Sadistic Characteristics of Love Life

This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.

Sadism, Dr. Hugh Mullen tells us, is more than just the sexually "perverse" practice of tying up a partner or otherwise constraining them during sex. Dr. Mullen reads a transcript of a lecture given by Karen Horney, in which she describes the various ways that sadism and sadistic personalities play out in marriages after the first feelings of love have faded.

In her practice, Horney has encountered many husbands who blame their nagging wives for the failure of the marriage, and wives who blame their husbands for staying out late. A relationship, she argues, is only as strong as the people in it, and it is important to look for signs of sadism in one of the partners.

Sadists, she claims, enslave others, especially love partners. They hold themselves to impossibly high standards, and, subconsciously recognizing their own failings, try to force their partner to achieve those standards, leading to a "molding" or a "shaping" dynamic between a "Superman" and his "victim." The dynamic also leads to an obsessive jealousy, so that the sadist neglects his work and his friends in order to "keep a bulldog grip" on his victim.

Horney draws on three works of literature—Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Kierkegaard's Diary of a Seducer , and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler for examples.

She focuses most specifically on Hedda Gabler. She argues that Hedda is unsatisfied with her life, and so "turns her resentment onto life and her environment." Despite security, a home, a husband, intelligence, and good looks, Hedda makes endless demands—for butlers, parties, and pianos—in order to make her husband feel guilty for not providing for her, and uses every opportunity to humiliate those around her. She also refuses to accept blame.

Ibsen's work is just a novel, she reminds us, but there are "many Heddas in our community," even if they are not so far gone, or if their natures are more conflicted. Still, they show possessive jealousy and a need to irritate others, while simultaneously denying such attitudes and feeling misunderstood or abused.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 69404
Municipal archives id: LT665