Dark Eros

I want to share some ideas and thoughts with you that emerged from the two lectures given by Thomas Moore on the eponymously named Dark Eros seminar series. Dark Eros (1990) (1) is Thomas Moore’s psychological reading of the works of the infamous Marquis de Sade (2) and application of this work to depth psychology.

These ideas are startling and cannot but disturb the psychic slumber of even the dullest reader. They are illuminating – albeit a dark illumination, a kind of black sun if you will, in the fashion that few psychological theories are, especially in the world of perennial self-development, and the rampant epidemic of popular psychology/spirituality. Where every sublime concept is castrated, gagged, tarred and feathered, and then sent to work as a whore in the brothel of social media and public opinion.

Moore’s work here is a reading the work of Sade as a mytho-poetic cataloguing of the sadistic, masochistic, humiliating, degrading, perverse, kinky and depersonalising capacities of the shadow. That part of our psychology that we keep hidden in the closet, stuffed under the bed and locked in the dungeon of our psychologies, so as to maintain the illusion of civility. The danger of such repression as is known only too well to anyone working in this field, is such repression only adds to the shadow’s malevolent character.

The explicit acting out of sado-masochistic erotic play is well known, and, judging by the explosion of FetLife and associated groups, now pretty mainstream. What is less well understood, following Moore, in the ubiquitous presence and character of Sadean contexts and practices in other areas of our daily lives. It is a few of these ideas touched on only briefly by Moore that I want to share with you.

To resist the Sadean impulse to torture you with waffle and unduly delay your gratification I’ll be direct and succinct. Two areas of society and interpersonal relating that Moore emphasised were medicine and education. How in both contexts – among many others of course but Moore focusses much of his research on these two in particular – we not infrequently encounter the Sadean (and arguably the sadistic) scene.

The ”Sadean scene” or scene of the Sadean crime as it were, is setting with in setting, context, intention or relationally in some significant sense mirrors the mythology we encounter in the work of Sade. Moore in this sense is interpreting Sade as expressing in striking, albeit some gratuitous, detail a particular mythological theme, narrative, characters and catalogue of imagery. The scene of the encounter with the Sadist, in Sade’s writing typically the character of the libertine. The one who acts out a sadistic impulse – read the infliction of pain, humiliation degradation, and critically: control and depersonalisation. And, as we all know, the sadist’s prey is the masochist or becomes the masochist in the enactment of the Sadean crime.

These encounters are always forms of physical, sexual, mental and relational torture. They are encounters and expressions of dark eros. The setting of the scene typically entails some kind of bondage, control, stricture, and limitation of the subject (or masochist’s) liberty. The setting and enactment are cruel, heretical to the point of being explicitly sacrilegious, and is often one or another kind dungeon. A place hidden from view where the sadistic atrocities can be carried out at will by the sadist.

Returning to the enactment of sadism in the contexts of medical practice and armed now with the setting, contexts, and tone of Sade’s imagery, I think how these are frequently the locations of the Sadean crime (sadism) is fairly intuitive and regrettable and encounters most of us are familiar with. How often in either of those contexts one may be subject to authoritarian shaming, depersonalisation, unpleasant strictures, and, not infrequently, outright torture.

I offer two short Sadean vignettes by way of example.

Recently my youngest son who is currently in his final year of high school, what we refer to locally as his “matric year” manged, along with three of four friends to get up some mischief. I’ll spare the details of the mischief in question, which are immaterial to the point of this story, so as not to further amplify the Sadean character of what followed. He attends a school in small town which whilst a good enough institution, is governed by the ethos of a certain conservative traditionalist ethos.

I was called into the principal’s office along with the parents of the other boys involved in the incident for a discussion about the punishment to be meted out to the boys by the school. Including my son there were five young men present. The accused, one might say. As well as the parents, two teacher and the principle, who shortly after greeting us absented himself and left the proceedings to his two male colleagues.

The office was not particularly big. A typical sized principal’s office, assuming you have ever visited one, which I imagine most of you have at some or other point of your schooling. It was crowded and the door was shut once we had entered. The two teachers and the parents all sat around a square table. The boys in their uniforms, summer uniforms for most of them mind you which already look slightly ridiculous on the frames of these now strapping seventeen and eighteen year old men were told to line up against one of the walls in the office – their backs to a freestanding green chalk board, so that we might properly address them.

In fairness it must be said the school were not out to make an example of them and the unspoken communication was something like lets jointly subject them to a mildly humiliating dressing down, with some token punishment and all walk away from this and on with our lives. The parents got this unspoken memo and after the two teachers shared their sage wisdom and incredulity with the boys for their lack of responsibility and better council for the incident in question the whip was handed over to the parents. The parents in turn did not spare the rod and made certain to top the teachers in their degree of outrage, disappointment, and reprimand to their sons and present company.

The whole thing went on for about twenty-five or thirty minutes and when we left my son, and I imagine his friends, were relieved. The actual punishment other than this mildly humiliating scene was light. They accepted it as par for the course being of the age, culture and schooling system they were in, and of course having been caught red handed infringing school rules on this occasion.

The entire thing was, to my point though, an unsubtle bit of Sadean theatre.

The other vignette I want to share with you is slightly darker, morbid and more personal. I share it not with the intention of being sensationalistic but because I think like the principal’s office story it constitutes and interesting example of a Sadean play and scene. This concerns a medical setting and procedure.

A little over a year ago I was scheduled to have open heart surgery for the repair or replacement of a prolapsed mitral valve. It was completely unexpected and for me at least a terrifying experience to go through. Obviously, the primary source of fear for one facing a surgery like that is never waking up from it. However, in my own case this was closely followed by a horror of being subjected t the various medical processes accompanying such an ordeal. And in this case, there were a lot of them. Not great for someone who suffers a morbid fear of medical procedures.

When I was preparing myself for the surgery by doing what every sensible person does in such situation scrolling endless YouTube videos for patient testimonials, I realised one of heart patients’ greatest fears in this regard is waking up intubated , i.e with a breathing tube down their throats and a respirator controlling their breathing. I was no exception in this regard, and it topped the longish (unfortunately) list of unpleasant experiences I would need to endure through the entire procedure and aftercare.

As part of my preparation, I visited with the anaesthetist who would oversee much of my primary care during and after the surgery. She had an almost angelic appearance and demeanour, prima facia a Justine rather than a libertine (for those familiar with Sade). Which leads me to propose a word of caution to the astute reader, do not mistake every “Justine” for a Justine, nor every “libertine” for a libertine, not infrequently true nature belies superficial appearances. She talked me through everything and put my mind at ease as much as was possible. Worth mentioning is it also turns out she was a competent cardiac anaesthetist who ensured I lived through the surgery and supervised my primary care afterwards. To be clear naturally I am in her debt, . However, the incident in question – the Sadean scene , if you will concerned this issue of intubation, whose prospect frankly filled me with dread.

It turned out that I would be kept unconscious through the day and night of my surgery and only woken the next morning when – all being well, the intubation would immediately be removed. I expressed to this anaesthesiologist that my greatest fear on hearing how it would all go down would be to wake up in the middle of that night intubated and for her to be no where in sight with no prospect of the intubation being removed. She assured me that with a sort of smug assurance only a doctor a medical specialist, can give a patient – who of course knows no better, that this was wholly impossible. Not improbable mind you, but simply impossible. That the drugs being administered to me intravenously throughout the night would ensure I remained unconscious until they chose to wake me in the morning.

Well, I’m pretty sure by now you have anticipated where this story is going. Indeed, I woke up in the middle of that night in the dark and intubated. I won’t unpack everything that happened form there, except to say I survived it all with relatively minimal trauma. However, the point I want to make here is my greatest expressed fear, that I was assured would not, could not, happen indeed did. This was by all accounts unusual, and I recall the shock on the attendant nursing sisters face when I woke who simply said – you’re not supposed be awake! I also recall as a kind of badge of honour that one of the nursing sisters who came to visit me the day I was being charged said to me she had never seen anyone remain as calm and unpanicked as I had in that situation. That felt good and offered some redemption and meaning from a pretty unpleasant experience.

It happened though. This morbid fear that the doctor had assured me was not possible, that I should not worry about, indeed occurred. Now what do I infer form that in this context, that she was a secret sadist, or the more probable in my opinion that I am a hungry masochist, manifested this turn of events. These speculations are fanciful, although possibly not entirely wide of the mark. Difficult to say, impossible to know. What can be seen and the reason for sharing is just how Sadean and sado-masochistic an experience the entire incident was. (3)

Now multiply that by thousands of such incidents/settings/dramas happening daily in the world of medicine and you start to see Moore’s concern that it is frequently and almost certainly almost always unconsciously a setting for the re-enactment of some of Sade’s darkest fantasises.

By way of conclusion, I would like to say something about the utility of such insights and how you might use them to better navigate your own relationships and world. The questions you might consider are deceptively simple but simultaneously very powerful:

• How are you enacting the Sadean scene in your own life, relationships and psychology?
• Where are you either the perpetrator or victim of the Sadean relational structure: cruelty, authoritarianism, depersonalisation, humiliation/degradation, the infliction of pain, suffering, objectification and so on?

You might consider in any contexts that you identify whether the cruelty of situation is necessary and by contrast whether a more humane and relational dynamic might not be appropriate. Although not a perfect fit, its pretty close, you might consider where in Jung’s terms you are relating or being related to through the will to power rather than eros.

Moore made an interesting suggestion in this regard which is to assign a value between 1 and 10 to how high one finds oneself on the scales of sadism and masochism respectively and of course this can be applied variously to different contexts. To be clear the suggestion or at least my suggestion here is not that such dynamic is easily resolved. I seriously doubt that it is. This type of relational structure of dark eros is typically deep dyed into the fabric of one’s being. However, reflecting on it is has more than mere academic value.

I suggest that one can and should evaluate these sado-masochistic dynamics against one’s ethical principles and ask candid questions of oneself such as what do I believe and stand for in this regard. Am I okay with this and if not what the hell should be done about it. Also, it would be remiss here not to highlight the Jungian hack as I have termed it. And that is the recognition that such impulses are better befriended, even when dark or malevolent in nature, than spurned outright. Somewhat perversely collaboration typically delivers a healthier result psychologically and relationally than repression. The critical caveat being that this is done consciously rather than unconsciously.

What that entails is perhaps the topic for another post, I’ll see where my Sadean mood takes me and decide whether or not I truly wish to deilver you form suffering, or if I wish to simply take some narcissistic satisfaction in (with)holding the keys to your psychic liberation. Of course, these days there are no shortage of oracular avenues to which you might turn for further illumination, not least of course the text in question, available for purchase on Amazon and I’m sure from other book vendors.

 

 

Until we speak again,
Stephen.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Dark Eros: The Imagination of Sadism, by Thomas Moore

The author of the National Bestsellers Care of the Soul, Soul Mates, and The Soul of Sex turns to the shadow side of loving and its cruelties, perversions, and appalling tortures. In Dark Eros, Thomas Moore shines a new light on the dark fictions of the Marquis de Sade to learn what they teach about the horrors hidden in the human heart, revealing the poetic and imaginative powers that lie within violence and sexual victimization. By returning to the paradox of ancient medicine—the cause of a disease is its very cure—Thomas Moore opens the way through sadism that affects family, education, love affairs, the work place and politics.

[2] Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French writer, libertine, political activist and nobleman best known for his libertine novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues, and political tracts.

[3] Its right and proper to qualify this story by saying, with one or two exceptions, such as the story I have related, the level of medical care I received was professional, highly competent and compassionate. I am alive today as a beneficiary of the miracle of modern medicine and its highly committed and caring practice by the doctors and medical team in question that cared for me. The story I have related is not meant to detract form this, rather only to provided what I think is a good illustration of this mythology of Sade frequently being implicit and unconsciously present in medical practice