In any case, it is clear that the self—whether aiming for further individuation and coherence, or headed back toward the old symbiotic union with the mother—is what is at issue in masochism. The masochist has a questionable sense of self, no matter what form the attempt to resolve that question takes.
Also, whatever the ultimate theoretical solution turns out to be, Russian masochism can turn up at either end of the spectrum. The exhibitionistic holy fool, for example, seems to utilize suffering primarily to achieve self-definition, while the submissive member of the tsarist peasant commune apparently loses his or her self in that commune, which has many maternal features as we will see below.
With the masochist’s very identity or sense of self a major issue, it should not be surprising that masochistic habits are not easily extirpated. To stop being masochistic is to be a different person, a different self. If Russians were to emerge from their past shorn of their masochism, they would not be Russians anymore. They would be someone else. As Virginia Warren says, “masochists could change their identity, so that in the future they could cast off their self-inflicted pain and still have a (different) sense of self.”70
But traditionalist Russians, at least, have not wanted to become someone else. Slavophile Konstantin Aksakov wrote: “Russians should be Russians, should take the Russian path, the path of faith, meekness, and the inner life.”71 For Aksakov, to take the path of “meekness” is to be Russian. Or, since the self is confused with Mother Russia anyway, to take this path is to be Russia: “Yes, Russia’s only danger is that she will cease to be Russia, and this is where the present Petrine system is leading us.”72
Similarly, the right-wing, anti-Semitic nationalist Igor’ Shafarevich (1923–) fears that Russia’s essential identity will change if Russians accept what he calls “russophobic” attitudes, such as the idea (among others) that Russia is “a nation of slaves [narod rabov] always bowing down before cruelty and grovelling before strong power.” Shafarevich declares: “a people [narod] that evaluates its history this way can no longer exist.”73 This is perfectly correct, although Shafarevich would no doubt be perturbed to realize that he has achieved a psychoanalytic insight: for Russians to evaluate themselves as masochistic is, indeed, to stop being Russians. The self-aware masochist is already a different self from the unconscious masochist (including the masochist who denies masochism).
If the self of the masochist is problematical and fragile, the masochist’s other is often unquestionable, solid, and grand—for example, the incomparable, eternal Mother Russia. According to psychoanalysis, this other is the parent (usually the mother) returned, but impossibly idealized, transformed into what Heinz Kohut would call an “idealized parent imago.”74 She may in fact have been abusive, but in the mind of the masochist she is now an angel. Stolorow, summarizing the work of several other psychoanalytic scholars, says, “The masochistic character stunts his own independent ego development, sacrifices his competence, and creates a debased and depreciated perception of his own self in order to sustain the image of an idealized, all-good, all-powerful maternal object on whom he can depend for nurture and protection.”75 Many masochistic patients periodically treat their analysts this way, for example. Highly religious individuals behave in a similar manner. The famous Ad maiorem Dei gloriam of the Jesuits is an essentially masochistic proposition.76 The great Russian masochist Avvakum was constantly seeking to displace glory from himself onto divine figures: “Speak, seeking glory not for yourself but for Christ and the Mother of God.”77
Here it is important to remember that the aggrandizement of the other toward whom one takes a masochistic stance is entirely projective in nature, that is, not based on the real status of that other. Nydes describes one patient who
sought to assuage his guilt for having divorced a devoted but dominating wife by constantly berating himself for his ingratitude. His tearful self-flagellation reached its height just a few weeks before his marriage to what seemed to him to be a much more desirable woman. One day in the midst of the painful experience of his self-inflicted suffering, it suddenly occurred to him that his sadness was really quite useless since his former wife could not possibly know anything about it. That simple reality fact served to remind him that it was his infantile superego and not his former wife whom he was really attempting to appease.78
Today’s Russia, like this self-flagellating patient, is a country going through a sort of divorce and remarriage. Much of the masochistic posturing seen in the recent Soviet and post-Soviet media reflects not the reality of the situation, but personally archaic attitudes toward a previously idealized, domineering mother.
Normalcy and Cultural Variation
Ordinary, “normal” individuals may sometimes behave in masochistic ways. Almost all the recent psychoanalytic scholars of masochism assert, at one point or another, that masochism is ubiquitous in human fantasy and behavior. Patients who come in for treatment of their masochistic practices or who end up in hospital emergency wards are just the extreme end of a continuous spectrum. As Charles Brenner says, “the difference between the normal and the masochistic character is one of degree rather than of kind.”79 Everyone is a potential masochist because everyone has had some masochistic experience in early development.
Indeed, anyone who is capable of feeling guilt, of inducing guilt in others, of delaying gratification, of being devoted to a child, of working hard to achieve a goal, of subsuming personal interests to a larger cause, is by definition fulfilling some need for—or gaining some degree of satisfaction from—the experience of pain.
Consider, for example, the completely normal phenomenon of guilt. Having committed—in imagination or in reality—a transgression, one may punish oneself inwardly, that is, feel guilty. The feeling is not necessarily conscious, and is induced by a relatively autonomous internal agency traditionally termed the superego.80 The feeling of guilt can lead to corrective external action (e.g., an apology or restitution), maladaptive external action (e.g., committing a crime in order to experience the relief of punishment), or to internal maneuvering of some kind (e.g., rationalization or repentance). When guilt feelings persist they may develop into a kind of masochism in statu nascendi. For example, a person with a lingering sense of guilt may develop a tendency to welcome misfortune. In certain religious attitudes this is even explicit. Interpreting the scriptural admonition to turn the other cheek, that is, to actually welcome misfortune, the nineteenth-century Russian elder (“starets”) Ambrose wrote:
If anyone begins to tell lies about you or molests you without provocation, this is a blow to the right cheek. Do not murmur but endure this blow with patience, turning the left cheek, that is, remember your own unjust deeds[= feel guilty]. And even if at the moment you are faultless, you have sinned much in the past. You will quickly realize that you merit this punishment[i.e., feel guilty some more].81