Masochism

“Certainly we don’t all go around writhing with exotic pains. But many men and women with ulcers, colitis, and headaches are expiating their guilt by inches. Some are so accident prone that they can hardly avoid the relief of a skinned knee or a good automobile wreck. Some talented people cannot resist undercutting their own achievements one by one. Others keep themselves in an ecstasy of anguish over imagined inferiorities and projected catastrophes. And most of us enjoy a little pain in bed, so long as it is combined with libidinous gratification. Masochism is not an isolated psychic tendency; it is a way of life.”

“If the crude bickering and fighting of children is splattered with too much guilt and suppression, hostilities go underground. The children resort to a variety of devious tactics of which, often enough, they are completely unaware, In the battle with mother, they refuse to eat; if forced to fetch and carry, they cannot see things directly before their eyes. With their siblings they are more lethal but equally devious. They learn in the most innocent manner to scare them out of their wits, humiliate them in subtle ways, and expose their slightest transgressions.

“But modern parents are quick to catch these devices; and cut off again, hostility and sadism proceed to the next level. Since in their environment children find it less painful to be wronged and blameless than guilty transgressors, they switch polarity. Renouncing the pleasure of open hostility, they pick up the bludgeon of guilt used so successfully by their parents. They become perpetual martyrs and draw from this what revenge they can. Suffering, imposed upon, and betrayed, nevertheless they damage everyone about them with guilt. With their own children, in turn, these unfortunates always win. They are usually the most destructive of parents. Outright hostility can be answered by the child’s hostility, and he may grow up relatively free. But guilt burns into the child’s psyche and creates permanent wounds of self-hatred. Defenseless, the next generation takes up the burden of guilt and, once grown, retaliates by throwing it upon the next.” Quoted from LSD Psychotherapy by WV Caldwell See Pain