ON REVOLUTIONARY SADISM
43
fact that he has painted it, his work attests to a desire to transform
his environment. Nurses "born" to their calling are moved by
feelings of compassion which are masochistic, but in so much as
they try to cure sickness they furnish proof that they too wish to
transform their environment.
We must, therefore, distinguish between masochism as the
element of an
emotional
complex and masochism as the specific
character of a complex of
behavior.
When not only desire but
behavior too is dominated by a tendency to self-transformation,
the individual is led to the self-destruction of his or her personal–
ity. Only in such a case does masochism become a definitely anti–
revolutionary force. Thus Sacher Masoch is a masochist in the
first sense, which is the emotive, while Rimbaud when he stopped
writing, when he diminished the manifestations of his personality,
became an example of masochistic behavior in the second sense,
for what he lost was all desire to transform; if he had any desire
at all left, it was to "commit suicide of the personality" and to
cease being a poet.
·
For a psychology of the unconscious, the difference between
sadism and masochism is contained in the antithesis
pleasure-pain,
while for a psychology of behavior the criterion is the antithesis
transformation
and
self-destruction.
Obviously, all emotive maso–
chism
can
become masochism of behavior, but it is only when this
actually happens that the qualitative change takes place which
brings about a contraction of the personality and often leads to its
complete elimination by suicide. Emotive masochism can bring a
revolutionary to the point of sacrificing his life. We call him a hero
then, for in his desire to trans£orm his environment and to fight for
those forces which help transform it, he was not afraid to sacrifice
his own person. But if this sacrifice was accomplished in a desire
to transform himself-that is, if his act was determined by maso–
chistic behavior-then he has really acted in a counter-revolution–
ary manner, for he has sacrificed his life for a cause that was not
revolutionary, namely, his wish to die.
Revolutionary behavior is always sadistic, since the dominant,
so to speak, of its emotive complex is sadistic. Masochistic be–
havior results from an unfavorable contact with reality, which
drives back into masochism the elements forming the emotive com–
plex. Because he cannot transform anything else, the masochist
