THE ENJOYMENT OF PAIN
We have pointed out that enjoyment can be derived by sentimental
reflection on moods of sadness. Such refined forms of the “luxury of
grief” presuppose a certain intellectual development and a tendency
to introspection, which cannot possibly be assumed in primitive man.
But as the active forms of the so-called pain-emotions are highly
appreciated—we may even say indulged in as enjoyments—by the lower
tribes of man, there must evidently be some more immediate cause of
this delight. And we are the more tempted to look for this cause in the
emotional process itself, by the fact that even bodily pains, which
do not admit of any sentimental interpretation, may be deliberately
excited.
We remarked in our treatment of the simple emotional elements, that
pleasure and pain can in no case be estimated by any absolute measure.
Now that we have to find some explanation of the delight in pain, which
applies to purely physical as well as to mental pain, we begin by
admitting that the relative character of feeling probably accounts for
many instances in which the pain is merely apparent. The same external
stimulus which acts on one individual with hypernormal strength, and
therefore evokes pain, may in the case of another individual who
has duller senses, produce a weaker impression, and thus call forth
a pleasurable reaction. The taste and smell anomalies of hysterical
patients afford us good examples of such abnormal pleasure. And, on
the other hand, there are plenty of instances, too familiar to be
enumerated, in which an impression which a sick person would call
painful brings pleasure to a healthy one.
Again, the power of receiving pleasurable sensations from strong
stimuli may often be increased by exercise. Mr. Marshall has applied
his psycho-physiological principles to the interpretation of
these “acquired pleasure-gettings” and though he perhaps does not
exhaustively and convincingly explain the process, he at least gives
a graphic and clear account of its most probable course. He thinks
that a hypernormal stimulus indirectly increases the blood-supply to
the stimulated organ. This organ will therefore, if the operation of
the stimulus is not too prolonged, store up some portion of unused
nutritive force during the subsequent repose. And thus, if the same
stimulus is shortly afterwards repeated, the organ will be able to
respond with greater facility and intensity, _i.e._ react under the
conditions of pleasurable reaction. In this way Marshall accounts for
the classic instances of acquired liking for olives and tobacco.[78]
It is probable that a similar influence of repeated exercise may
also operate in the department of compound emotions. Lehmann, who
explains the transformation of originally painful impressions into
pleasurable ones in a somewhat different way, viz. by his law of
“the indispensability of accustomed things” refers to this law
those instances in which persons who have had many troubles grow so
accustomed to them, that in a moment of ease they feel a kind of
loss.[79] The validity of this law will be recognised by every one who
has any opportunity of observing the vaguely and weakly unpleasant
feeling which sometimes appears when we are suddenly liberated
from some pursuing anxiety. And the indispensability of accustomed
sensations may impel persons to create new mental pains or worries to
replace the old ones.
Yet the mere craving for customary sensations cannot explain those
cases of genuine luxury in grief in which pain-sensations and
pain-emotions are sought precisely because they are painful. But if we
take into account the powerful stimulating effect which is produced by
acute pain, we may easily understand why people submit to momentary
unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the subsequent excitement. This
motive leads to the deliberate creation not only of pain-sensations,
but also of emotions in which pain enters as an element. The violent
activity which is involved in the reaction against fear, and still
more in that against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable
excitement which is well worth the cost of the passing unpleasantness.
It is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a peculiar
art of making the initial pain of anger so transient that they can
enjoy the active elements in it with almost undivided delight. Such
an accomplishment is far more difficult in the case of sorrow. The
reactions are here seldom allowed so free a course as to be able to
change the feeling-tone of the state. Moreover, the remembrance of the
objective cause will always tend to reawaken the original feeling with
its accompanying inhibition. Besides, a man of culture and refinement
is generally deterred by a kind of respect for his own emotional life
from artificially stirring up states of sorrow for his own enjoyment.
This reluctance, however, does not seem to exist in lower stages of
development. The crying feasts of the Maoris and the Todas—which afford
a striking parallel to the ceremonial wailings of ancient Greece—are
no doubt, whatever their ritual significance may be, attended with
a kind of pleasure.[80] By seizing on some real or fictitious cause
for grief—the death of a Linos or an Adonis—the participants succeed,
we imagine, in creating a state of sorrow in which the active and
stimulating elements outweigh the pain.
However barbarous this kind of amusement may seem to us, it is by no
means certain that we have completely outgrown such pleasures. The
delight in witnessing the performance of a tragedy undoubtedly involves
the enjoyment of a borrowed pain, which, by unconscious sympathetic
imitation, we make partially our own.[81] And the same phenomenon
appears in a yet cruder form in the custom, so general among the lower
classes of most countries, of visiting funerals and similar ceremonies
where sorrow can be contemplated and shared. Even civilised man is thus
able to enjoy the pleasure which may be connected with emotions of
sorrow and despair, at least in second-hand reproduction.
It is scarcely necessary to go through all the various emotional
states in order to prove that every one of them, if it can _per se_ be
enjoyed (in nature or art), is either primarily or by its reactions
connected with an increase of outward activity. But we must point
out that the pleasure derived from this motor excitement is often
still further enhanced by the agency of an intellectual element which
is simpler than sentimental reflection, and does not presuppose any
tendency towards introspection. In pain as in pleasure, in suffering
as in voluptuousness, we attain a heightened and enriched sensation
of life. The more we love life, the more must we also enjoy this
sensation, even if it be called into existence by pain. Lessing,
who cannot possibly be called morbid, confesses to this taste in an
interesting letter written to Mendelssohn: “Darinn sind wir doch wohl
einig, l.F., dass alle Leidenschaften entweder heftige Begierden oder
heftige Verabscheuengen sind? Auch darinn: dass wir uns bei jeder
heftigen Begierde oder Verabscheuung, eines grösser Grads unserer
Realität bewusst sind und dass dieses Bewusstsein nicht anders als
angenehm sein kann? Folglich sind alle Leidenschaften, auch die
allerunangenehmsten, als Leidenschaften angenehm.”[82] (“We are agreed
in this, my dear friend, that all passions are either vehement cravings
or vehement loathings, and also that in every vehement craving or
loathing we acquire an increased consciousness of our reality, and
that this consciousness cannot but be pleasurable. Consequently, all
our passions, even the most painful, are, as passions, pleasurable.”)
And Helvetius has expressed almost the same idea: “Nous souhaiterons
donc, par des impressions toujours nouvelles, être à chaque instant
avertis de notre existence, parceque chacun de ces avertissements est
pour nous un plaisir.”[83] (“Accordingly, we shall desire, by means of
constantly renewed impressions, to be at every moment reminded of our
existence, because each of these reminders is for us a pleasure.”) For
the sake of this “avertissement” of existence, individuals of intense
vital temperament, like Richard Jefferies and Maryia Bashkirtseff, have
positively loved their very sufferings.[84]
It is evident that pain as a sign of life and function may be
especially welcome when the vital sensation has for any reason become
weakened. The self-woundings of the heathen and Christian saints,
although no doubt fully justified to the sufferers themselves by
religious motives, may thus have had their innermost unconscious
motive in an endeavour to overcome that anæsthesia which is so
usual an accompaniment of hysterical disturbances.[85] It is hard
to believe that the tortures which they inflict upon themselves are
really felt as neutral or pleasurable. But we can easily understand
that such torture, although more or less painful, may afford a kind
of satisfaction by compelling the slow and dull senses to function.
Professor Lange has in his work on the emotions laid special stress
upon this point. “It is a condition of our well-being,” he says,
“that our sensorial centres should be in a certain degree of activity
called forth by the impressions which reach them through the sensorial
nerves from the outside. If from some cause or other—for instance,
from a decrease in the functional powers of these centres—there
arises an insensibility, anæsthesia, then we feel a longing to force
them to their usual activity by addressing to them an abnormally
strong appeal, or, in other words, by intensifying the external
impressions and thereby neutralising the insensibility.”[86] This
principle has, indeed, as applied by Lange to the expressions of
anger, been mercilessly ridiculed by Wundt.[87] But it seems to us
that the observation itself can scarcely be contested. Whether we
explain it as a case of the indispensability of the accustomed or as
the result of some peculiar yearning for life—a soul-desire, as Mr.
Jefferies would have called it—a deficient consciousness of function
is in most cases distinctly unpleasant. And, on the other hand, it
seems as if an increased consciousness of function were _per se_
pleasurable. It is of course difficult to prove by exact argument the
existence of a feeling which can be observed only as the innermost
concealed motive of our life. But on as strong evidence as can ever
be adduced on matters of emotional life, we may believe that in every
conscious life there operates a dim instinctive craving for fuller
and greater consciousness, or, if the expression be preferred, for
the most complete self-realisation. Happiness itself has been defined
by a philosopher so little inclined to mysticism as Mr. Brinton, as
“the increasing consciousness of self.”[88] It is therefore easy to
understand why, when this consciousness has been blunted by some
cause or other, we may even long for suffering and pain as a means
of escaping the dulness, emptiness, and darkness of insensibility.
It may seem to be a disturbance of all normal instincts that pain—an
element hostile to vital activity—can thus be preferred to a state the
unpleasantness of which is only diffuse. But we have to remember that
the absence of sensation and function frightens us by its similarity to
what we fear more than pain.
The sufferings of insensibility, this highest possible form of tedium,
which—if we are to judge from the descriptions in literature and
poetry—may in themselves be unbearable enough, must needs be unusually
keen in individuals who are given up to philosophic reflection. The
feeling of inanity which is caused by a suspense of vital sensations
is apt to spread itself over the whole field of sense-experience.[89]
In default of strong impressions, with their subsequent reactions, we
may lose the sense not only of our own existence, but also of that of
the external world.[90] The relatively neutral evidence of our higher
senses does not afford us the same assurance of reality as is given
by grosser impressions, which affect us more directly in the way of
pleasure or pain. On purely physiological grounds there may thus be
produced a morbid conception of the universe which, having neither ego
nor non-ego to rely on, lacks the conviction either of subjective or
objective existence. From this vertiginous inanity, which must bring
every philosophic temperament into despair, life delivers us by the
same means which Molière uses to confute the Pyrrhonists. Pain is the
most convincing reality we can imagine. It may therefore, even when it
is not deliberately sought for, afford a welcome support to thought.
“Suffice it thee
Thy pain is a reality.”
(TENNYSON, “The Two Voices”).
In this connection, however, we have not to dwell on the philosophical
importance of pain. We are here only concerned with its significance
for the immediate sense of life. And in this respect we believe that an
artificial creation of pain may play some part not only in anger, but
in the expression of all high-strung emotions. It is well known that
the orgiastic state of mind, whether originally caused by religious
exaltation or by erotic delirium, may often, when it has reached its
highest stage, express itself in self-laceration. These facts are no
doubt difficult to interpret. But it seems justifiable to assume that a
tendency towards the creating of pain-sensations may have been derived
from the emotional process itself. Explained in this way, orgiastic
self-tortures may be adduced as the most remarkable proofs of this
desire for an enhanced sense of life which lies at the bottom of all
our appetence.
However energetically strong emotions may accentuate our existence, and
however deeply we may enjoy the “realisation of ourselves” which we
find in the violent excitement accompanying them, high-strung states
are naturally bound to be followed by exhaustion and stupor. And thus
even the intoxication of life, this most powerful of sensations, sooner
or later passes its climax and sinks into dull insensibility. The lower
the function by the incitement of which the exaltation is produced,
the greater probably is its orgiastic power. But its duration is also
so much the shorter. A wild dance, for instance, invariably ends in
impotent prostration, during which the power of function and sensation
is completely exhausted. As long as the mental desire for increased
excitement is unsatisfied, this state must be distinctly disagreeable.
Hence all the frenetic manifestations by which man, when raging in
insatiable exaltation, strives to awake and rouse his failing powers of
enjoyment.
In the whole domain of comparative psychology there can scarcely
be adduced an example which throws so much light on the orgiastic
state of mind as the Bacchanal frenzy. And the descriptions of this
“Dionysischer Zustand” which are to be found in classic literature
give us the most complete idea of the various expedients by which the
devotee tries to maintain and increase his state of exaltation in spite
of the growing tendency to relaxation. By noise, roaring, and loud
cries, by frenetic dance and wild actions, the “Maenads” strive to
preserve and recover the fading sense of life, which ever baffles their
exertions. And as the last, infallible means of excitement, resorted
to when all other stimulations have proved unable to stir up the
dulled senses, we may explain the tortures which the partly insensible
Bacchante inflicts upon herself. “Suum Bacchis non sentit saucia
vulnus.”[91]
There are various kinds of orgiastic exaltation connected with
self-torture—as that of the tarantella dancers, of the dervishes, of
the shamans, and others—in which the creation of pain-sensations may
be explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of
the emotional state. Acute pain often makes it possible to overcome
momentarily the exhaustion or the dulness which unfits us for work.
And it is evident that pain may produce a similar excitement when
we require an increase of energy, not for the sake of obtaining the
greatest possible result from a working activity, but for the sake of
extracting the greatest possible enjoyment out of an emotional state.
But if this interpretation be admitted as possible, there will be
ample room for discussion as to its application to individual cases.
For it is to be remembered that even pain may fulfil the task of
relieving a nervous tension. In cases of bodily suffering counter
irritation may thus bring about a wholesome diversion of the attention
from an otherwise unbearable pain.[92] And it is unquestionable that
self-inflicted lacerations during violent emotion often subserve the
same purpose. When a savage scarifies himself on receiving bad news,
or at a funeral feast, his action is an instinctive effort to procure
relief from the overpowering feelings.[93] That he is not simply
performing a sacrificial rite,[94] but is merely seeking the relief
which experience has taught him may be afforded by pain as well as by
the subsequent exhaustion (especially from loss of blood), is proved
by the fact that the same expedient is employed in order to overcome
humiliation or bodily pain.[95] It is not stimulation, but a lulling of
the senses, which is here aimed at.
It must also be admitted that even the other orgiastic manifestations
may serve as purely cathartic means of relieving emotional pressure. It
is, as has already been remarked, impossible to decide in individual
cases whether an activity of expression—a dance, for instance—serves to
enhance a pleasurable feeling or to relieve a pain. Suffering, sorrow,
and despair may often, in their outward reactions, borrow the forms of
expression which are usually connected with joy. Thus frenetic games
and dances are often met with on occasions when we should least of all
expect them, as, for instance, in time of famine, epidemic, or war.[96]
Such paradoxical manifestations, in which an overstrained despair
attempts to obtain some kind of relief, are externally not to be
distinguished from the genuine expression of joy. On the other hand, an
abnormally strong emotion, which is primarily caused by the objective
conditions of pleasure, may in its excess be perceived as a pain. Joy
itself can thus be felt as an oppressive burden, which we try with all
our power to get rid of. The motor discharges, by which we seek relief
from such a “Noth der Fülle und der Überfülle,” can, however, only
indirectly offer us any real deliverance. A wild dance, for instance,
will inevitably accentuate the original feeling as a conscious state,
and thereby increase its intensity. But with this increase the craving
for relief will also become stronger. As long as expression is unable
to satisfy the ever-growing nervous tension, there must remain an
element of “never enough” in the orgiastic exaltation. It is only when
repeated solicitation has brought on bodily exhaustion that a real
release is attained.
There is no doubt that such a relief-bringing exhaustion was the
ultimate aim of all those exalted manifestations to which the poor
tarantuli and the Vitus dancers abandoned themselves. But the problem
presented by the similarity between the pathological despair which
constitutes the initial stage of such epidemic mental disorders, and
the oppressive feeling of joy whose expression has been thwarted, is
so difficult that we can hardly expect to obtain a decisive answer to
such questions as whether, for example, the mænadic exaltation is to be
considered as a melancholic or a cheerful state of mind. And in most
cases it would probably be equally impossible to ascertain whether in a
given manifestation we have to do with pleasure that seeks enhancement,
or with pain that seeks relief in exhaustion.
While every one is thus free to interpret the facts according to his
optimistic or pessimistic bias, it must nevertheless be considered as
a confusion of ideas to make the quest of unconsciousness a universal
and fundamental impulse in man. It is impossible for us to assign any
psychological importance to commonplaces on the enviable state of the
insensible and the happiness to be found in unconsciousness. It is only
when it delivers us from pain that a state of partial insensibility
and cessation of function may be perceived as relatively agreeable.
That an absolute absence of feeling could afford us any pleasure is a
psychological contradiction in terms.
This illusion of unconsciousness can, however, be easily explained by
the fact that intense emotional states are generally dominated by a
single preoccupation. A strong feeling, by reason of the limitations
of our consciousness, annihilates external sensations and ideas.
Ecstasy, that “over-conscious” state of highly concentrated activity,
rises above space and time to a state in which we feel liberated from
all forms of perception. But the highest pleasure which we may thus
experience is not, as Wagner in his pessimistic period would have it, a
sinking and drowning of ourselves in unconsciousness; it is far rather—
“endlos ewig
einbewuszt.”
To enjoy so rich and complete a sensation of life has, we believe,
been the object for which, each in his own manner, all men of strong
vitality have striven. Even if there are individuals so unfortunate
that for them a cessation of life and function appears as the highest
end of desire, such negative instances need hardly be taken into
account in a survey of universal human impulses. The longing for
unconsciousness is moreover so passive a condition of mind, that by
itself it could never explain expressional activities of the more
violent or elaborate sort. And it is even more insufficient as an
explanation of all those secondary expressions which are to occupy
us in the sequel. Art production would never have reached so high a
development if it had served only as a sedative for human feelings. But
neither does art, any more than the direct activities of expression,
involve mere excitement; it too fulfils, and with even greater
efficacy, a relieving and cathartic mission. While supplying man with
a means of intensifying the feelings connected with all the varied
activities of the soul, art at the same time bestows upon him that
inward calm in which all strong emotions find their relief.
Every interpretation of art which does not pay due attention to both of
these aspects must needs be one-sided and incomplete.