Khlyst

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

Dear Will,
First, sexual pleasure is a red herring.  The study of masochism has  
come a long way since Sacher-Masoch, and psychoanalysis has come a  
long way since Freud.  For example, there is

the post-Freudian psychoanalytic definition of masochism offered by  
Anita Katz, which bears repeating here: “any behavioral act,  
verbalization, or fantasy that – by unconscious design – is physically  
or psychically injurious to oneself, self-defeating, humiliating, or  
unduly self-sacrificing.”[1]

[1]   Katz 1990, 226.

(Katz is a practicing analyst in New York).  There is no sexuality  
here.  What Katz and other contemporary psychoanalysts (Cooper, the  
Novicks, Kernberg, and so on) mean by "masochism" is roughly what  
Freud meant by "moral masochism."  Freud's other two categories were  
erotogenic masochism and female masochism.  The first of these is real  
enough (read "Venus in Furs"), the second is just a sexist fantasy, it  
does not exist.  As for "pain," that too is not part of the definition  
just given.  Some self-flagellants may experience pain, others may  
not.  Many simply experience relief, or release from a sense of  
guilt.  Remember, Christianity is a guilt-based religion.  Jesus  
redeemed us from SIN, and apparently even that did not suffice, so we  
still have to do things like go to confession, perform assigned  
penances, abstain during Lent, etc.  I say "we" because I used to do  
these things myself (I was an altar boy, I was the president of my  
Newman club in college, I thought seriously about becoming a priest).   
Some forms of Christianity have moved away from the guilt-orientation,  
but I suspect that movement will halt in these hard times.


Aleksandr Etkind wrote:

Since my book Khlyst. Sekty, literatura i revoliutsia (Moskva: NLO  
1998) is indeed
lengthy it is perhaps too much to hope that professor Daniel Rancour- 
Laferriere would
read it. However, if he chose to do so he would find multiple  
descriptions of the Khlyst
ritual on pp. 41-49, 75-82, and elsewhere; for a particularly bloody  
fantasy, see p.143.

Dear Sasha, I have indeed read and studied your book, which you kindly  
handed to me on 7 March 1998 when you were a guest at my home in  
Davis, California.  As you can see from my previous posting I have  
cited your book.  The problem was that I could not find a specific  
assertion that flagellation was taking place in the various "radeniia"  
you describe, yet other sources were asserting that there was  
flagellation (James Billington, for example, a respected scholar in  
this country, and referred to in the previous SEELANGS post by Jeffrey  
Holdeman).  It is true that the "particularly bloody fantasy" you  
quote on p. 143 of your book includes flagellation, but that is "anti- 
sectarian propaganda," in your opinion, and I could not find any  
passage in your book where you affirm that flagellation was in fact  
normally practiced by the Khlysty.

By the way, a psychoanalytic history of the cross involves much more  
than guilt and masochism.  Think not only of the crucifratres, but  
also of the crucesignati - the latter commonly known in English as  
Crusaders.

With regards to the list -

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere



On Mar 4, 2009, at 3:13 AM, William Ryan wrote:

> Daniel, you say:
>
>   There were self-flagellants who practiced their masochism in
>   private, and others who flagellated themselves in groups.  In either
>   case the imitation of Christ is clear.
>
> You use the term masochism to label individual self-flagellants (but  
> then immediately suggest a motivation other than pleasure and with  
> no obvious sexual component). By implication in your first sentence  
> you apply the term also to the group practices. Do you think that  
> the term masochism, in any of its many definitions, is admissible  
> with reference to whole communities practising penitential rites?  
> Some of the Khlyst practices you describe below have no element of  
> pain (e.g. prostration), and those that do (e.g. flagellation) are,  
> as you yourself describe, related to specific historical  
> renactment , i.e. the imitation of Christ. The possible spectrum of  
> discomfort experienced by penitents, ranging from fasting or  
> abstention from particular foods to suffering physical pain, is very  
> extensive and has an overt external motivation in the history of the  
> religion of the penitent, and often a collective social context. It  
> is hard to see how, for example, the common penitential practices in  
> this season of Lent, e.g. fasting or abstaining from a favorite food  
> or drink, can be pleasurable to an individual Christian, still less  
> how it can be pleasurable to a whole community simultaneously. A  
> psychiatrist may perhaps label as a masochist a single individual  
> who inflicts pain on himself , but there may be many possible  
> motivations other than (sexual) pleasure, especially in the  
> religious context, and surely this cannot be extended to socially  
> sanctioned, perhaps even prescribed practices of entire communities?  
> Perhaps a label too far?
>
> Will Ryan
>
>
> Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:
>>

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