In Freud's time, corporal punishment was more common than
today. So common that in the beginning of his
paper A Child is being beaten, he said that...
A thread like this continues throughout this discussion:
The mixture of pain reinforced by reward.
Freud constructed different scenarios where children would already begin their
conditioning. Starting with experiences of spanking
with parents, an association of love and forgiveness
afterwards could be connected with punishment.
Even if children grew up with less beatings,
they would see plenty of examples in school with teachers and students.
Also children would witness their siblings occasionally being punished by
their parents.
And not all cases of witnessing beatings were completely frightening and without
pleasure.
Here a connection between sadism and sexuality is
made, but it doesn't become overt until later.
Freud looks at sexuality as something that includes all forms of love.
Competing for the attention of the father with other siblings,
leads to pleasure when the opponent is beaten or scolded.
The pleasure connected with pain may not be caused with masturbation alone.
Freud made an illustration on how these fantasies could develop.
But Freud believes that this second phase is a "construction of analysis"
that points to what is unconscious, like imagining one being in the place of the
beaten individual. In the third stage, the father is
replaced by other authority figures like a teacher.
As the child develops in the Oedipus Complex,
where the boy usually fights for the attention of the mother, and the girl for
the father, a guilt begins to appear that becomes an
early formation of the Super-Ego.
Freud then predicts that punishment represses the desire for the parent,
making it unconscious along with that sense of guilt,
and because of that, it keeps resurfacing in behaviour.
Regardless of the complexity
with which Freud connects pleasure with pain,
these early templates can lead to future relationships where
a sense of comfort can be felt even if they're toxic.
In a way, it's like the sadistic mind loses trust in itself
and finds benefit in attacking itself. The self-attacking may lead to better
behaviour, and many in society do not care how you
improve your behaviour, just as long as you do so.
Yet for others, it can be pathological. Did we imitate a good parent or a bad
one? Also, what past forms of desire were
shameful that persist in making the mind not
trust itself?
This earlier paper of Freud alludes to his later Super-Ego theory,
and how this entity becomes like an imitated authority figure
living in the psyche. It is often influenced by parents, who attached
reward to punishment, knowingly or unknowingly. This created an
internal police where people punish themselves willfully,
even when external threats are not present.
Here the connection that one sees is that this internal police can be fair or
unfair, and the Ego can be handicapped by a pathological Super-ego.
It helps to explain how people can be afraid of success,
like they are an impostor, and how they can derail their own plans with
self-sabotage.
The sexuality component is also clear, when punishment can be
a "no other alternative" for people, and a familiar, and therefore reliable
form of pleasure takes the place of something more healthy.
Freud always wanted people to bridge the gap between debasement and lust
with tenderness.
In the insightful commentary of the IPA's translation of
A Child is Being Beaten, Novick & Novick describe the masochistic mentality
and its need to negotiate with an imitated pathological internal parent.
This hints at the cure to the problem,
which is the ability to develop the ego to achieve goals, and to resist
self-destruction, even if it has a paradoxical feeling of
pleasure involved.
In Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, Nancy McWilliams provides more modern
extensions to Freud's initial work. Freud did find that a healthy Super-ego
could be followed by the Ego, but one doesn't always have a healthy
Super-ego. Like in Beyond the Pleasure Principle,
the Reality Principle can compulsively repeat disasters in order to master them,
or if influenced by the Nirvana Principle, there can be a need to
self-destruct to kill off the pain coming from the Super-ego.
This can be seen in Freud's patient, the 'Wolfman', Sergei Pankejeff.
He got limited help from Freud, who was struggling with masochistic patients,
and was unable to fend off bad relationships all through his life,
due to a lack of assertiveness, coddling by analysts,
and his low self-esteem.
Treatment of masochism requires that the therapist does not provide a model of
masochism, or a model of a sadist taking pleasure
at the patient's expense, and reinforcing their low self-esteem.
The point of this role-modeling is to
try to demolish pathological beliefs like:
It's the lesson that if you take care of yourself, it's faster than waiting for
someone else to do it for you, and it's also safer. Many of the
masochists that therapists treat, are in toxic relationships with
narcissists.
Similar to Nancy's suggestions, Sandra Brown,
who counsels many people in toxic relationships,
wants to remind people that those with low self-esteem are injured.
In particular their ability to handle cognitive dissonance,
or ambivalence, which is impaired with post-traumatic stress.
The depth of this ambivalence goes all the way to the core.
Victims may be unsure of whether their partner is toxic or not,
precisely because abusers provide both rewards and punishments,
but also they may have ambivalence about their own self-worth.
Like exercising a muscle, the patient has to exercise their executive
decision making functions with consistent actions that align with
values. It's important for people to realize
that when you do good things for yourself, not everyone else has to like
it. Like a dictator that despises your
freedom, it's okay to rebel. When you upset toxic people, it's quite
possible that you are doing something good
for yourself.
