The Masochism Tango

[midwestyankee]

I just came across this article in The Economist that intrigued me. I know little of masochism and don't remember my Catechism well enough to do in-depth commentary.

That said, the notion that masochistic acts might assuage guilt might spur some interesting discussion so I thought I'd toss it onto the community table and see what happens.

What think you?

 

[Netzach]

I just came across this article in The Economist that intrigued me. I know little of masochism and don't remember my Catechism well enough to do in-depth commentary.

That said, the notion that masochistic acts might assuage guilt might spur some interesting discussion so I thought I'd toss it onto the community table and see what happens.

What think you?

I think this is superb justification for what they did to the Aztecs.

Well, that's the spin the article walks away with. You could draw a scientific conclusion regarding, you know brain chemistry and endorphins and neural pathways, but why not give religion another fist bump?

Let's see.
1. I feel bad. 2. I hit my brain up for endorphins. 3. Wow, I feel good because the levels are where they should have been plus a point or two. W00t.

1. I feel fine. 2. Ice is fucking irritating. 3. I feel fine.

I know that's dry and boring, but I really think we're letting imaginations run away with this stuff. If someone is really carrying a load of guilt chances are they've gotten the "suffering will cleanse you" meme unless they were raised by wolves.

What package the message comes in, their personal level of buy-in - those things will vary. But most people will benefit from a chemical spike after an emotionally manufactured low. I'd like to see what happened after a cocktail, depressant or no, to another control.

"Pain is an altered chemical state" is kind of a nice scientific no shit sherlock which might make "us" less weird in the coming years.

 

[Mazuri]

[...] the notion that masochistic acts might assuage guilt [...]

According to my hubby, this is the reason I have any interest in BDSM so maybe he was a consultant on the article?

 

[DiscusDave]

Without actually reading the published scientific article, I can't judge for certain, but as explained in the review article, I fell as though the experimental design was kind of weird. It just seems off to me, like they needed o have more groups run it and altering the order of the actions (i.e. ice bucket, before writing).

And to see if it is something different than the pain itself making up for the guilt, (i.e. something like the chemical spikes Netzach speaks of) a design where another testing group would do the exact same as the experiment in the article and then when they answer the questioneer after the water tests, they would answer the questioneer about a "very similar" (but different) situation. Then later (a few days even) have them write for 15 minutes (like the original test) about the event they answered the questioneer after the water about. There are some problems with that design as well, but it could possible clear up any background noise in comparison to the pain being what relieved guilt. And even if my tweaks to the design won't make it better, I still feel like the current design had left a lot of things that needed to be controlled for or at least addressed, well... not controlled or addressed. So something needed to be done.

I do see how there could be a correlation. But correlation does not mean causation.

I do get the vibe that this article believes that the scientists went out in search of "proving" something. But the way science works, nothing is ever proven, you just find evidence to support that specific idea. Maybe that vibe was just me, though.

 

[midwestyankee]

I don't think the experiment was intended to show that something other than changes in endorphin levels and such was at work, just that there seems to be a relationship between enduring pain and relief of emotional states of guilt. Like other experiments on phenomena that have been held to be true by popular opinion for centuries, there's a lot of room for criticism. Sure, most of us get a ton of social conditioning that is probably very effective. And there are almost always different ways to design experiments to get at what might be perceived to be more rigorously defensible results. But you have to start somewhere and grants often force compromises on study groups because nobody wants to reach into their own pockets to supplement the cash provided by the grant.

I'm not sure that it's the result - which, by itself doesn't seem very surprising - that intrigued me so much as the attempt to verify that mental states caused by guilt might be modified through pain. In fact, rather than prove that theology is true, this seems to me to show only that we can mess with mental states through sequences of manipulation and stimuli.

I'm waiting for the experiment that proves that wine turns into the blood of a certain historical character.

 

[Netzach]

I don't think the experiment was intended to show that something other than changes in endorphin levels and such was at work, just that there seems to be a relationship between enduring pain and relief of emotional states of guilt. Like other experiments on phenomena that have been held to be true by popular opinion for centuries, there's a lot of room for criticism. Sure, most of us get a ton of social conditioning that is probably very effective. And there are almost always different ways to design experiments to get at what might be perceived to be more rigorously defensible results. But you have to start somewhere and grants often force compromises on study groups because nobody wants to reach into their own pockets to supplement the cash provided by the grant.

I'm not sure that it's the result - which, by itself doesn't seem very surprising - that intrigued me so much as the attempt to verify that mental states caused by guilt might be modified through pain. In fact, rather than prove that theology is true, this seems to me to show only that we can mess with mental states through sequences of manipulation and stimuli.

I'm waiting for the experiment that proves that wine turns into the blood of a certain historical character.

To be fair, the fact that someone's studying this is at least something.

I still want to know how many people have done or do bondage of any type while having sex, I think no one wants to de-marginalize a very common behavior.

Studying masochism is fine, as long as you don't make any connections to sexuality it seems.

 

[midwestyankee]

To be fair, the fact that someone's studying this is at least something.

I still want to know how many people have done or do bondage of any type while having sex, I think no one wants to de-marginalize a very common behavior.

Studying masochism is fine, as long as you don't make any connections to sexuality it seems.

Bingo!

But perhaps there's hope: first they study masochism in isolation and then later put it into different contexts.

I remember someone in one of the canonical books on BDSM (SM101, perhaps?) suggesting that about 10% of the population does some bondage or SM in their sex lives. But he could have pulled that stat out of his slave's ass for all I know.