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BDSM Therapy

He, the CEO of a multimillion company, shits in the corner.

She, the paid domina, scolded and spanked him, then pressed him to her breasts
to console him.

The public view of BDSM considers it to be primarily a form of sexual


relations ​and identifies it with instinctive need for subordination and
domination that in their turn are associated with sexuality.

image source: bit.ua

Such perception is based on Freud’s postulated prejudice that sexual instinct is a


manifestation of the basic — and, besides, nasty — human nature.
In this, Freud inherited, or rather could not completely overcome, the Christian
ideology of dismembering a person into a sublime soul and sinful body.

According to Freud sexual instinct is inborn. Even the child’s attachment to a


caregiver Freud was explaining as based on a sexual instinct. Freud assumed that
socially acceptable types of interpersonal relationships, such as romantic love and
marriage, are formed as a result of the transformation (sublimation) of a sexual
instinct, but at the same time interpersonal relationships preserve sexual drive at
its basis and remain just camouflaged version of it.

According to another common prejudice, sexual drive is inherently


aggressive. ​At the same time aggressiveness and dominant position is
traditionally associated with a man, and passivity and submission with a woman.
This association denies that the traditional concept of sex involves a man as its
only active participant — sex belongs to a man. A woman is an asexual being,
she is involved in a sexual act only as a passive and secondary element. Within
the framework of the traditional concept of sexuality, the way out of this
predisposition is blocked — if a woman assumes an active role, she is doomed to
be perceived as a manly or ineptly playing role of a man.

As a result of the juxtaposition of these prejudices, BDSM practices are


considered to be relatively permissible in society form of satisfaction of our true
animal nature — an aggressive sexual instinct.
If we consider BDSM outside the Freudian perspective, which reduces
everything to sexuality, this would allow us to more fully reveal this
phenomenon and identify the need underlying it.

Post-Freudian research (for example, John Bowlby’s) showed that the child’s
original attachment to another is not based, as Freud suggested, on sexual drive,
but rather itself represents the manifestation of a basic primal need. Expressed
more abstractly, the child’s primary need is to remain in a state of merger with
the caregiver, to dissolve in it to nonexistence.

This basic need for fusion persists throughout life, the form of bodily intimacy
that we habitually denote by the term “sexual contact” is rather a substitute and
compensation for this basic need, yet it is never completely replacing it. ​The
corporal proximity of adults imitates the state of the initial fusion of
the child with the caregiver — penetration into the body of another,
the feelings of the warmth of her body, the exchange of fluids and the
synchronization of the rhythm of movements.

From the general structure of dominance-subordination it is intuitively easier to


associate submission with the original desire not to exist. While in the submissive
position, a person feels pleasure of belonging to another, giving up her own will
and plunging into non-existence — the more shameful and humiliating, the
more distinctly she feels belonging and dissolution in the body of another.
Yet not only the pleasure of submission is explained by the desire for a fusion, but
also the pleasure of domination. Attempts to realize the need for a complete
fusion can be interpreted ambivalently: as the desire of the infant to be absolutely
subjected to the caregiver and as the desire to subdue the caregiver.
Consequently, subordination and domination  —  in their foundation
are not two opposite phenomena, but two forms of manifestation of
the same desire.

Infant desire of fusion can not be completely satisfied. The main obstacle on the
way to its satisfaction is the separateness of the body of another. Even the most
caring caregiver physiologically can not fully meet the need of a child since this
need is absolute. Even if the caregiver never ignores the infant’s cry, the mere fact
that she cried indicates that her need already failed to be satisfied and for this
reason she began to cry. The fact of crying does not manifest any precise
meaning — the infant simply feels bad — but retrospectively one can
reasonably consider her crying as manifestation of the desire to subjugate the
body of the caregiver, but also as the manifestation of the desire to be possessed
by her body (within the framework of the generally accepted association of
domination with the penetration into the body of another, which happens during
breastfeeding).

Thus, the desire to subordinate the body of the caregiver and be


possessed by her are not contradictory opposites, each of these
conditionally separated desires is united by a common desire to
become one with her  —  to make the caregiver’s body her own in
order to dissolve into belonging.

image source: bit.ua

The above-mentioned scene is indicative in this respect, within the presented


interaction of the role of a strict but loving mother and a disobedient child it is
difficult to figure out if the latter plays the dominant or submissive role. A
rebellious child wants to attract attention by his behavior, thus manipulates the
mother — but only in order for her to manifest her power to punish and console.

Conceptualization of the adult desire for the body of another as based on the
original infant desire for fusion deconstructs and emancipates the physical
intimacy traditionally conceived within the framework of pansexualism and
strictly defined sex roles. The ambivalent infant desire of the body of the
caregiver is asexual, that is, exists outside of scheme of sexual differentiation, the
subsequent association of the male with the domination, and the feminine with
the submissivity largely depends on the culturally conditioned perspective.

BDSM is a therapeutic theater that allows us to fulfill, in the form


closest to the ideal, our basic ineradicable need for owning/belonging
to the body of another and the urge to shelter from an adult world
that imposes on us a demand to to be independent and separated
from others.

Julie Reshe’s upcoming online classes:

Violent tenderness
(October 20 - November 10, 2018)

Link to enroll
Theory and Practice of BDSM therapy: An Integrative
Approach
(February 2 - 32, 2019)

Link to enroll

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