In two fin de siècle novels, H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and Robert Marsh’s The Beetle (1897), sadism plays a central role. However, while The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Beetle both include characters that exemplify sadism, the novels differ greatly in the characters’ portrayals due to the sadistic characters’ gender. The sadistic Moreau is presented as Machiavellian tyrant. However, because Moreau’s gender aligns with ideas of gendered sadism, the novel does not portray him as degenerate, monstrous, nor ambiguous. In contrast, The Beetle tampers with the sadistic female body, which leads to doubt of her true sex and form and leaves her as an undecidable, degenerate monstrosity. The sadistic characters’ descriptions in The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Beetle …show more content…
A perplexing amalgamation of culture and nature led to the pathologizing of sexual perversion by 19th century “sexologists” (Peakman 1). Richard von Krafft-Ebing first introduced the term ‘sadism’ in his book Psychopathic Sexualis (1886). Sadism includes the experience of mental and physical suffering as pleasurable (Holguin 1285). Later defined as one of the “modern perversions” by Sigmund Freud, it was traditionally seen as existing within the male domain (Schaffner 182), and as a type of “male sexual cruelty” (Wayne 542). Furthering Krafft-Ebing’s work, Freud suggests that sadism’s “life preserving aggression” in males is natural and biologically determined (Holguin 1286). In contrast, masochism, essentially the opposite of sadism, can be seen as
Personality is a concept that will continue to studied and improved upon. Theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Heinz Hartmann and several others have contributed significant ideas to the study of personality and have had impacts on our current approaches. The purpose of this paper is to compare two sources of the motivations concerning why people behave the way they do. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approach will be discussed and compared to the approach of neo-analyst Karen Horney. Karen Horney claimed that psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts and she offered a uniquely feminist perspective for her time that disputed the Freudian theory of penis envy.
The unconscious mind houses the preconscious, a small section that houses material that is non-threatening, and easily brought to mind. But deeper in the unconscious mind are the instinctual drives, the wishes, desires, demands, and needs that are kept hidden from out conscious selves because of the conflicts and pain they would cause if they were brought to bear every day. Psychoanalytic personality theory tells us that the personality consists of three separate, but forever intermingling elements, id, ego, and superego. The id section of a personality is by far the largest, the only section that we are born with, and the section that contains the unconscious thoughts, it is raw, unorganized, and from the time of birth it tries to reduce tension caused by our primary drives. The ego, a section that develops soon after birth, balances the instinctual desires of the id and the realities of the outside world. Last of course is the superego, the final personality structure that is developed in childhood, and represent the rights and wrongs of society, contained within the superego is the conscience, the part of us that prevents us from behaving in a morally deplorable way and is responsible for guilt. Psychoanalytic personality theory is not without its virtues; Freud’s proposed five psychosexual stages – oral, anal, phallic-oedipal, latency and genital – are all supported in life.
“In men, in general, sexual desire is inherent and spontaneous” whereas “in the other sex, the desire is dormant, if not non-existent, till excited” (457). Greg’s terminology is extremely power-laden. “Spontaneous” has the connotation of energy and activity, whereas “dormant” and “victim” imply inactivity. An important concept is the assumption that men, the “coarser sex,” act on women, the “weaker sex” (457).
In “Riding the Bull at Gilleys,” Scully and Marolla depict the psychopathological and the socio-cultural models of rape. The psychopathological model is a representation of what psychotherapist have used for years to explain the reasoning behind rape. With this model, rape is the result of an eccentric mental dysfunction, which symptoms include involuntary and uncontrollable sexual impulses. These sexual impulses may be temporary, repetitive, long lasting or brief. This model also implies that male sexual aggression is abnormal, therefore; psychologists do not seek any other rational explanation. Mainly, the psychopathological model ignores any correlational factors linking male sexual aggression to learned social behavior.
Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.
When the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert L. Stevenson and the play, Trifles by Susan Glaspell were written both literary pieces dealt in depravity. The two main genres engage in violent acts with no remorse. Both genres reveal emotional turmoil, that’s the battle within their mind and soul, taken pleasure in immoral behaviors. Although The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Trifles are genres depicting male and female depravity, they are alike and different in social issues, such as violence, murder and justice for all.
This text is centered on discussing how the choice of objects in men is primarily dominated by fetish. However, the choice of analyzing men is not caused by men’s account on fetish. Even though a fetish is often is deemed to have a close connection to abnormality, men rarely feel that it is a symptom of an ailment which eventually comes with a lot of suffering. For most men, they find themselves satisfied with fetishes to the extent of praising how they make their sexual and erotic life easier. Therefore, Freud’s text is centered on analyzing a fetish as a subsidiary finding in men.
According to the philosopher Thomas Nagel, the concept of “sexual perversion” falls under the rubric of psychological rather than biological, anatomical, or reproductive categories. Psychological rather than physiological since sexual perversion does not occur in lower life forms and it is the psychological aspect of it that makes the distinction. Not just for reproduction
In 1993, five men engaged into activities, which to them only brought gratification and satisfaction. However, it was evident when the “Law Lords upheld the original convictions of the men under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act for engaging in sadomasochism” , that the law saw it differently. All “five men were fully consenting adults, who willingly and privately participated.” Still, the Law Lords held that “it is not in the public interest that people should try to cause, or should cause, each other actual bodily harm for no good reason.” This decision, has become a very controversial one, with many questioning its merits. This essay will therefore try to negate whether consent should have been a sufficient defence, if this decision
For this ORIID, I will be focusing on the paraphilia of sadomasochism. Some of the theories behind why people develop paraphilia’s include the biological theory, believing that paraphilia’s are caused by illnesses or disturbance in the brain structure, psychoanalytic, when a child does not successfully make its way
For us to understand Freud’s perspective, we must look at the structural model and psychosexual stages that he believed to be the driving forces that influences the human behaviour. Freud believed that we have a multilateral mental mechanism that consists of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. The Id is based on the pleasure principle supplying strength for the development of mental life. The Ego is on the reality principle. It gains control over the primitive demands of the Id while taking in consideration the reality of the situation. The Superego behaves as a moral judge, when the Ego gratifies or tends to gratify the primitive
Freud argued that an individual’s instinctual drive was sexually orientated. In the same way that “hunger seeks nutrition,
Freud saw this gratification to be one of the basic human needs. In much the same way, Golding portrayed the hunt as a rape with the boys ravenously jumping on top of the pig and brutalizing it. This alludes to Freud's explanation of the pleasure drive, he called the libido. The term serves as a dual intent in its psychodynamic and physically sexual sense.
Freud continued his work on repression, memories, and past experiences of trauma to be the motive for all neurotic symptoms. Trauma in past experiences was not always the key determinant for hysteria cases, there needed to be another component for the cause. The combination of past trauma and present trauma awakened memories of the earlier trauma which constituted the true aggravation (Storr, 1989, p. 15). However, he began to see a common factor in his work. Next Freud noticed that a common denominator of all his hysteria cases was premature sexual experiences. Sex encompasses many emotions through mind, body, and spirit that can influence a great deal of character if repressed. Storr pointed out that, “Freud became more and more convinced that the chief
More specifically, Freud traces the roots of all adult behaviors back to childhood impulses and showed how conflicts related to the development of sexuality in childhood subsequently results in psychopathology or neuroses. (Good & Beitman)