Sado-masochism is an inherently and an intentionally ambiguous concept, as sadism and masochism are both opposed and observably linked, arising out of the developmental experience of domination and submission. Donne projects this into his experience with God, a fantasy derived from the experience with the actual father, whether personally or in the culture.
My whole point in using the concept is to emphasize the ambiguities and to establish ways of thinking them through. It is absurd to assert that calling Christian faith a conscious experience of gendered sado-masochism, is "stereotyping," "prejudice," or, in Chip's angry word, a form of "bigotry." Rather it is a way to avoid stereotypical thinking about the various quite diverse manifestations of Christianity. Without a way to make sense of Christianity's diversity one falls into seeing good guys and bad guys, and assertions that the various manifestations of Christianity just happen to have the same name and a lot of common history, but are discrete phenomena nowadays.
Also, though I am also a critic of much in Christianity as it exists, it is quite important to recognize its rôle in the historical formation of the human personality.
You suggest:
> One can also ask how psychoanalysis is implicated in
> the sado-masochistic economy, with a roughly christian
> outline.
>
And you ask:
> Does one hear a note of redemption and salvation in
> that higher good, above being captured and tortured by
> language?
>
Probably one does. One of the dilemmas of clinical practice is the issue
of hierarchy, since the therapeutic situation cannot escape the
hierarchies of the society, reification, etc. The rôle of "Analyst as
paternal confessor," carries with it many sado-masochistic ambiguities.
More broadly, however, Norman O. Brown argued that notions of redemption and resurrection in Christianity point towards human possibilities yet to be realized, in reality, of course.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
Alec Ramsdell wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> > "Masochism" doesn't appear to be so simply gendered
> > in Christianity
> > as you suggest ("feminine = masochist vs. masculine
> > = sadist").
> > Here's John Donne desiring to be ravished.
>
> [Holy Sonnet XIV]
>
> To my ear, this is where the feminine/masculine schema
> is less efficient. Donne sounds slightly too
> contestatory and manipulative, like he's trying too
> hard, or picking a fight. Or trying to write a good
> sounding poem, which it is.
>
> Compare George Herbert's _Church Monuments_ (a great
> poem).
>
> While that my soul repairs to her devotion,
> Here I intomb my flesh, that it betimes
> May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;
> To which the blast of death's incessant motion,
> Fed with the exhalation of our crimes,
> Drives all at last. Therefore I gladly trust
>
> My body to this school, that it may learn
> To spell his elements, and find his birth
> Written in dusty heraldry and lines;
> Which dissolution sure doth best discern
> Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth.
> These laugh at jet and marble put for signs,
>
> To sever the good fellowship of dust,
> And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them,
> When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
> To kiss those heaps, which now they have in trust?
> Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
> And true descent, that when thou shalt grow fat
>
> And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know
> That flesh is but the glass which holds the dust
> That measures all our time; which also shall
> Be crumbled into dust. Mark, here below
> How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,
> That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.
>
> [end]
>
> This is a "her" ("my soul") that knows her place, so
> to speak. Herbert gives us a moral masochism, with
> none of the "lust of pain" ("how free from lust")
> characteristic of feminine ertotogenic masochism; here
> the gendered descriptives get murky--there's none of
> Donne's "hysteria" or, conversely, masculine
> provocation. One way of understanding this might be
> as a sublimated feminine masochism. But what exactly
> registers as feminine vs. masculine, and the value of
> the masochism (not at all degrading), is not clear cut
> and doesn't easily fit a gendered matrix.
>
> Alec
>
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