Living with frustration

Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again just as it nears the top. The struggle itself towards the heights can be enough to fill our heart. One can imagine Sisyphus happy.

Masochism, sadism, sexual fantasy, voyeurism and mutual relationship

This blog charts a developmental journey of living with frustration. Accumulating coping strategies of masochism, sadism, sexual fantasy, voyeurism and mutual relationship. 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. By making helplessness pleasurable, it becomes tolerable. Not only that, infants, may, make themselves responsible for their submissive experience too. 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.)

Preserving a simple, benign, god-like interpretation of their caregivers ( Phillips, 2013 & 2023. ) A partial coping strategy for infant frustration. So in time, an infant adds to their repertoire. Making inflicting pain pleasurable (sadism.) Initially in fantasy, and later in action. So an infant kisses, then subsequently bites, the hand that feeds it. As children become sexually and physically mature, they further add to their repertoire of coping. Through the fantasised, and now real, possibility of reproductive sex and lethal violence. Adolescent coping strategies that may include sadistic sexual fantasy.

Sadistic sexual fantasy

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

Sadistic sexual fantasies can be understood as a protest, or a protection, against loneliness. Containing the adolescents real grievances within fantasies of control and revenge. A retaliatory reversal of the omnipotent control, or absence, felt to be suffered at the hands of caregivers. In these ways, sadistic sexual fantasies may assist the psychological survival of distressed, uncontained, adolescents.

These sadistic fantasies are often targeted towards the female body. Misrepresenting 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 be the voyeuristic appreciation of sexual representations.

Voyeuristic appreciation of sexual representations

Sexual representations are how sexuality, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior are depicted, portrayed, or symbolized in media, art, culture, and public discourse. Voyeurism is gaining pleasure from secretly watching people in sexual situations. Sexual representations can be appreciated voyeuristically. 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. These may provide new helpful experiences. For example, making us feel strangers to ourselves. In that, 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. )

Helpfully weakening repression of our own, previously unrecognised, fantasies. In this way pornography (as defined here) can have a 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 out frustrations harmfully. The final suggested development, to fully live with our frustrations, is mutual relationships.

Mutual relationships

Developing mutual relationships means experiencing people as subjects as well as objects. People with their own, separate minds, choices and feelings. People, in whom, we can notice our affect. This affect 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 can become transformational for us.

'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 mutual frustration. This is because we share that task with them. So we have the opportunity to more fully experience adult life. Recognising what violence actually is, as opposed to, what we may fantasise it to be :

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

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.

Fully living with frustration through a series of developmental stages. Masochism, sadism, sexual fantasies, voyeurism and mutual relationships. A nuanced, secure and psychologically stable understanding of ourselves, other people and the world. We are ready for the next challenge.

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