The homosexual and pseudo-homosexual phenomena described in the preceding chapters constitute a far from universal variety of sexual impulse, but “algolagnia” is much commoner. This name was introduced by Schrenck-Notzing as a general term for the phenomena of sadism and masochism, since these two sexual aberrations are closely related one to the other.
Algolagnia, or painful lasciviousness, if we exclude from consideration its most extreme manifestations, such as lust-murder and suicide from lust, belongs unquestionably to the most widely diffused of sexual aberrations; indeed, in its slighter forms it is almost universal. An experienced woman told Havelock Ellis[588] that she had known only one single man who was entirely free from sadistic lust; and, on the other hand, there are few women in whose sexuality no algolagnistic phenomena are demonstrable. This is natural, for algolagnia, differing in this respect from other sexual aberrations, has the deepest biological roots. Its nucleus, pleasure in the pain of others or in one’s own pain (the term “pain” being here used in the very widest significance, both physical and mental), is an elementary phenomenon of amatory activity. “Love is in its very nature pain,” we read in the “Divan” of the Persian poet Rûmi. It is certain that we have here to do with an anthropological phenomenon, one that is normal within wide limits. Algolagnia plays the greatest rôle in the individual life of single human beings and in the civilized life of humanity at large. It enables us to get a view into the hidden depths of the human spirit, and displays to us the remarkable phenomenon of the association of primeval animal instincts with the highest spirituality. It at the same time debases love, and renders it more profound, and it touches the most secret aspects of our nature.
“Der Schmerz beseelt
Und er entfesselt nied’re Triebe,
Die sonst dem Menschenherz gefehlt....
Der Schmerz betäubt—er kann beglücken,
Im Schmerz liegt ein geheimes Fleh’n;
Er lässt mit feurigem Berücken
Ein frevelhaftes Bild ersteh’n,”
[“Pain animates
And unchains lower impulses,
Which had otherwise been absent from the human heart....
Pain benumbs—but may also give happiness,
For in pain is hidden a secret prayer;
With an ardent charm
It gives rise to a wanton idea”]
sings Joseph Lauff in his “Geisslerin” (Cologne, 1901). Is there any pleasure without pain? is there any love without sorrow? He who is familiar with the history of civilization will answer these questions in the negative. Pain is a civilizing factor of the first rank; it is the necessary pre-condition and the inevitable accompaniment of pleasure and the affirmation of life. This is the central idea of the philosophy of Nietzsche. The pain of love is only a special case of the great immeasurable Weltschmerz and Weltlust (world-pain and world-joy), which move us so deeply in the powerful descriptions of Schopenhauer, and have always been the most lofty objects of contemplation to philosophers and to students of civilization.[589]
That love-pleasure and love-pain, the forces of creation and destruction—yes, indeed, that love and death (which Leopardi in a wonderful poem celebrated as twin brothers)—are separated only by a “thin veil” (Havelock Ellis), was an idea first expressed in the celebrated work of the formidable Marquis de Sade,[590] whose books, taken as a whole, are merely a paraphrase of the idea of the connexion between pain and voluptuousness; and, moreover, de Sade does not recognize this connexion only in active algolagnia—that is, in the infliction of pain, the voluptuousness of cruelty, the so-called “sadism”—but he recognizes it equally in passive algolagnia, in the suffering of pain, the voluptuousness of being tortured, in the state named after the author Sacher-Masoch, “masochism.” De Sade, who was the first consistent advocate of the anthropologico-ethnological theory of psychopathia sexualis, himself collected almost all the facts regarding the biological roots of painful lasciviousness, and regarding algolagnistic phenomena in ethnology and in the history of civilization.
The foundation for the understanding of active and passive algolagnia is constituted by the fact that we have here, in the first place, to do with a purely biological phenomenon, which makes its appearance in every normal love. The sexual act exhibits to us pain and pleasure in an indissoluble association. Love’s embrace is a “sweet pain,” a painful pleasure.[591]
The nature of the sense of voluptuousness is still rather obscure, but it is certain that painful sensations make their appearance as its accompaniment, probably indeed as an actual part of voluptuousness. I may remind the reader of the interesting remarks of Edmund Forster, mentioned on [p. 44], regarding the conception of sexual tension as a stimulation of the pain-perceiving nerves of the genital organs. Still more clearly is pain reflected (pain both active and passive) in the love-embrace itself, in the phenomena[592] which we previously ([pp. 50]-[51]) described, such as fierce embraces, convulsive seizures, grinding of the teeth, screaming and biting, both on the part of the man and on the part of the woman. Lucretius (“De Rerum Natura,” iv., verses 1054-1061) gave a vivid description of the normal sadistic and masochistic accompaniments of coitus. In this association sadism certainly predominates on the part of the man, though not exclusively; and, contrariwise, masochism predominates, though not exclusively, on the part of the woman. The sadistic “love-bites,” for example, are more frequently given by the woman, especially among savage races,[593] but among the Slavonic peoples it is the man rather who practises the “biting-kiss” during the sexual act.[594]
“Es brausen mir wie Wirbelwind
Im Busen namenlose Triebe:
Ich möchte dich beissen, einzig Kind,
Du süsse Frucht, vor Lust and Liebe,”
[“Nameless impulses are raging
Like a whirlwind in my breast:
I should like to bite you, little one,
Sweet little fruit, to bite you from desire and love”]