The (New and Improved) Loving Dominant Read Online Free Page A

become the team clown and everyone will think I’m fucking up on purpose.”
    The sadists, on the other hand, were seen as recognizing their inferiority and powerlessness and seeking to control others to gain an ersatz strength in place of real strength. In effect, he saw us as failed admirals playing with toy boats in the bathtub.
    Jean Genet, the author, drew on Freud’s third field goal attempt in his philosophical classic, Being and Nothingness, where he argued that both sadism and masochism were responses to a fear of mortality, of death. In his play, The Balcony, lawyers and other powerful individuals played out masochistic fantasies in a surreal house of domination. The theme implies that they are doing this to strike a psychic balance and atone for their sadistic behavior in the real world. It’s as if they were saying, “I hit him; now you hit me, and everyone will be even.”
    A Swedish psychiatrist, Lars Ullerstam, supported Jean Genet’s hypothesis regarding masochism as an exculpatory behavior. However, he pointed out that the presence of powerful, rich men in such BDSM brothels may also be because they, unlike their less powerful counterparts, can afford to pay the fees involved. Thus, it may be that the overwhelming number of lawyers who dominatrixes report seeing as clients, are not expiating sins particular to this profession. They may simply be making an obscene amount of money and, thus, be able to afford the dominatrix’s service.
    Jessica Benjamin, in her Powers of Desire, alleged that both sadistic and masochistic behavior were fueled by a need for recognition. The masochist suffers to be recognized as worthwhile by the sadist while the sadist subjugates another person to force recognition from him or her. Benjamin, on the other hand, gets her recognition by writing books.
    During the conference that followed publication of the Playboy Foundation Report in the 1970s, researchers had a chance to differentiate sadism from dominance. W.B. Pomeroy described a segment of a filmed scene which depicted a waxing. He had noticed that the “sadist” was watching, not just the place where the wax was falling, but also the expression on his partner’s face. When this sadist detected that she was getting close to the edge, he raised the candle to reduce the intensity of the stimulation. Pomeroy commented, “It suddenly occurred to me that the masochist was almost literally controlling the sadist’s hand.”
    Sadly, a less imaginative colleague pooh-poohed the idea and insisted that “genuine” sadists are not interested in a willing partner. (I’m personally glad this myopic soul was not present at the discovery of penicillin. He probably would have thrown out the moldy bread.)
    Working in what is known as the Object Relations School of psychology, Margaret Mahler attempted to explain sadism and masochism by looking at a child’s early relationship to objects. Rather than placing the critical age in puberty as did Freud, she held that such desires begin before the age of four.
    In sort of a Cliff’s Notes explanation, I’ll just say that object relations theory says that children go through a series of phases in which they seek either greater independence or greater reassurance. Mahler argued that both masochism and sadism come from a failure to have these needs satisfied at the proper time. In effect, the person is trapped repeating the critical phase in hopes of “doing better this time.’
    For example, she believed a sadist may have been unable to form a satisfactory relationship with his or her mother and turns to sadism in an attempt to make a controlled relationship in which he or she can try to recreate that relationship. On the other hand, the masochist was able to form a satisfactory bond but was unable to break it at the appropriate time. Thus, he or she is seeking a relationship from which a clean break is possible.
    There has been good news in recent years. When this book was first