochism means learning to enjoy a painful experience. It's one way to cope with the helplessness of being an infant. So by making our helplessness pleasurable, it becomes tolerable. Not only that, infants make themselves responsible for their submissive experience. Both in order to psychologically survive and enjoy it. So for the infant :

'it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God, than to live in a world ruled by the devil.' -(Fairbairn, 1952, p66-67)

Simultaneously preserving a simple, benign, god-like interpretation of their caregivers (Phillips, 2023.) All partial coping strategies for infant frustration.

So in time, an infant needs to add to their repertoire of coping. This time making the inflicting of pain on others pleasurable i.e. sadism. Initially in fantasy, and later in action. So an infant at first kisses, then subsequently bites, the hand that feeds it. Latterly, as children become sexually and physically mature, they further add to their repertoires of coping. This time, through the fantasised, and now real, possibilities of reproductive sex and lethal violence. New adolescent coping strategies that may include sadistic sexual fantasies.

Sadistic sexual fantasy

Adolescent frustration may be sadistically sexualised if it is not otherwise contained, in care giving relationships. For example, when our caregivers are absent, lost, or traumatically incomplete. Sadistic sexual fantasy involves taking pleasure from the imagined infliction of humiliation, fear, or other forms of mental harm, to a person.

Sadistic sexual fantasies can also be understood as a protest or a protection, against loneliness. Creating an inner world populated by persecutors and victims. Transforming real grievances into fantasies of control and revenge. A retaliatory reversal of the omnipotent control, or absence, felt to be suffered at the hands of incomplete caregivers. In these ways, sadistic sexual fantasies may assist the psychological survival of distressed adolescents.

These sadistic fantasies are often targeted towards the female body. This is part of the misrepresentation of the responsibility for care. Ignoring the part played by men, wider family and community in inadequate care. All coping mechanisms, including sadistic sexual fantasies, are incomplete. Making it more likely these fantasies may be eventually acted out. So another development to fully live with frustration, without harming other people in reality, may need to be the voyeuristic appreciation of sexual representations.

Voyeuristic appreciation of sexual representations

Sexual representations are present throughout culture. Representations that can be appreciated voyeuristically. Voyeurism is the activity of gaining pleasure from secretly watching other people in sexual situations. Where people are considered objects. One example is pornography. 'Material deemed sexual, given the context, that has the primary intention of sexually arousing the consumer and is produced and distributed with the consent of all persons involved (Ashton, et al, 2019.)’

We may bring these representations in and out of our experience. They may provide new helpful experiences. For example they have the potential to make us feel strangers to ourselves. We can believe our response is happening without our consent and/or responsibility.

'The whole point of pornography is to make us feel excited. [As if] the devil made me do it' - Benjamin, 1995, p207.

So sexual representations can be experienced as intrusive. Helpfully weakening the repression of our own, previously unrecognised, fantasies. In this way pornography (as defined here) can have a significant liminal status. Bridging adolescent experiences of sexuality to more nuanced adult understandings. Expanding our ability to contain and represent our frustrations in sexual fantasy. Rather than act frustrations out harmfully against ourselves or other people. The final suggested development, to fully live with our frustrations, are mutual relationships.

Mutual relationships

Developing mutual relationships means experiencing people as subjects. People with their own, separate, minds and feelings. Noticing the change we create in other people and them in us. This awareness can satisfy our (sometimes aggressive) need for recognition. In the extreme, 'because I affect you, I don't need to kill you.'

Other people who can survive the onslaught of our aggressive or sexual fantasies. Who are non retaliatory but affected. People who can note the symbolic, as well as other properties, of our fantasies. In this context, the limits of our power become clear and other people instead can become transformational for us.

'Only a good that survives hate can be, experienced as, an unthreatened, unprecarious good and thus not requiring continuous defense' - (Benjamin, 1995, p209.)

A good enough other, in a mutual relationship with us, means we can fully live with our frustration because we share the task with others. So from this place of hard earned maturity we have the opportunity to more fully experience adult life. Recognising what sex and violence actually are, as opposed to, what we may fantasise them to be :

'Real violence cannot be limited to and contained by the specular [mirroring] relationship to sexual excitement; it exceeds representation' - (Benjamin, 1995, p204.)

Moreover, allowing us to accept rather than seek to resolve two paradoxes. That which fascinates sexually can also disgust. Secondly, that which is abominable in reality can also be pleasurable in fantasy. Achieving the maturity of fully living with frustration through a series of developmental stages. Masochism, sadism, sexual fantasies, voyeurism and mutual relationships. A nuanced, secure, psychologically stable understanding of ourselves, other people and the world.

References

Ashton, S., McDonald, K., & Kirkman, M. (2019). What does ‘pornography’mean in the digital age? Revisiting a definition for social science researchers. Porn Studies, 6(2), 144-168.

Benjamin, J. (1995). Like subjects, love objects: Essays on recognition and sexual difference. Yale University Press.

Benjamin, J. (2017). Beyond doer and done to: Recognition theory, intersubjectivity and the third. Taylor & Francis.

Fairbairn, R, (1952, pp. 66-67) cited in Ludlam, M. (2022). Lost–and found–in translation: Do Ronald Fairbairn's ideas still speak usefully to 21st-century couple therapists?. In More About Couples on the Couch (pp. 141-155). Routledge.

Fennell, E, (2020) Promising Young Woman, unflinching journey into some of the sexually abusive experiences of women. Bystanders and all. Free trailer. CLICK HERE

Fennell, E, (2023) Saltburn, a visceral, sexual and violent study of psychopathy. Enacted as a narcissistic fantasy of destruction. Focussed on a family who became spoiled to death. Free trailer. CLICK HERE

Gaynord, A., (2021) All my friends hate me, viseceral film of a re-enactment of group gas lighting, sadism, paranoia & eventual suicide. Powerful and affecting (free trailer.) CLICK HERE

Mapplethorpe, R. (1982) Cock and Devil. National Galleries Scotland, https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/90698/cock-and-devil

Maree, J. G. (2022). The psychosocial development theory of Erik Erikson: critical overview. The Influence of Theorists and Pioneers on Early Childhood Education, 119-133.

Perry, A. (2023, April 9). Why would we put words to our desire? WIX. https://www.drandrewperry.org/post/putting-words-to-desire

Perry, A. (2022, October 11). How to have better sex, WIX. https://www.drandrewperry.org/post/better-sex

Phillips, A. (2013). The magical act of a desperate person: on tantrums. The London Review of Books, 35(5), 19-20. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n05/adam-phillips/the-magical-act-of-a-desperate-person

Phillips, A. (2023, April 3). Changing our approach to change. American library in Paris. https://youtu.be/7Mo4KJfXyO4?feature=shared

Phillips, A. (2024). Youtube interview discussing how our experiences of frustration may facilitate experiences of satisfaction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3uXdJWWMAI

n.b. I have also collated a list of other resources associated with intimacy & sexuality. You can access them here : CLICK HERE