The manifestations of sexual bondage are various in form, and the cases are very numerous.[[81]] At every step in life we find men that have fallen into sexual bondage. Among married men, hen-pecked husbands belong to this category, particularly elderly men who marry young wives and try to overcome the disparity of years and physical defects by unconditional submission to the wife’s every whim; and unmarried men of ripe maturity, who seek to better their last chance of love by unlimited sacrifice, are also to be enumerated here. Here belong, also, men of any age, who, seized by hot passion for a woman, meet coldness and calculation, and have to capitulate on hard conditions; men of loving natures who allow themselves to be persuaded to marriage by notorious prostitutes; men who, to run after adventuresses, leave everything and jeopardise their future; husbands and fathers who leave wife and child, to lay the income of a family at the feet of a harlot.
But, numerous as the examples of masculine “bondage” are, every observer of life, who is at all unprejudiced, must allow that they are far from equalling, in number and importance, the cases of feminine “bondage.” This is easily explained. For a man, love is almost always only an episode, and he has many other and important interests; for a woman, on the other hand, love is the principal thing in life, and, until the birth of children, always her first interest. After this it is still often her first thought, but always, at least, takes the second place. But, what is still more important, the man ruled by this impulse easily satisfies it in embraces for which he finds unlimited opportunities. A woman in the upper classes of society, if she have a husband, is bound to him alone; and even in the lower classes there are still great obstacles to polyandry. Therefore, a woman’s husband means for her the whole sex, and his importance to her becomes very great. It must also be considered that the normal relation established by law and custom between husband and wife is far from being one of equality. In itself it expresses a sufficient predominance of woman’s dependence. The concessions she makes to her lover, to retain the love which it would be almost impossible for her to replace, only plunge her deeper in bondage; and this increases the insatiable demands of husbands resolved to use their advantage and traffic in woman’s readiness to sacrifice herself.
Here may be placed the fortune-hunter, who for money allows himself to be enveloped in the easily created illusions of a maiden; the seducer, and the man who compromises wives, calculating on blackmail; the gilded army officer and the musician with the lion’s mane, who know so well how to stammer “Thee or death!” as a means to pay debts and provide a life of ease. Here, too, belong the kitchen-soldier, whose love the cook returns with love plus means to satisfy a different appetite; the drinker, who consumes the savings of the mistress he marries; and the man who with blows compels the prostitute on whom he lives to earn a certain sum for him daily. These are only a few of the innumerable forms of bondage into which woman is forced by her greater need of love and the difficulties of her position.
The subject of “sexual bondage” must here receive brief consideration; for in it may be clearly seen the soil from which the main root of masochism springs. The relationship of these two phenomena of psychical sexual life is immediately apparent. Bondage and masochism both consist of the unconditional subjection of the individual affected with the abnormality to a person of the opposite sex, and of domination of the former by the latter.[[82]] The two phenomena, however, must be strictly differentiated; they are not different in degree, but in quality.
Sexual bondage is not a perversion and not pathological; the elements from which it arises—love and weakness of will—are not perverse; it is only their simultaneous activity that produces the abnormal result which is so opposed to self-interest, and often to custom and law. The motive, in obedience to which the subordinated individual acts and endures tyranny, is the normal instinct toward woman (or man); the satisfaction of which is the price of bondage. The acts of the person in subjection, by means of which the bondage is expressed, are performed at the command of the ruling individual, to satisfy selfishness, etc. For the subordinated individual they have no independent purpose; they are only the means to an end,—to obtain or retain possession of the ruling individual. Finally, bondage is a result of love for a particular person; it first appears when this love is awakened.
In masochism, which is decidedly abnormal and a perversion, this is all very different. The motive of the acts and suffering of the person in subjection is here the charm afforded by the tyranny in itself. There may, at the same time, be a desire for coitus with the dominant person; but the impulse is directed to the acts which serve to express the tyranny, as the immediate objects of gratification. These acts in which masochism is expressed are, for the individual in subjection, not means to an end, as in bondage, but the end in themselves. Finally, in masochism the longing for subjection occurs a priori, before the occurrence of an inclination to any particular object of love.
The connection between bondage and masochism may be assumed by reason of the correspondence of the two phenomena in the objective condition of dependence, notwithstanding the difference in their motives; and the transformation of the abnormality into the perversion probably takes place in the following manner: Any one living for a long time in sexual bondage becomes disposed to acquire a slight degree of masochism. Love that willingly bears the tyranny of the loved one then becomes an immediate love of tyranny. When the idea of being tyrannized over is long closely associated with the lustful thought of the beloved person, the lustful emotion is finally connected with the tyranny itself, and the transformation to perversion is completed. This is the manner in which masochism may be acquired by cultivation.[[83]]
Thus a mild degree of masochism may arise from “bondage,”—become acquired; but genuine, complete, deep-rooted masochism, with its feverish longing for subjection from the time of earliest youth, is congenital.
The explanation of the origin of the infrequent perversion of fully developed masochism is most probably to be found in the assumption that it arises from the very frequent abnormality of “sexual bondage”; in that now and then this abnormality is hereditarily transferred to a psychopathic individual in such a way that it becomes transformed into a perversion. It has been previously shown how a slight displacement of the psychical element under consideration may effect this transition.
This transformation of the abnormality into the perversion, through hereditary transference, would take place very easily where the psychopathic constitution of the descendant presented the other factor of masochism,—i.e., what has been previously called its main root,—the tendency of sexually hyperæsthetic natures to assimilate all impressions coming from the beloved person with the sexual impression.