Sado-Masochism and the Idea of Personal Hell

Finding a mate is a biological drive that the vast majority of humankind finds difficult to avoid. We also seem drawn to society in general and from a young age we strive to gain the acceptance of our peers. We form acquaintances, relationships, friendships, cliques, and a wide array of other complex social attachments. Still, there is another biological drive working in us that some may not even realize; the desire to be the alpha, a dominant and privileged member of the social order. For those who have trouble acquiring alpha status, they generally fall into an omega role, essentially serving the alphas to cement a place in society and ensure their own survival. The psychological state that this drive causes in humans is best illustrated by sado-masochistic tendencies, where the alphas function as the sadists and the omegas take a masochistic role. Some people appear to keep towards one or the other end of the spectrum, but most of us experience fluctuating uncertainty when encountering others in our society. This instability and the friction of human interaction can cause considerable inner suffering, a metaphorical hell of the mind. Humans are still too driven by simple survival mentality to find stability and happiness within today’s complex societal structure, where they are met with new people that equate to new challenges on a regular basis.

            To help emphasize this point, one can simply look to the philosophical writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Jean-Paul Sartre. In Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, the reader is thrown into the mind of a man plagued by alternating doubt and egotism. The Underground Man, who is never named, is the perfect manifestation of a tortured soul weighed down in a self-created purgatory. Sartre also brings the concept of hell into his play No Exit by taking the scenario a step further and placing his characters in hell directly. Even though the three characters in the play are located in a physical hell, more emphasis is actually put on the inner hell that they cause each other through their interactions. This idea that we create our own hell is driven home by the fact that the “hell” they have been placed in is simply a small room with no mirrors or windows where they will spend eternity together. Even though the two works are separated by eighty years (Notes from the Underground in 1864 and No Exit in 1944) they share very similar views of the human condition; especially how it relates to the idea of “others”. Both philosophers made it a point to show the conflict of human interaction and give their characters personalities that reflect sado-masochistic tendencies.