S/M, Creativity and Transcendence
At the end of the 20th century psychodynamic interpretations shed a somewhat normalizing light on consensual sadomasochism, but still imply that this form of eroticism expresses the triumph of a significantly wounded self, or is a form of escape from the self. Yet, pathology is not the only way to understand the differences among our pleasures. In this presentation we will consider the possibility that one goal of consensual erotic power exchange might be a desire for that most intense sort of intimacy described as often by religious ecstatics as by erotic or romantic writers, and that rather than an attempt to repair or escape from the self, it may sometimes entail a spiritual quest for transcendence.