Velvet Underground- Venus in Furs

Was just reading about the psychology of sadomasochism and realized I haven’t listened to the Velvet Underground in a looooooooong time, perhaps it’s time to rediscover them.

In his essay Coldness and Cruelty, (originally Présentation de Sacher-Masoch, 1967) Gilles Deleuze rejects the term “sadomasochism” as artificial, especially in the context of the quintessentially modern masochistic work, Sacher-Masoch’s Venus In Furs. Deleuze’s counter argument is that the tendency toward masochism is based on intensified desire brought on or enhanced by the acting out of frustration at the delay of gratification. Taken to its extreme, an intolerably indefinite delay is ‘rewarded’ by punitive perpetual delay, manifested as unwavering coldness. The masochist derives pleasure from, as Deleuze puts it, The Contract: the process by which he can control another individual and turn the individual into someone cold and callous. The Sadist, in contrast, derives pleasure from The Law: the unavoidable power that places one person below another. The sadist attempts to destroy the ego in an effort to unify the id and super-ego, in effect gratifying the most base desires the sadist can express while ignoring or completely suppressing the will of the ego, or of the conscience. Thus, Deleuze attempts to argue that Masochism and Sadism arise from such different impulses that the combination of the two terms is meaningless and misleading. A masochist’s perception of their own self-subjugating sadistic desires and capacities are treated by Deleuze as reactions to prior experience of sadistic objectification. {E.g. in terms of psychology, compulsively defensive appeasement of pathological guilt feelings as opposed to the volition of a strong free will.} As in the epilogue ofVenus In Furs which shows the character of Severin has become embittered by his experiment in the alleged control of masochism, and advocates instead the domination of women.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadomasochism