What is the nature of self-destructive behavior?

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Originally posted: http://bendench.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-masochism.html

When you hear the word masochism, you probably think of whips and chains and the like. I wish to speak to you, however, not of physical masochism but of spiritual masochism. While physical pain may be a component of masochism, its essence lies not in suffering, but in the desire for self-annihilation, and more specifically, for the absorption of the self into another.1 Why?

Human life is fragile. Human beings are aware of their own limitations. Theologian Paul Tillich describes different components of this in his book The Courage to Be. Individuals, feeling their own limitations, experience anxiety at the threat of nonbeing. There is the anxiety of fate and death—I may be harmed, I may be killed, I may cease to exist. There is the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness—what is the point of any of this, does anything I do matter? And there is the anxiety of guilt and condemnation—have I done something wrong, am I impure, will anyone love me? Tillich spells each of these out in his book. A consequence of this, however, is that many individuals, feeling this insecurity, seek to escape it, paradoxically, through self-destruction—as an individual I am flawed, therefore I wish no longer to be an individual. Sociologist Peter Berger describes this desire for self-destruction and its rationale in his book The Sacred Canopy:

“Man cannot accept aloneness and he cannot accept meaninglessness. The masochistic surrender is an attempt to escape aloneness by absorption in another, who at the same time is posited as the only and absolute meaning, at least in the instant in which the surrender occurs. Masochism thus constitutes a curious convulsion both of man’s sociality and of his need for meaning. Not being able to stand aloneness, man denies his separateness, and not being able to stand meaninglessness, he finds a paradoxical meaning in self-annihilation. “I am nothing—and therefore nothing can hurt me,” or even more sharply: “I have died—and therefore I shall not die,” and then: “Come, sweet pain; come, sweet death”—these are the formulas of masochistic liberation” (The Sacred Canopy, Berger, 56).

But this is, in a sense at least, highly irrational. The individual, seeking to escape destruction—destroys itself! Master morality may be incomplete in that a master may sometimes fail to recognize its interconnectedness with others and the rest of life. As a result, its will to power may include sadistic tendencies. But slave morality is self-contradictory, in that its will to power results in denying that power is a virtue. Another way to say this is that master morality is fundamentally creative, although it may be stupid—in which case it will cause problems. But slave morality is fundamentally reactive (and if it also happens to be stupid, watch out!). Seeking to derive values from sources other than itself, slave morality leads to one undercutting one’s own functioning as an autonomous organism. It engages in war upon itself. This project is doomed to failure. The individual, as a whole organism, from bottom to top, resents the imposition of the values of others undercutting its autonomous functioning, and so it hates the others that it sees as imposing such values. This is done not even necessarily consciously, but as an organism—a body with intention. Yet because it relies on these others, because they have power over it, and it has taken them as the source of its values, its hatred is directed inward, towards itself. Its rage at them is directed at itself, and the fact that it has rage for them compounds its feelings of guilt—again, not necessarily consciously. “I am a sinner!” it proclaims. “I am wretched, evil, bad, wrong. I hate myself. Everything other than me is good—but I am the blemish on the world. Please forgive me! Please cleanse me! I am vile!”

And yet, the masochistic individual may be compelled to engage in just that behavior that it considers evil—both to justify its assessments of itself as evil, confirming its beliefs and reducing cognitive dissonance, as well as to unconsciously rebel against its oppressors as part of its trend towards autonomy. The individual seeks to destroy itself to end this tension and as the final confirmation—the final proof—to its masters and itself that what it knows to be a lie is actually true: that it does not care about itself, and that it is good by their standards—that is to say, a good servant.

This, by the way, is one of the primary reasons why telling suicidal individuals that suicide is selfish is particularly cruel and probably even counterproductive for the purpose of preserving those individuals. The masochistic state and the inversion of psychic energy that it entails makes everything hurt. This may result in a situation in which the individual either experiences acute suffering—in which little pains are excruciating, great pleasures are empty, and life may be unbearable—or an emotional withdrawal—in which nothing is felt, life seems a pointless routine, and one loses interest in once enjoyed activities. No wonder you think that life is suffering! No wonder you think that we live in a fallen world! Of course when you are sick and dying the world seems terrible—but why should humanity as a whole base its values off the sick and dying? Why should that be our gold standard?

Even though it is self-contradictory in this sense, this impulse—to abandon the self and to abandon life—is strong. The organism wishes to experience itself as powerful and positive, and if the strongest influence it feels it can have is through self-annihilation, this is precisely what it will turn to. “We would rather will nothingness than not will” (Nietzsche). Not all spiritual traditions exploit this impulse, but many do. In Buddhism, the existence of a self is denied, and the goal of Buddhism is to snuff out the flame of consciousness and cease reincarnation. In Yogic philosophy, the individual seeks to abandon the world of the senses, to retreat inward, and to dissolve the individual (Atman) into the ground of being (Braman). The word Islam means submission, and Islam is marked by a categorical submission to Allah. For Christians, this same impulse is represented in submission to Christ—I will be cleansed of my sins, I will escape death. Even in Judaism we find this, and the primary example is that of Job. God destroys everything that Job has, and when Job asks why, God responds that it is not Job’s place to ask. Submission. Self-renunciation. “The sadistic fellowman may refuse or forget to be properly all-powerful…The sadistic god is not handicapped by these empirical imperfections” (Berger, 57).

This is not to say that the cultivation of mystical experiences is without merit. On the contrary, a great deal can be gained from this. But the perspective is one sided. Categorical happiness irrespective of one’s circumstances is not conducive to the survival and increase of an organism—and more than a few have sought out mystical experiences not for the purpose of integrating their insights into a stronger more autonomous self, but in an attempt to escape. While transcendence without immanence is an empty rush towards an end that never comes, in which one is never living for oneself but eternally seeking to justify oneself to others, immanence without the transcendence of a growing self is an empty aversion to life. Dewey was right in saying that future plans should be a means to rendering one’s current actions meaningful—the future as a means to the present rather than the present as a means to the future.2

One must also consider, however, that encouraging masochism is also highly practical for the state. “Every society entails a certain denial of the individual self and its needs, anxieties, and problems” (Berger, 55). Society does not fundamentally care about you. It wants to exploit you. It wants you to die happily for its purposes, or live as a cog in its machines. Of course society wants you to be unselfish—that is merely the selfishness of society! If you care about people, you want them to be selfish to a certain extent. You want them to live for their own happiness, because you regard them as ends in themselves and not merely as means to some other end. But masochism, as the individual expression of nihilism, exists in many worldviews in order to prevent this. It seeks to make the self merely a thing, a component, an object. Say no to this. Don’t give up.

Let's consider how our ADPAS insights help us address the existential anxieties Tillich describes: the anxiety of fate and death, the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, and the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. Each of these are problems that result mainly from the pattern of vicarious living—though in the order that they are presented, each mounts in the degree to which it is psychological and not physical. We will start with the last one first. The anxiety of guilt and condemnation is born out of internalizing the values of others as if they were objective facts to which one is subject rather than tools created by organisms to serve in their functioning. Many a depressive state may be the result of the client suffering delusions of good and evil (directed at oneself). To overcome this, one must come to understand that morality is a human production and that values are posited by subjects. One must then come to posit values that are in line with one’s own functioning and self-actualization. This is not to say that you should only care about yourself—there is nothing you should do in any objective (externally imposed) sense. If you came to me and said, “I didn't want to die, but I loved the person in question, and I preferred ending my existence to allowing that person's existence to end,” I would say, “You have done what you wanted.” If, however, you came to me and said, “I didn't want to do it, I hated it, and I resent it, but I had to because it was my duty and otherwise I would be wrong,” I would say, “My friend, you are confused.”

The anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness is similarly based in confusing values as being the same as facts. Meaning is not the sort of thing that exists objectively (imposed from the outside)—the subject itself, with its particular position and interests, is key. One must learn to reorient oneself to participating in activities that one finds meaningful, that make one feel alive and happy. Nevertheless, integration with one’s environment (other people, nature, God, etc) is often a source of experiences that individuals find meaningful, and so the ability to engage in this sort of activity readily should be cultivated. Spiritual pursuits can be very useful in this venture. To a certain extent it would seem that meaning is a sort of middle ground between the individual and the outer world—we want our actions to have significant impact in a larger (and ideally ultimate) sphere. All organisms seek homonomy, and as a communal species it makes particular sense that we would seek out a “common meaning.” Nevertheless the subjective aspect of meaning is made apparent by the following observation: Either you find a given thing to be meaningful or you do not. If it is meaningful to you, who cares whether it is meaningful to anyone else? And if it is not meaningful to you, who cares whether it is meaningful to anyone else? Meaning is something that happens when the significant is in line with the fundamental, and thus the experience of meaning cannot occur in the presence of either alienation or anomie. I’ve been told that the key to happiness is doing one’s duty. Maybe so, as long as you understand that if you don’t want to do something, it’s not really your duty.3

Lastly, or firstly, there is the anxiety of fate and death. The sting of death is felt most strongly by individuals that are not living for their own joy. The existential revolt of the individual throwing itself into the attainment of its goals against all odds can itself do much to give the individual a sense of peace—because its actions are freed, it is doing its best regardless of what happens. Psychologically, one must come to understand that values are not properly derived from the external world, but rather from the self. If one fails, at least one gave it one’s all. As Nietzsche says, what could be greater than perishing in the pursuit of an impossible ideal? In remedy to this, practically, one can alleviate one’s existential fear of death through actively pursuing personal extraphysical experiences. Studying about past lives may be useful in this, when done properly. More effective, learning how to actively communicate with extraphysical consciousnesses—especially “ancestors,” other human beings that are no longer physically alive—can bring one feelings of security. And most effective of all, one can learn to achieve the out-of-body experience and verify, personally, that one’s own consciousness can indeed exist independently of a physical incarnation. One should not rely merely on the subjective experience of this, but should confirm the separate presence of one’s consciousness from one's physical body through observing and interacting with things in the physical world that can be confirmed by other individuals. None of this should be taken on faith, but should be actively pursued and confirmed through experience—personally, empirically, scientifically. Why would you rely on faith when you can know? While the mainstream scientific community tends to assume a strictly materialist perspective and to regard spiritualist matters as beyond its scope, where testable, hypotheses concerning extraphysical phenomena should be regarded as being as much the realm of science and systematic empirical inquiry in general as any other observable phenomenon. To regard them as otherwise would be to cling to dogma rather than pursue knowledge—a stance to which science, to borrow a phrase from Sam Harris, when working properly, should be the antithesis.

Love is self-extension. Masochism is self-renunciation. In this sense, they are opposites. If you sacrifice yourself for something you love, it is because doing so is an affirmation of your will. That thing is an object of your will. When you destroy yourself because you think you have to, a similar process occurs (since you are still doing what you want, in the broadest sense), but it is tied up in knots (since you think values exist as externally imposed rules, which they do not). You are reacting instead of creating. The former is the result of direct and genuine desire. The latter is the result of confusion and lies.

There is a difference between being selfishly unselfish and unselfishly selfish. The selfishly unselfish are primarily selfish. They start out by saying, “I am good. I like myself. I want to be happy and powerful and obtain the things that I want.” But in the process of being selfish, they come to realize that they are interconnected with their environment, in general, and other people, since human beings are a colonial species, specifically. They come to realize that in general, it is to their benefit for others to be happy and prosperous, and to work with other individuals cooperatively. And it is pleasing to do this. If other people are happy, it makes me happy. And other people are useful to me—not only in some gross instrumental sense, but fundamentally. Each person represents a wealth of power, en potentia, for me. Their love, their talent, their minds, their bodies, their personality, their spirits—all of these things enhance my world. The more each individual is actualized and able to achieve their full potential, in general, the better things are for me. But as I come to appreciate my interconnectedness with things more, I come to appreciate these other individuals as ends in themselves as well. As I feel their life essence interpenetrate my own, as I feel kinship with them, as my heart opens, I take joy in them as ends in themselves. But when I act, I act primarily for my own happiness. They are a part of this happiness—they are a part of me—and so I act in ways as to enhance them. And I find that enhancing them is a very pleasurable outlet for my own power—that in growing with them and co-creating with them I experience myself as powerful through the act of creating and enhancing. I take them as ends in themselves, and I want them to be selfish, because I want them to survive and prosper and be as happy as they can be.4

The unselfishly selfish start out by negating themselves and their own worth. They experience the pattern of vicarious living, feeling that they are bad and unworthy. And so their primary goal becomes one of pleasing others in an attempt to earn and obtain their love and approval. They need others to validate them and tell them that they are okay, because they do not primarily believe this about themselves. They are not positing their own values based on their own desires—regarding themselves as the font of their own values—but rather seek others to objectify them and to convince them that they are objectively good—though since values are fundamentally subjective, they find the feeling of validation that others can provide them with perpetually elusive and unconvincing. God becomes a useful construction for them, because this imaginary ultimate subject can continually be telling them that they are good and on the right side (as opposed to others) and they can believe this to be objectively the case. He continually reaffirms for them the standard they themselves have made, delivered as if from the outside, the only perspective they respect. They seek to act unselfish in order to obtain validation, but in that they are really doing this in order to get something from others, they are really themselves acting selfishly. They resent that no one appreciates them, because they are doing what they do, not because they want to perform that action for its own sake, but in order to obtain appreciation from others. They seek to manipulate others in order to force their appreciation, and they often seek to point out how unselfish they are.

They want to make a big show and spectacle of their unselfishness, yet if you comment on how good they are for what they are doing, they, paradoxically, are embarrassed by this. Why? Because you make them self-conscious of what they are doing. If you praise them, it indicates that they are doing what they are doing in order to be praised, which would be selfish. Rather, they want you to see and know that they really are unselfish, to say nothing about it, but to show through your actions how much you think of them and how highly you value them. They renounce egotism as sinful—though they themselves, in truth, are deeply egotistical (sanctimonious) as a defense for their deep insecurity. When others act selfishly, they deeply resent it, because they do not really love those other individuals and regard them as ends in themselves—or if they do, they are too limited and resentful as a result of their own vicarious living to bless this. In their coarser form they will curse these people as being bad. In their more refined and insidious form, they will talk of pity for these lost little lambs and unconscious children who they are here to help. Either way this is a means of looking down on these individuals and reaffirming their own perverted values, obtained through ressentiment.5

Of course, we all want the love, approval, validation, and appreciation of others, but the difference in this case is that the vicarious individual has internalized the hatred, rejection, and conditional approval of others to the point that the search for approval becomes their sole obsessive goal. But if you think I am seeking to fault them for this, you are mistaken. In some ways, it is precisely for love of them that I write. You feel dark and ashamed for things that you sense inside yourself, but I see to the bottom of your soul and I think nothing bad of you. My hope for you is that you become more selfish and happy. Because so far you have let others rule your life so that they would not pick at your wounds—your insecurities. So starving for acceptance and approval are you that you embrace ideologies that promise to love you if only you abandon yourself. They want only to exploit you, to turn you into an instrument of their own power, but you go along with it. They anesthetize you to your pain. They let you forget for a little while what you are running from. But they do not bring you health. On the contrary, your sickness is precisely what they require that they may keep you as an instrument—as a slave. Christianity, for example, is like Munchausen syndrome by proxy on a mass scale—they are keeping you sick in order to maintain control over you and acquire glory for themselves. And as for you yourselves? Well, many of you would seem to suffer from Stockholm syndrome. You would defend your abusers to the end.

Does Christianity make people feel more accepted? No. In fact, in makes them feel less accepted. It alienates them from themselves and their own natural tendencies. In order to feel accepted by Christianity, they have to renounce parts of themselves, but this they can never really do, because those things are a part of them, and so they feel even guiltier. Christianity keeps them lowly, because it is not unconditional love. It is love “in spite of.” R.D. Laing, perhaps the greatest clinical psychologist to ever live, talks about how, when he was a little kid, his mother use to say,

“I love you. Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“No you don’t. I love you, but you don’t really love me. I love you, but no one else does. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t believe me! You don’t love anyone—how could you? And no one loves you, except for me—how could they? But don’t believe what I say just because I say it—if you look in your own heart you’ll see that what I am saying is true. And the only reason I am telling you this is because I love you.”6

There is a similar kind of emotional manipulation that goes on in Christianity.7 But this is not real love. Real love exalts the object of its love. It does not make one feel guilty or lowly or try to indebt the object of its love to itself. Real love proclaims “You are perfect”—it is a categorical affirmation of the object of love not contingent upon the loved one’s usefulness to the lover—which is the basis of calling something imperfect. False love proclaims “You are imperfect, but I love you”—that kind of statement is really meant to glorify the one saying it, and not the object of love. It is manipulative and sick.

No one that believes in sin can fully love anyone, because to find fault in someone for being what they are (or doing what they do, which grows out of what they are) is a hatred, and to condescend to one by “loving them anyway” is a hatred. And even if you regard one as clean and faultless, in that they could fault and become tarnished in your eyes means that your love is really conditional. You don't really love them for what they are to the bottom of their being—you love those aspects of them that are useful to you. Anyone that asks you to apologize for your actions themselves, as opposed to, for example, some harm that came about as a result of them, does not appreciate you. You did what you thought was best. To apologize for that is to apologize for being. If I am sorry for doing something, it is because I regret some result that occurred because of it. But how can I ever truly be sorry for being what I am and doing what it occurs to me to do? And how could I ask someone else to be? If I don't like something, I will act in such a way as to protect my will, but I don't want to fault others for their being and add insult to injury.

1 This is not to say that masochistic tendencies, like all tendencies, cannot be used artistically—that is to say, selectively and for a creative purpose. Through selective self-destruction I can become a stronger and more powerful being, but this goal is precisely the opposite of the one I am here chastising.

2 People say we should be in the moment—as if it were even possible to be anything else! If you are thinking about the future or the past, you are just as much in the moment as if you are starring at a wall. Why should your sensory experiences be considered more the object of now than your internal cognition? Your immediate sensory experience by itself is fundamental but not significant.

3 Circuitry in the actual brain would seem to confirm this conceptual description of meaning. Kelly G. Lambert (neuroscientist, psychologist, and chair of psychology at Randolph-Macon College) has identified what she refers to as an “effort-driven-rewards circuit” (Lambert 35) consisting of the nucleus accumbens (the reward center of the brain—problems here can lead to loss of pleasure or addiction), the striatum (the motor system—problems here can lead to “sluggishness and slow motor responses” (Lambert 35)), the limbic system (“involved in emotion and learning” (Lambert 35)—problems here can lead to negative feelings), and the prefrontal cortex (“which controls our thought processes, including problem solving, planning, and decision making” (Lambert 35)—problems here can lead to poor concentration). The more this circuit is fully activated the greater the sense of meaning and psychological well-being the individual experiences. “It is this accumbens-striatal-cortical network—the crucial system that connects movement, emotion and thinking—that I call the effort-driven-rewards circuit” (Lambert 35). Mental health and resilience result from the individual 1) understanding the significant structure of its external environment, 2) accessing the deepest parts of its emotionality in response to that structure, 3) determining a way to alter that structure in the service of the deepest levels of its emotionality, and 4) engaging its physical body (especially its hands, to which most of the motor cortex is devoted) in the production of tangible external results in line with the service of that emotionality. But, one must note, the process of performing such an activity actually activates this system more than any particular result that one achieves through performing the task in question. In other words, we experience the process of working towards something as more meaningful than actually achieving it.

Lambert, Kelly. "Depressingly Easy." Scientific American Mind August 2008: 30-37.

4 This process by no means is exclusive to human beings. You can come to appreciate nonhuman animals, plants, inanimate objects, abstract ideas, geographical locations, or anything else as an end in itself. It is all power and will to power—it all counts as things that can become objects of your will and regarded as ends in themselves. To the question of whether animals have rights, a Utilitarian would reply “of course” and a Kantian would reply “no way.” A Kantian would say that it is a category error to regard animals as having rights. But in reality it is a category error to regard anything as having rights in any sort of objective sense. Rights are a psychosocial construction. You are the one that makes the rules. You are the one that determines the criteria for what you choose to regard or disregard. You are the one that says “this quality is important” and “this quality is not.” You can include anything you want in or exclude anything you want from your “kingdom of ends”—be it an insect or another human being. And you can do this on a case by case basis, for any reason, or for no reason that you can articulate at all. You can include things just because you like them or exclude things just because you do not like them. Of course, I think the more aware and sensitive you were to the energy patterns of others, the broader you would probably draw your lines and the more wills you would probably try to integrate with your own, but it is not as if it has to be any particular way. You decide how you want to interact with things. When you first hear that rights are a psychosocial construction it may sound bad, but in reality it is awesome. No one can tell you that you or others don’t have the right to something, because they have no more right to tell you that you can’t than you do to assert that you can. The ideal world is exactly what you want it to be, but you yourself are responsible for bringing it about. On the other side, if someone wants something to be the case that you are opposed to, you don’t need any carefully worded formula to deny them this. That it is contrary to your will is all that you need to assert (unless, of course, you are trying to persuade others). This is a factual description of the reality of the situation—it’s what you are doing anyway, although some of you are better at rationalizing your behavior than others. And what will prevent this situation from collapsing into brute conflict? Knowledge. Ideally you will look out for your own interests as much as possible (autonomy) and look out for the interests of all others as much as possible (homonomy).

5 “Observing compassion and forgiveness can spur those virtues, too. But in theses cases, whether you are likely to be forgiving or vengeful, compassionate or cold, may depend less on having a role model and more on emotion. A specific cluster of emotional traits seem to go along with compassion. People who are emotionally secure, who view life's problems as manageable and who feel safe and protected tend to show the greatest empathy for strangers and to act altruistically and compassionately. In contrast, people who are anxious about their own worth and competence, who avoid close relationships or are clingy in those they have tend to be less altruistic and less generous, psychologists Philip Shaver of the University of California, Davis, and Mario Mikulincer of Bar-Ilan University in Israel have found in a series of experiments. Such people are less likely to care for the elderly, for instance, or to donate blood.”

Begley, Sharon (2009, May 4). Adventures in Good and Evil. Newsweek, CLIII (18), 46-48.

6 I saw a video in psychology class in which Laing was relating this story to someone. I'm paraphrasing from memory, and I don't remember what the video was called. If anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it.

7 If you’re not aware of this, you really owe it to yourself to observe it up close. Go to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting, watch fundamentalist programs on TV or listen to them on the radio, or read Christian tracts like those by Jack Chick. These are the places where this tendency is most potent and obvious. Afterwards it’s easier to notice it in more liberal presentations where it’s more watered-down and concealed.

If you identify with the message of this article, please email it to people, tell your friends, even print out copies to pass around. Together we can raise awareness. Thank you.

Authors Website: http://bendench.blogspot.com/

Authors Bio:
Ben Dench graduated valedictorian of his class from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in the Spring Semester of 2007 with a B.A. in philosophy (his graduation speech, which received high praise, is available on YouTube). He is currently enrolled in the Pebble Hill School of Sacred Ministry, where he is studying to be an interfaith minister. His interests include all forms of experiential and technique oriented spirituality, especially shamanism and the out-of-body-experience; social justice, including environmentalism and building a sustainable global community; and the study of how to live effectively and maximize human potential.