Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch was an Austrian writer from the mid to late nineteenth century. The term masochism was derived from his name due to the nature of his renowned romance novels. In his literary analysis of Sacher-Masoch’s novels, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, in 1967, brought attention to the importance of an assistant, ‘an agreement between partners, which Sacher-Masoch had literized by drawing up actual contract,’ (O’Dell, 1998, p.4). However, earlier, in the late nineteenth century, the term masochism was used by Richard von Krafft, a French philosopher, to give a name to what he viewed as a ‘desire to harm one’s own body,’ (O’Dell, 1988, p. 3). Without emphasising the more modern use of the sexualised word, it can be said that Stelarc, among other performance artists involved in performance with conscious intention of self-harm, performed masochistic acts. In 1949, Theodor Reik conducted an in-dept. clinical study of masochism and expressed the idea that there are four components to such behaviour. These components are listed as fantasy, suspense, demonstrati...
This episode of Intervention on A&E Network follows the addiction of Latisha from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Latisha is thirty-nine years old, unemployed, and currently lives with her boyfriend, Dominic, that she has known for less than two months. Latisha married her boyfriend at the time, Chris, when she was sixteen and divorced him when she was twenty-five. During her marriage, Latisha had two children, Solomon and Sadiha. After Latisha’s divorce, she had a daughter, Tuesday, from another man. Latisha has been addicted to crack cocaine since she was fifteen years old. In the episode, Latisha admits to smoking crack up to fifty times a day, accumulating about twenty hours a day of smoking. In order to pay for the drugs since she is unemployed, Latisha prostitutes herself in her town. Latisha’s
Throughout “Chasing the Scream” many intriguing stories are told from individuals involved in the drug war, those on the outside of the drug war, and stories about those who got abused by the drug war. Addiction has many social causes that address drug use and the different effects that it has on different people. In our previous history we would see a tremendous amount of individuals able to work and live satisfying lives after consuming a drug. After the Harrison Act, drugs were abolished all at once, but it lead to human desperation so instead of improving our society, we are often the reason to the problem. We constantly look at addicts as the bad guys when other individuals are often the reasons and influences to someone’s decision in
Stekel, Wilhelm, and Louise Brink. Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty. 2 vols. New York: Liveright, 1953. Questia School. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
”The History of Sexuality” is a three-volumes book, published around 1976 and 1984 by the french historical philosopher Michel Foucault. The three volumes are “An Introduction” (which later is known also as “The Will of Knowledge”), “The Use of the Self” and “The Care of the Self”.
Vitus’s dance, between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, manias swept across Europe as tens of thousands of people participated in frenzied public orgies and wild dances lasting for days and sometimes weeks. It is little wonder why psychiatrists and medical historians classify such episodes as group mental disorder affecting those overwhelmed by the stresses of the period. (Bartholomew 1)
Scull, Andrew. “Moral Treatment Reconsidered: Some Sociological Comments on an Episode in the History of British Psychiatry.” In Madhouses, Mad-doctors and Madmen, edited by Andrew Scull. 105-121. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981).
Freud developed his theory from interactions with his neurotic patients and his own psychological experiences. He classifies an obsessional neurotic is classified as one who if “aware of impulses in [himself] which appear very strange,” is “led to actions, the performance of which, give him no enjoyment, but which it is quite impossible for [him] to omit” (Freud Abstracts 2). In Frankenstein’s ...
Thanatology is derived from the Greek word Thanatos, which means death; Death of the physical self and death of the internal self. As Sigmund Freud institutes in his work Beyond the Pleasure Principle there are two drives in the brain that both coincide and conflict within the individual and one of these drives is death itself. Eros is the drive of life, love, creativity, sexuality, self-satisfaction, and species preservation. Thanatos consists of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence and the unknown thoughts of death (Freud, 1953). These self-destructive characteristics are present in all human beings, but they are in the unconscious part of the mind that can be accessed but can also be repressed in order to survive (Freud, 1953). The purpose of this essay is to examine the history of Thanatology, what it is, and the correlations of Sigmund’s Freud’s understanding of the unconscious death instinct that has infiltrated into today 's society.
In today’s heterosexual and patriarchal society sex and sexual desires revolve around men, and Hoagland sets out seven patterns showing how this is the case. Sex is thought of as a “powerful and uncontrollable urge” and male sexuality therefore is a basic component to male health, sexual acts show male conquest and domination, sexual freedom gives men total access to and over women, rape is, by this logic, natural and women who resist a man’s advances are “‘frigid’”, sex involves losing control and sexual desire, when described as erotic, “involves a death wish (eros)”. The bottom line is that in today’s heterosexual and patriarchal society sex is all about men having a natural power over women; sex involves a total loss of control which creates a split between reason and emotion since being in control is a matter of reason controlling emotions, “we tend to believe that to be safe we must be rational and in control but to...
Maher, B. A., & Maher, W. B. (1985). Psychopathology: I. From ancient times to the eighteenth
We are not particularly familiar with citizens who take part in this type of activity with corpses, the reason being because as a society we are not accepting of it. It is one thing to have an infatuation with a living breathing person, but why the dead? Indeed we as humans seek love and affection from others, however, a dead corpse does not have the capability to offer any of that. A person who feels the need to seek pleasure from a corpse is considered to be suffering from some type of trauma. Dr. Griffiths presents these important statistics that describe what type of people become necrophiliacs and what drives them to this insane state of
The theory included the phenomenon of enjoying pain and sadism, which is all about finding pleasure in pain. Freud ascertained that the unconscious constitutes of three senses. These senses include the life instinct, the Eros, which initiates skill improvement in an individual and helps them to be better, successful, people. Eros plays a key role in improving an individual’s personality. Another instinct is the sex sense which brings about libido energy to individuals, and bodily pleasures, such as having a meal or having a good conversation. The third instinct is known as Thanatos which is a death instinct. This deals with pushing people towards death. The superego is always alert to subside the pressures of Thanatos, but ultimately the unconscious takes full control (Myers 84). From this brief introduction, this paper is going to explore the psychoanalysis theory of personality, its key components, and its relevancy to the modern culture.
This field of Sexology, developed from German and French influences, developed a taxonomy and categorization of sexual ‘deviance,’ in which homosexuality was at first seen as pathological and unnatural. This notion of a ‘degenerate’ sexuality and deviances, political, legal and social groups began to understand homosexuality in medicalized terms. Krafft-Ebbing, Ulrichs, Freud. Paedophilia and greeks.
Freud viewed the entire human psyche from a sexual perspective. He defined the unconscious as a collection of repressed personal material. He believed that behaviors are controlled by the unconscious mind, which could be understood through dreams and free association. (Lothane, 2006, p.295-296). He theorized that the human mind had three basic components: the id, the ego, and the superego, and these individual parts often conflict, shaping personality and if not treated, causing neurosis (Schultz & Schultz, 2012, p. 321-323). He stated that therapy could repair narcissism that stemmed from low self-esteem, through transference as patients begin to get the things they missed. Freudians believe there are two basic conflicting drives in a person: the life drive and the death drive. The life drive supports survival by avoiding uncomfortable and life-threatening situations while the death drive desired extreme pleasures that to death (Reppen, 2006, p. 215-216).
Necrophilia is comprised of a large scale of actions and fantasies (UCSB1). Experts have made subcategories to aid in clarifying the spectrum of necrophilic actions and fantasies (UCSB1). The first subcategory is necrophilic fantasies. “Necrophilic fantasies” are simply fantasies of sexual contact with the deceased (UCSB1). The second subcategory, “pseudonecrophilia,” is defined as secluded episodes of sexual contact with a cadaver with no prior necrophilic fantasies or yearnings (UCSB1). The third subcategory is necrosadism. “Necrosadism” is described as, “a paraphilia in which one derives sexual pleasure from violent actions performed on a corpse, such as mutilation or the drinking of blood” (UCSB1). The final subcategory, necrophilic homicide, is like necrosadism, but differs in the fact that the crime of killing a victim to acquire a cadaver is a part of the fantasy (UCSB1).