Unknown Speaker 00:02 I'm going to start by just telling you a little bit about what I want to do, I want to partly read and partly talk a paper that I'm working on, which has the title of the workshop. And I would like to say before I started that it in the title might be somewhat misleading, because, in fact, I'm not going to talk about some of the kinds of violence that are of most immediate concern. To us, as active feminists, for example, the battering of women. I'm not going to talk about that now, because I don't think it's important, but because I'm trying to understand another kind of relationship of violence, that is more often called violation than violence. And so really, in a sense, the title could be properly understood as being a discussion of violation. And secondly, what I'm trying to do, is, in a way, very philosophical and very abstract to try and lay a kind of groundwork for understanding certain psychological processes that are involved in sexual violence or violation. And consequently, I'm going to talk at a certain level of abstraction on a certain philosophical level, which I've tried to make it as easy as possible to follow, but which might be at times difficult. And if that's the case, I'd like you to interrupt me, because there's no point in my simply sort of reading this as fast as I can, and hoping that people catch what they can. However, I would like to say that what I'll do is try and limit myself to about a half an hour. And if it turns out that I can't get everything in that I felt was important to get in time work it in, in the discussion. This is this. Unknown Speaker 02:21 Yeah. Is it possible to give us the juice? Unknown Speaker 02:25 Yes, I was just about to do that. That way, if it's not what you're interested in, you can leave now rather than in the middle so that I don't get paranoid. Okay, this is the gist of what I'm going to say in a nutshell, very densely put psychoanalytic theories of how human beings separate from their primary caretakers and develop an individuated sense of self stress how precarious the process is, I would like to talk about the difficulty human beings have in coming to terms with the existence of another, as De Beauvoir puts it. One of the main difficulties in our culture is that such strict boundaries between self and other are enforced, especially between selves body and others body. Out of this boundary, develops the peculiar form of rationality that infuses power relationships. The individual who is caught in the rational enforcement of these boundaries, feels itself to be isolated, or feels others to be unreal. I see violence as an attempt to break out of this encasement. But violence is genuinely suffused with the very thing it seeks to be free of the aspiration to control. I am going to examine this in relation to masochism, with particular reference to the story of Oh, where sadism and violence are expressed in forms of extremely rational control. Then I want to discuss the way in which male and female identity are split into the controller and the submissive, the rational will in the person without will. Finally I want to contrast this with mutual recognition of others and otherness. That's the gist of what I'm going to do. Hopefully, the account which Nancy gave this morning of what differentiation is, will serve as a kind of basis for this and a lot of Nancy's work has served as a basis for my work. The point that I want to start with that she made is this. The development of individual selfhood is usually conceptualized as differentiation between self and other But the fact that the other must be appreciated as a subject in her own right, is usually under emphasized. If differentiation does occur without this appreciation, and that's what usually happens, we have something which I call false differentiation. Now, this means that at the level of social performance with others, and at the cognitive level, the person knows that she's physically and mentally distinct from other people. But at the level of feeling, we're at the level of what we could call the true self. There is not that sharp and clear sense. The vibrant aliveness of knowing that I am I and you are you. Instead, what the subject tends to see when it looks at the other is the projection of a kind of mental image. And this is what Winnicott calls this subjectively conceived object. Now, you know, in psychoanalysis, it is common to speak of the other as the object. And this already indicates something about the fact that the other is not understood as another subject. Now, the first proposition that I'm working with here is that what we call violence, and what we call domination take place in reference to subjectively conceived objects, that is to others who are not appreciated as subjects in their own right. Because the moment that you do appreciate the other as a subject in her own right, she cannot really be the target of violence. What we do need to know to understand violence and domination then, is why people do not develop the capacity to see other people as subjects. I think then, that the root of the problem of domination is connected to a failure to achieve what I'm calling true differentiation as opposed to this false differentiation. Psychological domination is ultimately a failure to recognize the other person as a like, Unknown Speaker 07:14 even though separate from myself, now a self which is strong enough to define itself, not only by being separate, which is a point that Nancy made this morning, but also through its commonality with other subjects, is the kind of self I'm talking about that is truly differentiated. And such yourself does not have to maintain this very strict separation from others to feel that it exists. So this kind of autonomous selfhood, most psychologists now agree, develops through the sense that you can have an effect on another person. And the first other person is usually the mother, the less successfully that you are able to change or have an effect on another person, the less likely you are to be able to respect her subjectivity. Being able to affect the other is a sort of necessary condition for true differentiation. However, it's equally necessary that when I affect the other, she does not simply go to pieces under the impact of my actions, that's not being affected, that's being destroyed. The other has to simultaneously maintain her integrity as well as be affected. Other otherwise she ceases to be another subject who can recognize my attention to actions, she simply becomes a thing an object and she no longer exists outside myself. So if the first other that we encounter in life sets, no limits, or if she can be completely controlled, she ceases to perform as an other for us, then we are left all alone. Now, this is what I would call a dialectic of control. If I completely control the other, she ceases to exist. And if she completely controls me, I cease to exist. If I act on her to the point of trying to control her completely, I negate her absolutely and vice versa. Now, I think that the deepest exploration of this dialectic of control was made by Hegel in his discussion of the master slave relationship, which is a payments in difficult part of his phenomenology of knowledge. Before I try to explain what Hegel said about this, let me say something more about this idea that the other must resist absolute control. This idea was really developed by Winnicott and The way that I see what he said is that the subject comes to experience the other as existing truly and independently. Only if she survives the subjects actions. It's only when there's a certain resistance on the part of the other, that the subjects act seems to have an impact otherwise it sort of just goes right on through. And consequently, the way that he put it was that the subject should have the feeling of destroying the other mentally, but that the other is surviving this attack. And if this works, the subject becomes aware that the other is truly outside of her himself, and is not wholly controlled by the selfs mental apparatus. Now, what this means is that the mental omnipotence, which is a feeling that Freud ascribed to early infancy, where you feel that the world is exactly parallel or included in everything that you think and you can't differentiate your thought between what is going on out there, that this mental Omnipotence has to be given up. But the way that it is given up, is by discovering that all these things that you imagine you are doing to the other aren't really having that effect, or so I understand him. And if this works out, if the other survives this sort of mental attack, then the subject feels that the other is truly alive and out there. And also, then the subject can feel alive for himself. And this is a simultaneous process, what it means. The example that when a cook is is it now the baby feels that it's being fed from the outside, that it's not just feeding on itself? Unknown Speaker 12:14 That there is indeed an outside and inside. Now, the first question that I think everybody asked when they read this piece of Winnicott is what does he mean when he says that the subject has been destroying the object or attacking the other. And what I think that he meant is what Hegel meant in his concept of negation. And what Hegel said was that every action, which the subject takes on the object negates the object, what that means is it changes the object a little bit, so that it no longer is what it once was. So that it's no longer itself. That means that in acting on things, we change, and transforming them, we are negating their old form. If we try to control them, absolutely, if we take away their form, as independently existing beings, then we completely negate them, they no longer exist for us. But if we act and they do continue to survive, still recognizably themselves in their new form, then they're not completely negated. Now, I think that when it cuts contribution was to see that the first negating acts, the first mental acts, which tried to wipe out the other completely, are actually an attempt to find the limit to find the point at which the other resists so that we can place the other outside in the real world. Later, he says, if the object fails to survive, or retaliates, then the destructive act does not accomplish this separation in this sense of reality and instead becomes trapped in a struggle to maintain omnipotence. And We thus have the beginning of a power struggle. Now, I want to say simply that for Freud, and most of the people who followed him and most of the people who write about differentiation today, it's assumed that human beings start out in this stage of omnipotence and that they want to maintain it. They don't want to give it up. And what Hegel is saying is that the self or the self consciousness wants to be absolute. It wants to be recognized by the other but not in a mutual process. It simply wants to place itself out in the real world and prove that it is real, it doesn't really care about proving that the other is real at all. It only wants to use the other to prove itself. So for him, the AI wants to prove this at the expense of the other. The AI wants to think itself the only one the whole of the world. It obscures the tendency, the eye wants to be one and all alone. It starts out by incorporating everything else, allowing the other to exist only as an object inside itself as a mental object, an object of thought. And, in a way, I think that this coincides with what Dinnerstein talks about when she says that the person wants to control absolutely everything that matters. So for all of these thinkers, the self only gives up this omnipotence, when it realizes its dependency when it has to. In Freud, this happens through the animal desire or the physiological need. In Hegel, it happens to the desire to be recognized by the other. The subject discovers that if it completely devours the other, or completely controls the other, it can no longer get what it wanted from the other. So it learns better. That's how they see it. Now, it may be that this omnipotence that they're calling the first state is actually a defensive reaction, which I think is something like what what Nancy's thought is tending toward is the idea that this is already a reflection of this intense assertion of difference. I'm not clear about that. But it's an interesting point to think about. In any case, as I interpret Winnicott, he's not saying quite that the subject tries to maintain this omnipotence, but rather, he's saying that the subject is trying to get rid of it, that violence is an attempt to get out of it, not to maintain it. And that what he's trying to grasp is a kind of contradictory process in which the self tries to place the other outside by imposing itself on the other and finding that it cannot do so. So this contradictory process has two elements, the negation of the other and the recognition by the other. And obviously, if you completely negate the other, the other can't recognize you. So there has to be a balance maintain between these two, right. Unknown Speaker 17:14 And that is why I think most people have not really understood this process. They've Yeah, yeah. Do you go back Unknown Speaker 17:23 to right after the point of that charter Unknown Speaker 17:26 room, talking about the differences aspect of that, yeah. to where you started back at one o'clock, and just restate that thing about his attitude about violence as a way to get out Unknown Speaker 17:37 of your mind, I think that what he's saying is that it's not just an attempt to impose yourself on the other to win against the other to prove that you're all that there is. But rather, it's an intense attempt to impose yourself so that you don't win. So that you, you encounter a point where you can no longer impose yourself. That is, it's an attempt to control the other person that ought to fail. That ought to be encountered by resistance. And if it is, then even though that may be a painful process of giving up Omnipotence for the first time, you can see that the other person really exists. And the way that he's describing it is a mental process. That of course, I think there are many different levels in which that can be understood. Does that make sense? No, I think the problem is the most people have always failed to see that this contradiction exists, that people both have to try to get out of their isolation in their encasement in their own minds, by being sort of violent. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 18:49 The points of confusion, at least for me is Unknown Speaker 18:51 that there are several kinds of different periods of time. You're talking extremely cognitive, same time clearly referring to the first six months or three months and cognition of the time you're talking about classes the same by knowing Unknown Speaker 19:11 well, I don't know yet whether I'm talking cognitively I think I'm really talking about something that isn't original infantile Unknown Speaker 19:17 omnipotence is not I perceive I infant perceive you mother. Period, is that I nearly experienced and I experienced, I experienced all and in the process of for instance, might be hungry, screaming, and having the experience of feeling better because it happens namely, I get fed and then it not happen. I am forced to differentiate that I cannot my screaming doesn't relieve the pain doesn't continuously. Unknown Speaker 19:49 Yes, that's exactly the way that Freud and Klein in a lot of those people see it but in my opinion, that's not what when Akkad is seeing it all. He's seeing something different He's saying Unknown Speaker 20:02 the secondary to two and a half year old. Unknown Speaker 20:04 Yes, absolutely. I'm talking about a point way beyond a cognitive realisation, I'm talking about a point where it is simply an emotional matter of really feeling that somebody else is alive and exists and counts Unknown Speaker 20:17 precisely. I think that's a part of it. I just think that the two stages must be separated, because otherwise there's a massive amount of confusion. Unknown Speaker 20:24 Okay. I mean, I think that that's true. And, in a sense, for Winnicott, that kind of omnipotence doesn't end nearly so early, because he thinks that ending it on an intellectual level is not where it's at, you can end it intellectually, you can have this kind of false differentiation, and you can continue to be undifferentiated emotionally for the rest of your life. And I think that, in fact, the reason that it has been so difficult for people to grasp, the kind of process that Winnicott is talking about, is that it is a contradictory process. And I'm not sure if I entirely grasp what he's saying, either. This is how I interpret or Intuit what he's trying to say, which is that, in fact, in every human relationship, to look at Hegel's idea, you have to have this element of negation of acting on the other of seeing that you can change the other, and you have to have it be recognized, and vice versa. And the problem is that these two elements tend to get pitted against one another, into opposing elements that do not occur simultaneously mutually. And according to Hegel. It's always necessary for the dialectic to have the any two contradictory moments, get split up and have one party play the one side and the other party, the other side. That's how the dialectic moves. That's how history happens, right? If we all stayed in the state of perfect balance of equal tension between these two contradictory elements, which would be ideal, according to Hegel, it wouldn't be ideal at all, because there would be no history, there would be no movement, there wouldn't the dialectic would not move. Okay. We're going to deal with the Unknown Speaker 22:32 establishing the conceptual, contradictory to deal with the underlying physicality, and what kind of dialectic between child and adult all character in terms of physical contact, tactile experience, and scale? Unknown Speaker 22:52 Well, I'd like to bring that up later, because I'm really trying to set up a conceptual outline for this experience of attack and violation. And I will try and do that fairly briefly. What I'm trying to say is that there is something in the nature of this bond that forms between two people, where the tension gets broken, and the possibility of each person being whole is somehow lost. And rather, one person plays one half and the other place the other, okay. And this might be because people cannot tolerate ambivalence. And this might be for a number of other reasons, but in any case, we know that it is extremely difficult for people to feel that they are both alike and different to both accept and reject another person to feel that they are both separate and linked to another. This we all I think nail empirically. What I think Winnicott was trying to say is that the negating action is an attempt to restore that wholeness by making yourself real and making the other real by putting yourself out into the world but also by putting the other out into the world and not having the other simply exist in the mind. And that is a way of finding her limit. Now Unknown Speaker 24:40 right, would you say this is a lesson Unknown Speaker 24:41 on the daughter tries against the mother? Unknown Speaker 24:46 Well, I think that the process by which one tries to separate is always to negate the other. But the problem is that if you negate the other two entirely, then the other no longer exists for you. And isn't there to say, Oh my How separate you become And so then you're just there all by yourself. And then isn't, in fact, the problem. So you want to wipe the other out. But if you wipe her out to completely, she's not there any longer to recognize you, she can't do anything for you and you're all by yourself again, once you're by yourself, again, you no longer feel whole and separate. But instead, you feel like you're one half of this relationship that God split off. And the half that you are is the negating half, and you don't have the recognizing half, you don't have it inside you and you don't have it outside you. So that if someone is trying to do that, let us say, separate from you and you retaliate, or you cave in, then you can't give them this recognition that they need for their separateness so they don't really achieve it in that way. And that I think, is what Winnicott was trying to get at. And now I think that that must be very fundamental to the human condition because so many people have identified with this problematic especially as Hegel defined it. It has sort of gone into the whole intellectual mainstream, and it really has influenced all of French psychoanalysis. It's at the bottom of what De Beauvoir is arguing, I mean, it's really all over the place in very tricky ways. And I think that from my own reading of the matter, the most subtle solution in a way is, is the one that when it cuts in. In any case, the problem that Hegel found in the master slave relationship is that if the one person is completely in this negating position, right, he wipes out the other so completely, that the other can't recognize him. Okay, that was the basic dilemma that Hegel came up with. So on the one hand, you want to act on the other, and you want to control the other. But if you do that, you're out of luck. And it seems to me that this is extremely important, not only in terms of understanding infancy, but also in terms of understanding the erotic master slave relationship, that is the sadomasochistic relationship and what that means about the process of domination? First of all, because I think that the fantasy of violence and subjugation plays an extremely prominent part in the sexual imagery in our culture, not only in pornography. And I think that's one reason that we're interested in this. Another reason is that the adult erotic relationship, especially the heterosexual relationship, is always tinged with this problem. And in it, I think we are constantly finding clues of what went on in the original infant mother relationship. Now, final reason that I think is very interesting that Betye talks about is that this kind of sexual erotic relationship which replays the master slave relationship is also part of religious eroticism. And that religious eroticism has been on the decline. And I think it's finding its way into our culture through other forms. So it is net sense that I want to talk about the story of Oh, before I do that, let me simply quote you what Betye says about the problem that Hegel outlined where two people struggle to the death, for recognition, each trying to get the other to give in and recognize. But Ty says that the problem with this diff struggle for prestige is that the slave by accepting defeat has lost the quality without which he is unable to recognize the conqueror, so as to satisfy him. The slave is unable to give the master the satisfaction without which the master can no longer rest. The question is, then what's the master going to do next? He's won, and now he can't even get this recognition that he was fighting to get. This is precisely the problem that when it comes in a way he's trying to deal with the fact that it is so unsatisfying to remain omnipotent. The second thing that Betye says is that if one wants to know about death, one ought to look at the erotic or sexual excitement because the two are linked. He argues that the significance of eroticism is that it affords the opportunity of transgression against the most fundamental taboo, which is law that separates life from death. Unknown Speaker 29:40 It is the law of discontinuity according to which Each Individual is exists in a separate, isolated existence, the body from which he or she can only be released by death. So the death is Beyond the continuity, it's in depth not in life that each individual is reunited with the rest. And what but highest calling death can also be understood as merging or fusion, in the sense of an early relationship in which the infant does not yet experience itself as being separate from the other. Now, according to a tie, to break from this continuity into continuity requires and also constitutes a violation that is in the act of transgression in the violation of the taboo, we do two things we break the taboo and we uphold the taboo violation expresses a kind of fundamental layer of passion, the attempt to get back to continuity and reason represents that which preserves this continuity and individuation. Now, in a certain type of transgression, the taboo is both upheld and broken. And the way that that happens is, for example, in ritual sacrifice, that one person allows her boundary to be violated and the other person violates, or guess who does what? Unknown Speaker 31:19 In sacrifice, but Ty says the man is the actor, the woman is the victim. However, he says, The woman performs the function for the man of breaking her disc continuity and risking death. He does it for she does it for both of them. Okay. Now, I would add to that, that the man upholds the boundary of reason for her by keeping his violence within ritual limits. So in this form of of violation, each partner represents one pole in a split unity. And this means that violation always requires its opposite control. Now, I want to contrast this with impulsive violence, which is feared because it represents a loss of control ritual, or what I'm calling rational violence upholds control, even while it breaks it. That's why it was so much a part of religious experience. In this kind of rational violence, the loss of control is defended against by controlling the amount of loss or relief. And I have to say here that it is possible that understanding this will tell us a good deal about impulsive violence, about the kind of violence that we see in everyday life where people break out into a rage and murder someone else. For example, it may be that this will tell us something about that, particularly in a heterosexual relationship. But I don't have that worked out yet. And I think that this is a very different nature, and it tells us about something else. In any case, what the tie doesn't ask when he sets up this relationship between violation and control is what I think Winnicott was trying to get at. And that is again, this question is the violation which both breaks the taboo and upholds it? Isn't it really an attempt to find a certain limit to really discovery a certain boundary which will make the whole relationship sprang to life? And isn't it a ritual attempt to do that, that has infused religion. Now, I want to turn from this to masochism into the story of Oh, and how that works. And simply say that, De Beauvoir argues and I think she's right that real masochism is when not simply when one person experiences pain, but when the pain is wanted as proof of servitude. And I think that it's this issue of servitude, which is key. But she also says that masochism should be distinguished from the impulse to lose the self and to transcend the self by giving up the self to another. She says that can only happen in a mutual relationship. But I don't completely agree. I think that the masochist is also trying to find a form of transcendence and loss of self, which is sort of the equivalent of this violence that I've been talking about, which is the attempt to find the self. This is the attempt to lose the self to transcend. And I would like to tell you a little bit about the story of Oh, in relation to all of this. Unknown Speaker 34:56 The first night that I was brought to the castle of Rossi, which isn't An organized place organized by men for the ritual violation of women. They read this speech to her. And I'm going to read you some of the parts of this speech because I think the whole relationship is contained in it. They say to her, you are here to serve your masters, you will drop whatever you are doing and ready yourself for what is really your one and only duty to lend yourself. Your hands are not your own, nor are your breasts nor most especially any of your orifices, which we may explore or penetrated will. You have lost all right to privacy or concealment, you must never look any of us in the face. If the custom we were leaves are six exposed, it is not for the sake of convenience, but for the sake of insolence, so that your eyes will be directed there upon it and nowhere else. So that you may learn that there resides your master. It is perfectly alright for you to grow accustomed to being equipped since you're going to be every day throughout your stay. This is less for our pleasure than for your enlightenment. Both this flogging and the chain are intended less to make you suffer scream or shed tears than to make you feel through this suffering, that you are not free but fettered, and to teach you that you are totally dedicated to something outside yourself. Now, I think that this tells us a great deal about the imagery of sexual violation. First of all, oh has to give up her subjectivity, she can no longer use her body for action, she used to be merely a thing. She has to be continually violated. And even when she is not being used, her self boundary is going to be transgressed by the fact that she simply has to be available. Also, what I think is most important is that she used to recognize her Masters in this particular indirect mediated way by the penis, and the penis represents or symbolizes their desire, so that they can maintain their self and their subjectivity independent of her recognition that stands between her and them so that they never become dependent on her recognition. Instead, yeah, Unknown Speaker 37:13 I just want to interject what seems to me that that passage, doesn't really explain any kind of masochistic? Unknown Speaker 37:19 No, it doesn't. Yes, it does, exactly. But unfortunately, you'll get to what au does in relation to this, which. What you see what this passage expresses is that the Masters show their subjectivity and their power over her, not in the direct sexual way so much is in their general ability to organize and calculate and control the effect that they're having on her. What they do is more for her enlightenment than their pleasure. Now, this expresses a rational control, a rational violation and expresses their rational attentions. They enjoy not so much her pain as the marks that they leave on her as visible effects of their control. Now, why is it that they find more enjoyment in their command than in her service? Why is it always mediated through the penis? I think that this is because it allows them to maintain their sub separate subjectivity, so that they do not become dependent on her. Otherwise they would suffer the fate of Hegel's master who gradually loses subjectivity to the other because the other is now the one who recognizes him, it's to get us out of this bind. In other words, that if you completely negate the other, the other can't recognize you, the trick is that you are not the one to be recognized, you simply recognize yourself in your actions. And the second reason they do this is because they have to be careful not to consume her as a wellness object, because you become what you consume, you are what you eat right? And so, what they want to consume is her will and this is why they are always getting her to consent. It is so that they can have a relationship to her will. And so that it is their her will that they are commanding. Now what they're trying to do is to both turn her into a thing and avoid turning her so much into a thing that she's no longer any good to them. And what they're trying to do is to violate her boundary without that violation occurring in such a way that it's the boundary is now broken once and for all and there's nothing interesting to happen and there's no more resistance. Okay, so what they're trying to do is to, in a way to dominate her and take power over her piece by piece, and they talk about how they are gradually enslaving her so that they can continually break her will and continually get her consent and And this is actually the movement of the narrative. And it's also the movement of what I'm calling the dialectic of control because it constantly reveals the problem of trying to separate by negating the other. Now I want to look at ohs experience. Actually Oh is the one who risks death in order to be recognized by her lover. She is the one who is seeking recognition and is desperate for recognition. There's a sense in which from the very beginning her enslavement makes her unsuited to recognize her lover. She is more the objectification of his desire, not a human subject who recognizes it. He wants to use her as an object in his struggle for recognition. Now, this leads to a problem in the narrative. I'm in the dialectic, which is if she can't recognize him, how is he to get recognition through her. And what he does is he gives her to another man, Renee, her lover gives her to this man, Sir Stephen, who was his older stepbrother. And at this point, oh herself realizes that she's an object in his effort to win prestige from Steven, who is more important to her to him than she can ever be. And this plunges her to complete despair, because she can only exist if Renee recognizes her. But she realizes that he's not really recognizing her the way that she wants to be. She feels that without Him, and His love, life is absolutely void. She thinks to herself, paraphrasing what she saw as a child, it is a terrible thing to be cast out of the hands of the living God. So that the religious character of her experience is not only elaborated in the very detailed way in which she's ritually violated. It's also that she actually experiences her lover as a god whom she adores, and cannot stand to be parted from. Now, while God represents the ultimate oneness and the ability to stand alone, oh represents abject dependency, the inability to tolerate separation and aloneness. So oh story is really a drama of failed separation. Unknown Speaker 42:22 Now, the end that is inevitable, is either death or abandonment. And the author seems to choose both. And the reason the author chooses both is because for the sadist, or the master, the end is the death of the objects, there's nothing more he can do to her, there is no more violence possible, no more resistance. That's the death of the other four. Oh, the end is abandonment. Because then she in a sense, does not exist without this other. And we also find that she experiences Her abandoned by her lover as a punishment for the sin of wantonness and her wanting this consists of the fact that she has desired she's desired not only her lover, not only through Steven, but she's also desired women. And she has acted toward them as she has led men act toward her. So she's being punished for her subjectivity on two counts one and her desire her negating action and one for her desire to be recognized. But I think that her real sin is that she's taken the prerogative of the male the assertion of herself toward other women, because that is what is gradually revealed toward the end of the story. Now, how are we to understand I was consent, throughout the book, whatever you might think about real life, what makes this book work is that she consents. And it seems to me that in one way, we could see it as a flight from aloneness and separation from psychic death. That I don't merely want to say that she's in flight from freedom, because I think that she's also in search of a certain kind of freedom, the freedom of devotion to her God. And she finds a kind of transcendence of loss of self and her enslavement. And for her this loss of self is the opposite of losing the other which is for her the fate worse than death. So that her search for the boundless is really a search for merging with the other. She wants to belong to the others. In order not to be alone. She consents to her enslavement in order to avoid separation. Now there's a certain way in which pain her willingness to suffer pain is connected This transcendence, and she says, Well, she thinks that she likes the idea of torture, when she's undergoing it, she can't stand it. And afterwards, she was happy to have gone through it. Now, pain, I think, in these terms is a kind of violent rupture of self. And so while it is terrible to undergo it afterwards, she appreciates the effect of having lost herself. Now, what the story shows is that, oh is the one who was willing to go all the way to risk her life in order to gain recognition, not her Master's. And in this sense, she achieves transcendence through this process of rupturing herself through pain. And the one real question then is, why does she choose to do it in this way, rather than through mutual reciprocal giving yourself with an equal? Right? Unknown Speaker 46:01 This is the big question. And I think that we want to know this in the same way that I want to know when I read Hegel, why the struggle for recognition has to end in the power relationship instead of reciprocal equals self sovereignty. Well, we could say, Gee, that's the way men think. But it's also seems to conform to great view of reality. And I think that the tie is correct, and try to explain this by referring to the idea of transgression or violation as both breaking and upholding the law. By having this kind of violation, this master slave or sacrifice or victim relationship, one person can remain in control can remain rational while the other person loses her boundaries. Were both partners to give up the self and give up control, the disorganization of the self would be total. This way, the masochistic ego is able to identify with the sadistic ego which remains in control. So Oh does not have to experience her loss of control completely. Instead, it is a process where the boundary to be freely dissolved by this kind of reciprocal relationship, what would happen is that she would be left unprotected before a kind of infinite and terrifying unknown. Now, in this infinite and terrifying unknown is the possibility of being a whole person of standing alone without denying the other. But I do not think that the Infinite is experienced in this way, as such a possibility by her. It's rather experienced as a void and emptiness. And I think it can only be experienced as a possibility rather than a void if there is a trusted companion. And I would with whom to share it. And I think this goes back to the earliest experience. Furthermore, I think that another person can create such a void for the subject. And that is what I imagined Winnicott is talking about when he says that the other fails to survive. He's saying that when the other caves in or withdraws or retaliates, the other is creating a void for the person who asks. And then instead of this infinite possibility, you have an infinite void. So that if the other caves in and withdraws it feels as if my act drops off the edge of a kind of empty. Now, all I want to say at the end, is that I think that there that Freud was right when he said that there was a kind of primary sadism which did not really intend to hurt the others. It was a pure and simple, negating and destroying action that really is innocent does not yet know what the effects are for the other. And it's only when this gets turned against the self by being rebuffed in some way that it is experienced as hurtful as rage in the sense that we know. And initially, I think that this kind of sadistic action is inclusive of the possibility that the other will survive. It's what we call eating your cake and having it too and everybody wants that. And the reason they want that, I think is explained by Winnicott. The problem is that when, if that doesn't happen when the other doesn't survive when this void is created, then the original self assertion is changed from a simple negating act to an expression of mastery against the other when the person and fails to find a limit. They continue to destroy and attack in a new spirit. They continue to seek a boundary for their dangerous and consuming passion, but in a new way. Now, in the case of false differentiation, the boundary is imposed as reason over passion. And that is why the sort of violation that we've been looking at, and the story of Oh works so well, because it keeps the contradiction between reason and passion alive, it keeps the element of control. And this corresponds very nicely with a kind of false differentiation in which separateness is continually asserted at the expense of the other. Unknown Speaker 50:52 Also, if we look at the masochistic side of this relationship, she is able to continually re experience retaliation for herself assertion at the hands of the sadist, she exposed herself to the boundless in herself, the other continues to survive, to maintain boundaries to control but also to retaliate. The great danger for her is that the other will disappear. Now, the consequences of all of this, that I see are too, one consequence, I see in terms of the development of our culture at this point, and this is rather speculative, and it's sort of perhaps not anything that can be proven at the moment. But I would say that the dialectic of control has reached a point of being intolerable to a great number of people. That is to say that the discontinuity and the isolation in which people are confined in our culture is actually greater than it ever was before, the possibilities of ritual violation are lower than they ever were. And so that means a that real violence has to break out, in a sense, there's no sublimated form of violence. And be it means that not only women, but men are increasingly confined by this, this continuity, the fact that there's no room for the expression of continuity, so that what might have once been, at least an acceptable balance between reason and passion and allowed for this ritual form of violation no longer exists. And what happens is, I think that it gets recreated, it gets recreated in certain kinds of erotic imagery and literature. And secondly, it gets recreated in political movements. And that is why certain kinds of right wing and fascist political movements are a kind of new expression of what needs to be found in religion. And they have these religious components, which in many ways, have been repudiated as irrational by let us say the left, okay. And we can see this in cult movements as well. And so I think that if we are to take this analysis of the erotic aspect of the power relationship and domination seriously, then what it means is that it is really not possible to have a successful politics without an erotics. But it also means that we are left with the question as to whether anyone, in a political way can reunite this hole that is made up of these two contradictory parts that we've been looking at that is it really possible for people to tolerate? The reunification of the split elements in the cell? Is it possible for people to be both able to give up the self and also maintain it? Can they stand alone and still recognize another? I think that the new political erotic that we want to find in feminism that breaks with the old domination would really involve the toleration of this contradiction to a degree that we've never known in human history. And finally, the problem for feminists has been that we want to deny violence, we want to condemn it, we want to condemn the whole impulse behind it. And in doing so, we are simply having to recreate a new imbalance a new polarization, and either to I think de eroticized our own politics or, alternatively, to deny part of ourselves that in fact exists and is going to come back to haunt us. So that I think is where in a way we might begin discussing and I'm sorry, this has taken so long. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 54:57 question. I mean, I think you The use of the model thesis, which I feel at the moment somewhat like an original Bible celebration of the workshop. But the thesis, it seems to me puts an incredible burden on the object to be responsible for the violence subject that is, in some case, in some sense with law that you're suggesting is the object, which is the following Charo really is the rather primary character failed to respond in exactly the way and in such a context, she never respond in exactly the way that is required by this, then she is responsible for the failure to differentiate at the end of the hence the mother's problem, that input does not reach maturity. And in some sense, it seems to me that leads to other problems like you're talking about, which is for the perpetrator of ritual violence, it doesn't matter whether or not there is a masochist, to go with his sadism. That is for the ongoing ritual murder, or for the Jewish victim of the Nazi, or the Nazis. In some sense, it doesn't matter whether or not would you participate Unknown Speaker 56:25 in, it doesn't matter in a certain very important way. Because when the victim does not resist, things get worse. That's the first thing you can say about it. Because it's the failure to find resistance that makes the Violator get more and more violent, violent and frustrated until the absolute limit is reached. That is not to say that the burden of this is on the victim. I don't think that it's a matter of saying that there's fault. It's simply a matter of fact, that without resistance, the violence gets worse. And we actually know this empirically. But the answer to your first question is I don't see why we have to say that mothers are responsible for this dynamic if the whole of human history has been dominated by this kind of splitting mechanism in people's psyches. I don't see how one lone individual mother's going to imagine that she is going to overcome this Unknown Speaker 57:14 descriptive model, in some sense, assume. Again, when Unknown Speaker 57:21 he assumes that the mother can do this, he's more sanguine than I Unknown Speaker 57:26 did the mother should do this. Unknown Speaker 57:28 Yes, she should. I think what apparently speaks to is the whole the extreme version of permissiveness in which the parents and in many cases, the mother just likes the kid walk all over and walk all over that and thinks that if she resists, she's going to be doing psychic damage to the kid. And so the kid never experienced. Unknown Speaker 57:48 This assumes that the mother is secondary to the infant that there is no in some sense, whether or not the mother resists or gives them not because of what she needs, or what she is. But the total primary meaning of the infant, which becomes in some sense, the total. What I'm saying is, this is not what the model suggests, but that the model is phrased in a way that leads to this and historically, we know, has led to this in the history of mothering certainly in the history of post psychoanalytic treatments. Unknown Speaker 58:24 I think she would precisely be responding on her own needs. I mean, she would also she would, she would set her limits out of her own sense of self, Unknown Speaker 58:32 she would but in the in the description of it, does that get described in that way? Unknown Speaker 58:38 Well, we can describe it in that way. I think that's what's important. Unknown Speaker 58:43 Yes, I think that the mother is victimized, especially as victimized by all of the theories that have been the permissiveness is precisely the perfect intervention, because to the winner, she's not victimized, I believe what you were saying is the degree to which she wouldn't be completely permissive, but wouldn't actually have some sense of natural autonomy be limiting the influence, maybe, but what I'm really interested in is how this violence that you've been talking about, get trapped, or what is the effect really, of it when this kind of overt violence that you've been using as a metaphor gets translated into kind of covert, passive aggressive violence that we're also familiar with, in our lives in it, which is very common in mothering and also in erotic relations. This, what happens then when it goes through that further translation, and the violence isn't even something that you can point to and say, there it is, it's violence. In other words, the relationship that you've described is so nakedly there, that it's good to start with, then what happens next? Unknown Speaker 59:55 Somebody went into that heart Unknown Speaker 59:59 container In the Unknown Speaker 1:00:01 story about what is the concept of masochism. Sadism turns into it and it's also a form of controlled aggression, that breaks down into the situation breaks down, because breaks down the way that the dialectic breaks down, because they're not just like, there are a splitting on the part of the master the relationship is between the lover, Steven, and that destroys. I wanted to ask you Unknown Speaker 1:00:39 well, the paradigm there is that the real origin of this domination is in the relations between the men, not the man and the woman, right. And the the, the suggestion is that really in the struggle for recognition or prestige, there are never two but three, two men and a woman, right, and the woman that becomes the object who mediates in the struggle for recognition that takes place between the two men who are the ones who really love and hate each other. And that I think already opens up a whole other. Unknown Speaker 1:01:24 Yeah, it is. raised another kind of problem, which is, I feel a very troubled by the sort of tacitly accept acceptance of a causative between early childbearing and institutions in society, whether they're political institutions, or whether they're you institutions in which women are private and brothels and institutions of the sort that you're talking about. institutions exist, I would suspect that institutions are to be explained in terms of the dynamics of the society, and that the way people are weird are, of course, part of the dynamics of society. But the the, there isn't a simple causative link of the source that you're talking about. That it may be that, obviously, how what has to be read in such a way as to make it possible for one to function in society? But it seems to me, Well, let me just say, I read about arrays for discussion, the question as to whether you can talk about these kind of particular problems in an individual development as a county for forms of political movements, or, you know, institutions, men and women. I mean, well, it takes me sort of try to give an example of what I mean, I grew up in the midst of nature, talk about both males and females have the problem of differentiation, so on, and yet, it is patently obvious that in this society, it is I mean, it is men who have power over women, the particular ways in which one seeks to violate someone else, or to affirm oneself and so on, are not determined by your individual experience with your mother, but are determined by the way that society structures the power relations of the society. As another aspect of let me say this, I find it very troublesome, when you says the word violence and violation, particularly violence, back and forth, as referring to something that a really powerless infant does, in the same words, the same breath of the same sense is when use is it in talking about male status, or sadism? In general? I just find that extremely troubling. And we'd really just like to raise this question in your discussion. Unknown Speaker 1:04:20 The very last one I've never objected that was a flossing over, because it makes very clear relationship in relation to the difference. In reality, just gonna talk about this magazine at the end. And the difference is, but it's all the difference in the world is different. So, yes, Unknown Speaker 1:04:42 you see, the whole problem that I think you're missing is this is that in order for there to be real violence, there has to be fantasize violence, there has to be the impulse to do it. In order for there to be a society which does certain things. The fantasy of doing them has to exist in people's minds, and in more than one person's mind. might add in a lot of people's minds. The question is, how does this fantasy this imagery of doing certain things to other people come into being that is where, by the way, not so much an individual experience with an individual mother, but probably a general experience with general parenting comes into play, that I don't think that you can have a a system of behavior that isn't based to some extent, on early fantasies, that is those if those early fantasies really contradict the system of behavior, they'll come out in some other way people's fantasies do have to get acted out, they can only control them to a certain extent. And I think our society is based very much on controlling fantasies controlling fantasies of violence. Now, it is true that there's something I glossed over perhaps, which is that on the one hand, we have to ask how the fantasy comes into being. And then on the second hand, we have to ask, how does the decision get made about how it gets acted out? And I think that, you know, one could be great deal more precise about that, than I was being I have no doubts about that at all. But I think it's really it leads to that interesting question. Because Unknown Speaker 1:06:21 I don't I find from or I don't understand why it is so troublesome all the time, to people who tend to see your world who didn't agree. And I certainly consider myself one of those people. Why is it so troublesome to see in the early infant, mother, because that's who does it relationship, which is obviously a relationship in which the baby's body is done to whether lovingly or sadistically, or passive aggressively that baby's body is done to, in all ways, the whole body? It's the initial Listen to me, really powerful experience. I mean, I realize it as a mother, I don't remember it is an instinct, but certainly that feeling of having this small body under control, and to the degree that you identify with the interest, you feel that, why is it so to see that relationship as an obvious analog to what we are then prepared to experience erotic learning, and by extension, politically, I don't understand why it's such a contradiction, obviously, what because Unknown Speaker 1:07:30 in that early experience, in no way enables you to predict what people are going to do. Just for that very simple reason was you can predict what people are going to do, you can totally other principles, I can predict that males are going to have power over female, because they know some things about how society works. The fact that, you know, somebody's mother did X to them, by and large, doesn't enable you to predict the power relations, oh, absolutely doesn't enable you to Unknown Speaker 1:07:56 know the opposite and enables you to explain it. You see, we have two different models, prediction and explanation. And this is what we're trying to do. Now, we're not trying to predict right, this is perhaps the man philosophy. Unknown Speaker 1:08:07 But what if what I'm trying to say is that those same experiences could be expressed in society in 1000 different ways, in 1000 different ways. And isn't that what's important to us at the moment, at this conference, at a women's conference, those things could be as I say, express, I mean, I could think of all kinds of ways in which these particular problems could be expressed that have nothing to do with brutality, are, you know, some of the particular forms that you that I really do believe that people express their fantasies that they have to find a way to express their aspect. But it doesn't have to be in the particular ways that you have been talking about today. And it would be important for us as women to try to understand what determines how these things get. Unknown Speaker 1:09:05 in direct response to you, I think that violence in the water system are just the most salient forms of expression. And those 1000s of other ways of expressing use, things just don't have force. Unknown Speaker 1:09:17 Other societies don't necessarily do precisely what we're talking about Unknown Speaker 1:09:21 the same way Unknown Speaker 1:09:23 down the panel that said that the amount of violence against women has increased with women's demands for more equality in some of the other institutions. I think what Justin was saying before that the ante is being upped, as submerged are several major forms of violence, don't do it anymore. There's only one there is this ongoing dialectic and the more that women demand participation more than women demand, sexual satisfaction, demand more women demand equality, all of these many ways, which you did, there was a pluralism of ways in which men worked out their fantasies of domination before and a lot of those avenues are being closed off. And the channels that they can use are narrower or narrower and they're becoming more and more Dream, it's no longer possible to insult a woman by saying, hey, check. So now he's now you got rigged, you know, Unknown Speaker 1:10:06 but you used to be able to beat women would have to be against. Women are now sort of more violence than they used to be. Unknown Speaker 1:10:13 I think what's interesting is that the imagery of violence and the imagery of this kind of violation has increased, I think that it is out in the open. And that it is interesting that it doesn't that was that different from it having been in the past, the pornography industry is now this, you know, multi billion dollar industry is an increase of a certain quantitative kind. But besides that, I think that what we have to what I would argue is that if it has increased, as it appears to have done by the simple extension of that industry, but also by what we see around us, but let's say for the moment that it has, then what we would want to know is, why has it done so and all I'm trying to argue is not that it has because I don't have any empirical data here. But if it has done so, let's say for the sake of argument, the reason I would say it has done so is because other forms of ritual violation. In fantasy, I'm not even talking about doing it right now. But just fantasizing it through, say religion, are increasingly closed off. And I think that eroticism of the sexual and emotional type is the heir to religion. That's what I'm trying to argue in it. If you look at the, at the earlier religious history about which I know little, but just enough to know this, you can see that story bow is modeled on all of these devotional tales of masochistic relationship and sexual relationship with God. I mean, if people who are experts in this area, you know, have have told me about that, and I think that makes sense. Because what, what's happening is that our culture in becoming more secular is having to find these other ways of coping with what are are still basic human problems that we haven't solved. Unknown Speaker 1:12:08 I think the point is, is that there are not 1000 different ways to express that they're really around small, striking a small number of ways in which these getting threatened there any conflict question are relatively universal, there's a certain amount and other cultural structures that get built to get established, established Unknown Speaker 1:12:27 in court in response to Unknown Speaker 1:12:30 what are Unknown Speaker 1:12:32 their first if there are, Unknown Speaker 1:12:33 there is some variation. But once once one sees the kind of the kind of basis with the forms with question, but kind of fantasy that are behind different expressions, that one can begin to look at what determines once more of a question rather than another and another and expect different way. And I think that would be a good basis. Unknown Speaker 1:12:56 I must say, I'm not convinced when we need a real data on some of the intervening mechanisms, the accurate one is talking here about development in the first three years of life or something, and then acting as though one can then make the leap to adulthood. Whereas, in fact, the culture throughout it's consistent this as we're all agreeing that and I don't think a child can be brought up in such a way as to make that child sort of not fit with the cultural norms. Right. I mean, in that sense, I think we're in total agreement. But when I, part of what I'm, when I'm Atlanta, a number of things, obviously, but what I would say in response to what you just said, is that I don't think take those early fantasies and transpose them, or these I would worry, okay, transpose them directly 10 or 20 years. Hence, I think you've got to see the mechanisms that operate in between and to what extent the culture which is consistent with being a form of grooming is in fact, the causative mechanism along the way, and that if you intervened at a different way, and at some other developmental point, whether or not you would change the end result? I mean, people here are talking about the leafs not really, I think not information that was another source. Unknown Speaker 1:14:20 What we're really talking about are concepts. Unknown Speaker 1:14:24 That is to go into some sort of analytic. I have been there years ago, I'm not an anti analytic person. But I do think that there is that I think that people are talking here without the perspective of looking at it from a point of view that doesn't take for granted that there are these connections. I really I really just want to make very clear that as they say, some of my best friends and so but but this is, this is a fact. I you know you If I don't speak from angels that says, Unknown Speaker 1:15:04 I think there's a problem here, look, the thing is, this is just a conceptual paradigm. It's, you know, no conceptual paradigm ever can evoke belief unless either you have the experience that fits it or you find the data that fits it or somebody else presented. But I think the question is what makes this conceptual paradigm at all interesting. And I think what's important, or what struck me when I found myself putting these texts together is simply this. The master slave chapter that Hegel wrote, as I said, has been a foundation for an incredible amount of psychoanalytic work without it ever having been directly psychoanalytically discussed, okay. And the reason for that is, I think that nobody could get together why it was that that was such a powerful paradigm. But everybody has known that it has been in it's been the basis for incredible number of theories of domination ever since. Now, then you take something like story of oh, it's also an incredibly powerful book. And, you know, it's evoked all kinds of reactions, but it has really been in the middle of a whole discussion about masochism, and about the erotic master slave relationship. And I think that what is interesting is simply to try and find a way conceptually to understand what the fit is, okay, what is that? What is making sense to us about this, and that's a different level than empirical truth, it really is. And I sort of feel like that, to find all the cultural mediation is not an unimportant task. It's a dreadful, important task. And I'd like to be able to do some of that myself. But I wouldn't want to get into a whole argument about which is more important. I think they're all important. And I think that, you know, we have to try every way we can to understand why these things move us the way that they do. The main thing that that I'm trying to do here is actually argue against something else. That is not argue against the effects of institutions or culture, what I'm trying to argue about, in a way, is what we call politics, what we consider to be important, politically, and in fact, you know, I think that if anything, the political burden of what I'm saying is that a certain in a certain way, we have to accept violence, we have to come to know it, we have to come to accept our intimate relationship and knowledge of it in the fantasy world, before we can deal with it. Now, if somebody wants to challenge that, on the basis, that of what you're saying, which is, well, we know that men have power, let's go out and do something about it, we don't really have to understand how it works. On the fantasy level, I'm perfectly willing to hear that argument. Okay. Just a point of clarification. Unknown Speaker 1:17:49 In the very beginning, you said Unknown Speaker 1:17:50 that, Unknown Speaker 1:17:52 that if, if the if prisoners is so good, received the other end subject as constituting a subject in themselves also, then the possibility of violence is negated? And what I'm trying to figure out is whether whether that's because once because the violence itself? Unknown Speaker 1:18:14 Because the violence is the is the instrument? Or is the mediation Unknown Speaker 1:18:19 of discovering the self that once you if person has self, then you don't need to do violence? Or is it either is that the reason? Or is it because two selves, two autonomous selves, the existence of two autonomous self up supposing that oneself will not do violence on another? Another self, because of the recognition was saying this is a life. Okay, that's human nature thing, which I'm not knocking the nature but unconscious. Well, there Unknown Speaker 1:18:53 about 10 arguments for that proposition, which is why didn't spell them all out. But you know, you named a couple of them, which are, I think, true. Another, I mean, one way to put what you said is what Rousseau meant when he said that we can't that premise, he's he argued that, you know, in the state of nature, the primitive man right, would not really be able to hurt his fellow, because he said, what would happen is that his natural empathy and identification with the other would prevent him from doing that. And he said, it's only modern philosophical man who has been taught to reach the stage of indifference that he can hear someone being murdered outside his window and think, Oh, well, it's not me. It's society that has to take care of this. And that is, is the one level of argument. The other is that. What I'm saying is that to respect and appreciate another subjectivity as being like your own, involves recognizing your inability to control the world, a kind of humility in the face of otherness that is sufficient that Do you know you know that doing violence to them is not going to make them do what you want them to do I mean, violence as a means of getting someone to do something would not be used, if we always saw others as subjects now what sometimes happens for political and social reasons that we don't, and I'm not sure we always should, I'm not going to be ethical about this. But when we don't, then and when we do use violence, to get people to do things, we are treating them as objects. So there would be at the very least a great deal of cognitive dissonance in doing this. And one final point is that I think violence is essentially a fantasy of control. It's not only an instrument of control, violence is accompanied at the time, by the belief that you control the other, that in doing what you're doing to them, you are encompassing them, making them be subject to your will. And I think that, in that sense, knowing that you don't control someone is a involves a kind of sense of reality, that's the only way I can describe it involves a feeling of reality, in relation to which violence is a kind of nightmare, or dream. They are just two different states of mind. And I think that it's really important to appreciate that difference in the state of mind, I mean, even to think about it in yourself when you've experienced the urge to do violence. Unknown Speaker 1:21:34 I have a couple questions. Because sometimes I've been thinking about the positive erotic aspects of SA relationships and rational violence. And I can see the cathartic value of, of SF of fantasy about violence, delivery to trouble, I keep having the nagging feeling that there's a conflict with right reject feminism, feminism, and also that maybe just maybe it's just an elaborate rationalization of that thought. And I also have some questions that I'd like to raise that I can't answer. How does this work in practice in relationships? And also, are there differences between the male female relationship with the male male relationship, the female female relationship? visa vie for control violence? Unknown Speaker 1:22:31 I'm not sure if I have answers about the differences. I think that that there is a male model. And I think, what story of Oh, is trying to show and I, I find it somehow reasonable, although I can't quite explain why is that. But it sort of is like the reason that Evelyn said that, you know, in order to be a masochist, you have to identify with the sadist. In order to be the sadist, you have to identify with a masochist and involves an identification, right? It's what the tie said, you have to identify with the person that you're sacrificing and the person who's sacrificing you to get the full satisfaction of the transgression to get both has. And if you don't get that there isn't any point in voluntarily doing. So as long as we're talking about voluntary behavior here, then I think we're saying that there has to be this identification. Now, the fact that men have always played this, this role, or to a large extent have played this role is clearly something that's breaking down. I don't know exactly why it's breaking down. And it hasn't completely broken down by any means. But it's breaking down a little bit. Okay. And it No, maybe it's always been something that could be changed around and I'm wrong and saying it's breaking down, I don't have enough information. But I think that it's at least intellectually acceptable to people now, in ways that it might not have been that people could switch roles. But switching roles is not getting out of them, as we know. And consequently, I think that the the problem for me is that I don't have enough data about when you know, in which types of cultures, people switch roles when they tend to keep them rigid, why we keep them rigid in some situations and not in others. And it's easier somehow to find out about this psychic mechanism than it is to make those kinds of statements. Unknown Speaker 1:24:26 It's also interesting that even if it was Mother Child mother infant relationship, at one level, the input controls the mother or the father. Sleep is interrupted by the feeding schedule. Unknown Speaker 1:24:42 So maybe you're saying that her mother experiences the infant is being violent toward her, Unknown Speaker 1:24:48 controlling the way that the NBS controls very Unknown Speaker 1:24:51 important point. To the child's body, but the child also does a great deal to Unknown Speaker 1:24:58 just in terms of it to choose to cry was helpful. And I wouldn't make this point it's been killing me during this whole presentation is that somehow there's been a differentiation between the actor and the object, which I think is a false one. Because as you act, you're always responding to that before. So you're acting as a response to the previous, and the person on whom you are acting, then as a responder is also an actor on you. And it's very, very difficult, perhaps impossible to draw the line between the actor and respond. It is a mutual dialogue that goes on continuously with, I was reminded of those of you into a simulation accommodation that PJ intends that assimilation accommodation goes on, almost simultaneously, it's very difficult to try to point out where one ends, and the next begins a new sense, I think the dialogue between mother and child, which is an actor no longer goes on simultaneously, one, the other taking the role instantly back and forth. I think it's wrong to try to conceptualize the actor and the responder as different people, and Unknown Speaker 1:26:09 they probably, I mean, I agree with you. Absolutely. It's a it's a conceptual problem. I think that what's interesting, therefore, is the form. After a while a dialogue does begin to assume a form. And sometimes that means that once person's responses are always in one mode and the others in the other mode, it doesn't have to be that way. But the kind of relationship we're talking about has precisely that problem, that it gets caught, right in that kind of rigid form. And I think that that is what a relationship of domination means is that in a way, you, unfortunately, you can predict the responses Unknown Speaker 1:26:45 that being dominated, not just the dominate your Unknown Speaker 1:26:48 Oh, yeah, absolutely, both are subjected to the feeling of being more dead than alive, of not being real. I mean, that's the whole thing. If the other person isn't real to you, you don't feel real with with the other person. And so that's why I was trying to say that violence has this sort of nightmarish quality of you know, you're not really awake. And I think of that famous line history is a nightmare from which I'm trying to wake him, which is, I think, a statement that as long as the dialectic keeps going, and the splitting keeps occurring, we are never in reality, we are never awake. And maybe the only thing to do is to stop the wheels and have no history if that's what that means. And of course, Western culture has been very attached to history. I'm wondering, with the fact Unknown Speaker 1:27:43 that self destructive behavior as opposed to struction against Unknown Speaker 1:27:48 another. It's so much more characteristic of women. Unknown Speaker 1:27:54 And I don't know if that's true. What extent is that acting out, within socially constrained boundaries of women's needs violence in order to try and win. And yet the possibility for doing violence against against others, if you're a woman is so it's just so much nonsense. Whereas men do have opportunities for acting. self destructive behavior. Unknown Speaker 1:28:34 I think a lot of self destructive behaviors, what I'm calling masochistic behavior, it's an attempt to lose the self. It's an attempt to both get away from aloneness and discontinuity and in that sense, lose the self and find some kind of merging in union and it's also an attempt to submit the self to some external force. I think that you know, very loosely speaking, it's clear that a lot of drugs are about that which we consider to be self destructive, but also that people used to flagellate the mutilate themselves in order to attain this sense of losing themselves being merged with something else, you can also undergo certain kinds of religious, religious devotional rituals where you starve yourself to the point where you feel like that, too. I think that that. Right, in this recent review of the literature and anorexia, it said that the people said that they often got this incredibly high feeling from doing it. Yes, and also just, you know, when you don't eat for a long time to get very high, and they enjoyed that with a feeling of loss of self and they were trying to starve the self out of existence. And clearly, all these things in some way that hasn't been completely defined, revolve around the problem of separation or individuation, and is the problem of not being able to assert the self and get a whole self feeling with the other and the problem not being able to be alone. I think that those somehow hang together here. Unknown Speaker 1:30:06 So the need the massive discount for the anorexic Unknown Speaker 1:30:12 need for the loss of self, Unknown Speaker 1:30:15 which is a sense of power, I'm getting some attention. Why is that different than the need to gain themselves through violent behavior? Unknown Speaker 1:30:31 It's I think it probably combines those components. But I think that, that there that the action of trying to lose the self, and trying to establish yourself by negating the other, are, in some way, similar but different. I mean, I think that they have a common element. But there's also a diff difference, because in the one case, what the person is doing is trying to either impose himself on someone else or thrust the other person out. And that that is somewhat different than trying to simply negate the self. That is, what happens is there's a point at which self assertion runs into self negation and vice versa. But until they reach that point, you know, that vanishing point, they are somewhat different, and they're going to take very different behavioral forms, and one is going to look like self destruction, and one is going to look like destruction of the other. I think that's somehow very important. What's the precondition for one or the other? Why is it that Unknown Speaker 1:31:46 or, or whatever choose Unknown Speaker 1:31:49 could transcend? Unknown Speaker 1:31:51 Well, my vision of it was simply this and I have no way of knowing if this is correct, but my imagery is this the masochist is the person who in this initial negating act, gets a direct retaliation, and gets the feeling that to assert the self is really wrong long, or gets the feeling that if she asserts herself, the other is going to disappear. And she's going to be plunged into the void. Okay, so that the other withdraws. And my image of what happens when someone becomes sadistic is that for some reason, they're continually provoked over and over again, to try and try and try to get the response from the other person. And that, in a sense, there's a difference. In one case, there's a kind of imperviousness and in the other case, there's a kind of withdrawal. But that's it. I mean, that's my fantasy of how those things work. That is, in one case, you, you turn it against yourself, because you're getting that response, the other person is disappearing. And in the other case, what you're doing is you're trying and trying, and because in some sense, the other person is letting you do it to them, but not giving you what you want in return. They both probably as early experiences equally frustrated, but I don't necessarily think and then is where I agree with you Lila that that's what really determines why some people become the one and some of the other I think actually everybody experiences something of both. And that through other what we're calling secondary mechanisms, from a psychological viewpoint, but which are really quite primary from a social and cultural viewpoint. That those other mechanisms are what determine who gets sorted out in which direction not just what happened to you. I think what's important is that your early experience sets you up to be able to play this game. And then let us say it can be really crude society assigns you your role and tells you which base you have to play and which team you're going to be on. But you got to really know both sides of the game to play ball. And I think that's what happens when you're little is that you learn both sides. And what you don't learn is how to get the two sides together so that something different happened Unknown Speaker 1:34:06 I appreciate your listening to this for so long. And thank you very much