It occurred to me that masochism is really an externalization of shame.
I really think there is a lot of value in adding shame to fight and flight. I got that idea from Sebern Fisher. If you think of two dogs, they can fight, they can run, one from the other, or one can SUBMIT to the other. You’ve seen dogs who have been kicked too much (Springsteen lyric): they cower. Their heads go down. They are saying “I am not a threat”.
So there are really three ways of dealing with the threat of violence, but all come from approximately the same place in the limbic system, although now that I think about it, there is no neurological reason to think one or the other might not tend to predominate for various reasons.
When the klaxon is going off all the time, the world itself becomes the enemy, the threat. Masochism then becomes a way of quieting that alarm by showing you present no threat. You are nothing. Nothing to worry about. It’s instinctive, like cringing when something gets thrown at you unexpectedly.
Sadism, then, would be a counterreaction to masochism, which is to say expressed shame. But masochism is logically first. It comes from the frightened child, hiding in a corner, or in my case the attic and closets, trying desperately to avoid death and injury by signaling a lack of threat.
And even though, of course, the threat of death and injury passes–even if it is endured daily for many years–it is almost more real than real threats. Real threats come to seem a relief in contrast. This is another motivation for otherwise apparently irrational violence.
But masochism is showing obeisance to the universe, first, and not infrequently to other human beings.
I have told, I think, the story of the stripper who told me how she liked to be tied up and suspended, naked. She was an “exhibit” at some emo music event at least once. She said it relaxed her and made her feel free.
This hypothesis would explain that. Her shame, ironically enough, disappeared when she was fully controlled.
I think this makes sense.