When symptom is symbol: some comments on Rosemary Gordon's, 'Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship'.

Abstract

This paper is a commentary on Rosemary Gordon's paper, 'Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship', with a suggestion for an alternative interpretation of masochism as a part of a sado-masochistic couple. Gordon postulates an archetypal need to venerate and worship that can be hidden in the shadow and distorted in such practices as sexual masochism. Her paper also offers several avenues of exploration for further studies in connection with the phenomenon of masochism, including sexual perversion ('paraphilia'), chronic psychological victimhood, PTSD and traumatology, religious extremist behaviour such as self-flagellation, transformation in the individuation process and numinous experience. An extension of her hypothesis to include religious problems of modernity is suggested.