Reviews for A taste for pain

The average rating for A taste for pain based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-01-09 00:00:00 Guvenc Ergin In 1974, Danish feminist Maria Marcus published Den Frygtelige Sandhed. En Brugs-Bog om Kvinder og Masokisme (The Awful Truth; a Workbook on Women and Masochism); in 1981 it was published in English as A Taste for Pain; On Masochism and Female Sexuality. It’s an inquiry into masochism in women: • A journal of Marcus’ struggle to come to terms with her own sexuality • A report of her investigation into the theories of the experts • Reflections on the depiction of women masochists in pornography or literature (starting, of course with the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and including The Story of O — which she calls a fable, a warning to women about brainwashing from our culture of male domination) • And a plea to women masochists, to talk about it together; so we can learn how to heal our sexuality. She studied everything she could find in order to understand herself. She conscientiously reports her feelings, reactions, experience; she carefully, rationally, analyzes as far as she can; she falls back eventually to metaphor, to story, as the only way to express what she perceives. She stays rational much longer than I can when thinking about Sigmund Freud and his progeny, reporting on seven different psychoanalytic theories of masochism (all three separate ones from Freud himself), evaluating their fit to her experience. As I read the views of these presumed experts, I cringed. I raged. I felt crammed into one box and then another. I left Marcus’ book and came back, thinking I must pay attention to these ideas; they are what has formed my culture, formed my expectations. How can I break free of them if I can’t think about them? She does find one psychoanalyst she can relate to: Karen Horney. Marcus applauds Horney for her radical departure from the Freudian canon in stressing the role of culture. However, Marcus observes that Horney questioned whether masochism is a sexual phenomenon, or a fundamental character structure expressed in all fields, and so in the sexual field as well.” [1] This would make sexual masochism only “a kind of sub-division of ordinary all-comprehensive authoritarian masochism, including a desire for subjection at all levels.” [2] Marcus disagrees: she sees sexual masochism as “clearly a very much more independent illness.” Marcus differentiates two main forms of masochism: 1) sexual and 2) authoritarian, the habit of subordinating oneself, putting oneself down, that results from the authoritarian structure of our culture. [3] Marcus concludes they are separate from her own experience in emerging from social/authoritarian masochism while the sexual pattern remains recalcitrant. In addition however, she observes, the culture conflates the sexual and social problems, into one “female masochism,” regarding women as victims by nature. This mishmash, Marcus declares, is what makes the most harm. Marcus also likes another important contributor to the theory of masochism: Wilhelm Reich, who valued orgasm as our primary connection to the life-force, the way to be in balance with the universe. He put the blame for neuroses on the punishment-based power structure of the traditional nuclear family. That all makes sense to Marcus (and to me, too). But she observes that Reich says “not a word about women.” Nothing about the larger cultural structures enforcing male domination, nothing about the sexualization of that domination. Nothing about how women are brainwashed by that domination into submission socially, psychologically, and sexually. As Karen Horney observed, “In our culture it is hard to see how any woman can escape becoming masochistic to some degree, from the effects of the culture alone.” [4] We are all dealing with what Maria Marcus talks about. But Marcus blazes trail. The courage of this woman awes me: her dedication to learning and speaking the truth. She bears unflinching witness to the depths of her own soul, examining herself, questioning How? Why? … as well as What now?  [1] Marcus p. 227. [2] ibid. [3] The concept comes from Erich Fromm’s term “authoritarian personality” which he coined in Fear of Freedom.(1941?) [4] Feminine Psychology, 1967, p. 231

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-05 00:00:00 Joe Anchondo I learned a lot reading this, and it certainly gave me a lot to think about, but Marcus' differentiation between "authoritarian masochism" (someone's love of oppression in everyday society) and "sexual masochism" (a love of domination limited to the bedroom) led to some questionable conclusions, in my mind. Her suggestion that masochism is a disease that she has tried to rid herself of; her warning that, since women are viewed primarily as sexual objects under patriarchy, admitting that we are sexual masochists will give men an excuse to treat us like authoritarian masochists; her seeming refusal to engage with queer and trans experiences of masochism -- all of these come across as dangerously reactionary and heteronormative. Still, as someone who is trying to branch out and read more about subjects like this, I appreciated it for its accessibility and frankness.