Just finished reading
Caricature of Love today. Wow. Yeah, it's disturbing at times, but I'm amazed and what else Cleckley manages to portray, beyond and above all the pathology, about Love. There were so many "Aha" moments intermingled between the shock, horror, disbelief, and sadness that makes up the majority of the book. And the last chapters were some of the most eye-opening and beautiful I've read!
That said, I want to try to make some connections based on what I've just read. First of all, while reading the sections in
Mask of Sanity on perversion I had a slight inkling that he was talking about "asthenic psychopathy", but this pretty much clinches it for me. The best description of the cases he mentions is possible by just listing some of the adjectives and descriptors he uses, I think: false sentiment, ennui, langour, weakness, antibiological disgust, false division between they abstractly ideal and unrealistically perverse. The descriptions Cleckley gives of Baudelaire, Huysmans, Strindberg, Whitman, Wilde, Swinburne, de Sade, Swift, Gide, etc. all to greater or lesser degrees seem to fit this description by Lobaczewski;
Lobaczewski said:
Such people also attempt to mask their different world of experience and to
play a role of normal people to varying degrees, although this is no longer the
characteristic “Cleckley mask”. Some are
notable by demonstrations of their
strangeness. These people participate in the genesis of evil in very different ways,
whether taking part openly or, to a lesser extent, when they have managed to adapt
to proper ways of living. These psychopathic and related phenomena may, quanti-
tatively speaking, be summarily estimated at
two or three times the number of
cases of essential psychopathy, i.e. at less than two per cent of the population.
This type of person finds it easier to adjust to social life. The lesser cases in
particular adapt to the demands of the society of normal people,
taking advantage
of its understanding for the arts and other areas with similar traditions.
Their liter-
ary creativity is often disturbing if conceived in ideational categories alone; they
insinuate to their readers that their world of concepts and experiences is self-
evident; also it contains characteristic deformities.
me said:
Cleckley describes, in detail, their literary pursuits and how they present their skewed view of reality as self-evident, insinuating that it is true for all others. Witness Freud, Gide, and all the rest.
The most frequently indicated and long-known of these is the asthenic psycho-
pathy, which appears in every conceivable intensity, from barely perceptible to an
obvious pathological deficiency.
These people,
asthenic and hypersensitive, do not indicate the same glaring
deficit in moral feeling and ability to sense a psychological situation as do essen-
tial psychopaths. They are
somewhat idealistic and tend to have superficial pangs
of conscience as a result of their faulty behavior.
me said:
He also points out their "sentimentality", i.e. their false sentiment. They speak with high words about things and behaviors, which, in reality, show themselves to be weak, lifeless, disdainful.
On the average, they are also less intelligent than normal people, and their
mind avoids consistency and accuracy in reasoning.
Their psychological world
view is clearly falsified, so their opinions about people can never be trusted. A
kind of mask cloaks the world of their personal aspirations, which is at variance
with what they are actually capable of doing. Their behavior towards people who
do not notice their faults is urbane, even friendly; however, the same people
mani-
fest a preemptive hostility and aggression against persons who have a talent for
psychology, or demonstrate knowledge in this field.
The asthenic psychopath is relatively
less vital sexually and is
therefore ame-
nable to accepting celibacy; that is why
some Catholic monks and priests often
represent lesser or minor cases of this anomaly. Such individuals
may very likely
have inspired the anti-psychological attitude traditional in Church thinking.
me said:
Again, this is straight out of Cleckley. These individuals are disgusted by normal biology, normal femininity, normal humanity. They're demonstrably weak in the sexual department, their flowery prose notwithstanding. And it's their perverse attitude that lead to the Medusa-like grip of "sex is dirty" which pervades culture, in addition to an "anti-psychological" attitude (and perhaps more dangerous).
The more severe cases are more
brutally anti-psychological and contemptuous
of normal people; they tend to be active in the processes of the genesis of evil on a
larger scale. Their dreams are composed of
a certain idealism similar to the ideas
of normal people. They would like to reform the world to their liking but are un-
able to foresee more far-reaching implications and results. Spiced by deviance,
their visions may influence naive rebels or people who have suffered injustice.
Existing social injustice may look like a justification for a radicalized world view
and the assimilation of such visions.
The remark about Aldous Huxley made me wonder:
Cleckley said:
Aldous Huxley, thought milder [than Evelyn Waugh], also seems often to feel that man and woman cannot even make a tragedy of their love - merely a dull farce. Of him, Reginald Reynolds writes:
Here is the weakness of Mr. Aldous Huxley, if a cowardly Paris may venture a shaft at the heel of Achilles. ... Mr. Huxley is obsessed with sex to show its ugliness, having a most excremental loathing for what appears to him the grotesque antics of lovers.
Having read some of Huxley's works (in particular, his last book,
Island, which sums up his philosophy on pretty much everything), I wasn't sure about this. So I did a search and found this essay:
_http://www.reuniting.info/aldous_huxley_tomorrow_appendix
Here are some quotes. As you can see, his views aren't quite as presented in Cleckley's book.
Huxley said:
Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work. The domestication of sex presents a problem whose solution must be attempted on two distinct levels of human experience, the psycho-physiological and the social. On the social level the relations of the sexes have everywhere been regulated by law, by uncodified custom, by taboo and religious ritual. Hundreds of volumes have been filled with accounts of these regulations, and it is unnecessary to do more than mention them in passing.
Our present concern is with the problem of domesticating sex at the source, of civilizing its manifestations in the individual lover. This is a subject to which, in our Western tradition, we have paid much too little attention. Indeed, it is only in very recent years that, thanks to the declining influence of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, we have been able to discuss it realistically. In the past the problem used to be dealt with in one or other of three equally unsatisfactory ways. Either it was not mentioned at all, with the result that adolescents coming to maturity were left to work out their sexual salvation, unassisted, within the framework of the prevailing, and generally barbarous socio-legal system. Or else it was mentioned -but mentioned on the one hand with obscene delight or obscene disapproval (the tone of the pornographers and the Puritan moralists), or with a vague and all too “spiritual” sentimentality (the tone of the troubadours, Petrarchians and romantic lyrists).
Today we are condemned neither to silence, nor obscenity, nor sentimentality; we are at liberty, at last, to look at the facts and to ask ourselves what, if anything, can be done about them. One of the best ways of discovering what can be done is to look at what has been done. What experiments have been made in this field, and how successful have they been?
He then describes the "Male Continence" developed by John Humphrey Noyes
... in his Male Continence ... Noyes set forth his theories of sex and described the methods employed by himself and his followers for transforming a wild, God-eclipsing passion into a civilized act of worship, a prime cause of crime and misery into a source of individual happiness, social solidarity and good behavior.
“It is held in the world,” Noyes writes in Bible Communism, “that the sexual organs have two distinct functions — viz: the urinary and the propagative. We affirm that they have three — the urinary, the propagative and the amative., i.e. they are conductors first of the urine, secondly of the semen and thirdly of the social magnetism. . .” After Mrs. Noyes had come dangerously near to death as the result of repeated miscarriages, Noyes and his wife decided that, henceforth, their sexual relationships should be exclusively amative, not propagative.
But how were the specifically human aspects of sex to be detached from the merely biological? Confronted by this question, Robert Dale Owen had advocated coitus interruptus; but Noyes had read his Bible and had no wish to emulate Onan. Nor did he approve of contraceptives — “those tricks,” as he called them, “of the French voluptuaries.” Instead he advocated Male Continence and what Dr. Stockham was later to call Karezza.
With the most exemplary scientific detachment he began by “analyzing the act of sexual intercourse. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Its beginning and most elementary form is the simple presence of the male organ in the female.” Presence is followed by motion, motion by crisis.
But now “suppose the man chooses to enjoy not only the simple presence, but also the reciprocal motion, and yet to stop short of the crisis. . . If you say that this is impossible, I answer that I know it is possible — nay, that it is easy.” He knew because he himself had done it.
“Beginning in 1844, I experimented on the idea” (the idea that the amative function of the sexual organs could be separated from the propagative) “and found that the self-control it required is not difficult; also that my enjoyment was increased; also that my wife’s experience was very satisfactory, which it had never been before; also that we had escaped the horrors and the fear of involuntary propagation.”
Noyes attracted followers, started a little commune-type living arrangement, and went so far as to promote "Complex Marriage", where "all were to love all". He didn't condemn monogamy, but thought group love was better.
The Oneida Community endured for thirty years and its members, from all accounts, were excellent citizens, singularly happy and measurably less neurotic than most of their Victorian contemporaries. The women of Oneida had been spared what one of Noyes’s lady correspondents described as “the miseries of Married Life as it is in the World.” The men found their self-denial rewarded by an experience, at once physical and spiritual, that was deeper and richer than that of unrestrained sexuality. Here is the comment of a young man who had lived in the community and learned the new Art of Love. “This Yankee nation,” he wrote to Noyes, “claims to be a nation of inventors, but this discovery of Male Continence puts you, in my mind, at the head of all inventors.”
...
And this is not all. Sexual love is a cognitive act. We speak — or at least we used to speak — of carnal knowledge. This knowledge is of a kind that can be deepened indefinitely. “To a true heart, one that appreciates God, the same woman is an endless mystery. And this necessarily flows from the first admission that God is unfathomable in depths of knowledge and wisdom.” Male Continence transforms the sexual act into a prolonged exchange of “social magnetism”; and this prolonged exchange makes possible an ever deepening knowledge of the mystery of human nature — that mystery which merges ultimately, and becomes one with the mystery of Life itself.
Noyes’s conception of the sexual act (when properly performed) as at once a religious sacrament, a mode of mystical knowledge and a civilizing social discipline has its counterpart in Tantra. ... In Tantra the sexual sacrament borrows the method of Yoga, “not to frustrate, but to regulate enjoyment. Conversely enjoyment produces Yoga by the union of body and spirit. . . Here are made one Yoga which liberates and Bhoga which enchains.” ...
In the West the theory and practice of Tantra were never orthodox, except perhaps during the first centuries of Christianity. At this time it was common for ecclesiastics and pious laymen to have “spiritual wives,” who were called Agapetae, Syneisaktoi or Virgines Subintroductae. Of the precise relationships between these spiritual wives and husbands we know very little; but it seems that, in some cases at least, a kind of Karezza, or bodily union without orgasm, was practiced as a religious exercise, leading to valuable spiritual experiences.
For the most part, Noyes’s predecessors and the Christian equivalents of Tantra must be sought among the heretics — the Gnostics in the first centuries of our era, the Cathars in the early Middle Ages and the Adamites or Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit from the later thirteenth century onwards.
In his monograph on The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch Wilhelm Franger has brought together much interesting material on the Adamites. They practiced, we learn, a modum specialem coeundi, a special form of intercourse, which was identical with Noyes’s Male Continence or the coitus reservatus permitted by Roman Catholic casuists. This kind of sexual intercourse, they declared, was known to Adam before the Fall and was one of the constituents of Paradise. It was a sacramental act of charity and, at the same time, of mystical cognition, and, as such, was called by the Brethren acclivitas– the upward path.
According to Aegidius Cantor, the leader of the Flemish Adamites in the first years of the fifteenth century, “the natural sexual act can take place in such a manner that it is equal in value to a prayer in the sight of God.” A Spanish follower of the Adamite heresy declared, at his trial that “after I had first had intercourse with her [the prophetess, Francisca Hernandez] for some twenty days, I could say that I had learned more wisdom in Valladolid than if I had studied for twenty years in Paris. For not Paris, but only Paradise could teach such wisdom.”
Like Noyes and his followers, the Adamites practiced a form of sexual communism, and practiced it not, as their enemies declared, out of a low taste for orgiastic promiscuity, but because Complex Marriage was a method by which every member of the group could love all the rest with an impartial and almost impersonal charity; could see and nuptially know in each beloved partner the embodiment of the original, unfallen Adam — a godlike son or daughter of God.
...
Male Continence is not merely a device for domesticating sexuality and heightening its psychological significance; it is also, as the history of the Oneida Community abundantly proves, a remarkably effective method of birth control. Indeed, under the name of coitus reservatus, it is one of the two methods of birth control approved by the authorities of the Roman Church — the other and more widely publicized method being the restriction of intercourse to the so-called safe periods.
Unfortunately large-scale field experiments in India have shown that, in the kind of society which has the most urgent need of birth control, the safe period method is almost useless. And whereas Noyes, the practical Yankee, devoted much time and thought to the problem of training his followers in Male Continence, the Roman Church has done little or nothing to instruct its youth in the art of coitus reservatus. (How odd it is that while primitive peoples, like the Trobrianders, are careful to teach their children the best ways of domesticating sex, we, the Civilized, stupidly leave ours at the mercy of their wild and dangerous passions!)
Meanwhile, over most of the earth, population is rising faster than available resources. There are more people with less to eat. But when the standard of living goes down, social unrest goes up, and the revolutionary agitator, who has no scruples about making promises which he knows very well he cannot keep, finds golden opportunities.
Confronted by the appalling dangers inherent in population increase at present rates, most governments have permitted and one or two have actually encouraged their subjects to make use of contraceptives. But they have done so in the teeth of protests from the Roman Church. By outlawing contraceptives and by advocating instead two methods of birth control, one of which doesn’t work, while the other, effective method is never systematically taught, the prelates of that Church seem to be doing their best to ensure, first, a massive increase in the sum of human misery and, second, the triumph, within a generation or two, of World Communism.
I did some more searching, and apparently the Cathars were accused of sodomy because they were against procreative sex. Their detractors failed to see what they were
actually practicing. Anyways, I did some more looking on the site where this article is found, and it's all about this "Kerazza" technique. It has some very interesting and pertinent articles, IMO. For example, I think this is a good summary for everyone to check out. It's a powerpoint presentation:
_http://www.reuniting.info/download/The%20Hidden%20Factor%20in%20Relationship%20Disharmony.swf
The woman speaking (Marnia Robinson) is the author of the book
Cupid's Poison Arrow, in which she describes how and why relationships turn stale. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there dealing with the mammalian brain, mating vs. bonding sex, hormones, bonding sex, etc. and it seems to me to describe some of what Gurdjieff was saying when he wrote:
Conscious love evokes the same in response.
Emotional love evokes the opposite.
Physical love depends on type and polarity.
It also seems to apply to some of the relationship phenomena Cleckley describes. After watching that video, see how she relates that info to pornography and masturbation:
_http://www.reuniting.info/wiki#porn
_http://www.reuniting.info/intoxicating_behaviors
_http://www.reuniting.info/node/4486
_http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cupids-poisoned-arrow/201002/the-right-masturbation-advice
Here are some quotes from the above articles:
When you’re hit by Cupid’s arrow, you effectively become delusional. You don’t realize this, of course, because, well, you’re delusional. You’re convinced that the person you met last week at your buddy’s wedding is The One, and you expect the passion you’re feeling to keep you quivering with interest and ecstasy for a lifetime. (Scientists call this phenomenon “pair bonding,” and though they’re experts on the condition, they’ve been known to succumb to it themselves.) Cupid is a sneaky dude, or rather, the biological agenda he personifies doesn’t necessarily promote enduring love.
Cupid’s ammo is the first of a series of neurochemical impulses in a primitive part of your brain known as the limbic system—or “mammalian brain.” Your ancient mammalian brain is so powerful, so efficiently wired, that it often overwhelms your more recently evolved and considerably more realiable “rational brain.”
The mammalian brain’s mating agenda urges you to:
(1) fall in love recklessly with fireworks that propel sperm to egg,
(2) bond long enough to fall in love with your kids so they have two caregivers,
(3) get fed up with your mate,
(4) look for a new one.
This agenda improves the genetic variety of offspring, and the greater the variety, the better our genes’ chances of surviving into the future. Cold, heartless, but effective.
Lots of animals masturbate, but none with the intensity and ejaculation frequency of human males—except when in captivity (according to Leonard Shlain, MD).
Almost monthly, new research confirms that food can cause drug-like brain changes. Food and sex are known as "natural reinforcers." That is, they aren't drugs, but our brains light up for them so we reach for more without thinking.
Still, the concept that "food can cause obesity because it is like a drug" is perplexing. After all, our rather buff ancestors ate a lot, and quite evidently were enthusiastic about sex. Yet becoming dangerously hooked didn't seem to be much of a risk. Didn't their brains light up for food and sex? Yes, of course. The difference is that they weren't surrounded by superstimulating, synthetic versions of food and sex. We are, and it is a relatively recent hazard.
It seems that, just as we're poisoning our bodies with toxic foods, toxic sex has its effects, too! (and I don't mean that in the moralistic sense!)
Notice what Marnia says about bonding sex. Not only does it bring partners together, it actively helps the healing of old wounds. It utilizes the behaviors we've acquired for bonding with children to promote longlasting bonds with our partners, and these include: touching, gazing into the eyes, non-verbal calming vocalizations, etc. These are the things that psychopaths use to bond with their victims, as Laura described in the WWLP threads. And interestingly, it seems that this has always been a practice among true esoteric groups:
_http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/courtly_love_chivalry_cortezia_cathars_gnostics
One of the Cathars’ basic beliefs was that 'true love' was not the ordinary human love between husband and wife but rather the worship of a feminine savior (the Lady), a mediator between God and man, who waited in the sky to welcome the pure with a holy kiss and lead them into the Realm of Light. By contrast with this pure love, ordinary human sexuality and marriage were bestial and unspiritual. Cathars believed that the love of man and woman should be an earthly allegory of their spiritual love for the Queen of Heaven.
... Guillaume Belibaste, the last Cathar recorded to have burned at the stake in 1321, a victim of the Inquisition, is said to have prophesied that "at the end of seven hundred years the laurel would turn green again." Does that mean the the principles of Catharism, or "the true Christianity," would once again come to the world's attention? ...
Persecution sent the movement underground and into decline, but the troubadours of Provence spread elements of it throughout Europe under the guise of cortezia, the courtly love tradition. As a troubadour sang impassioned songs to his Lady pledging willing submission, those in the know would have recognized them as hymns venerating the Divine Feminine revered by the Cathars. Not surprisingly, Madonna worship rapidly increased during this period.
Just as in India where Tantra was waxing, higher love was in the air in Europe. Courtly love had echoes of tantric practice (more below). The mystical Jewish Kabbalah has also been traced to 12th century Provence.
Also around the same time, a venerated Sufi scholar, who wrote about the spiritual power in the union of male and female, Ibn al-`Arabi, was born in Spain in 1165.
Sufi courtship Contemplation of the Reality without formal support is not possible. . . . Since, therefore, some form of support is necessary, the best and most perfect kind is the contemplation of God in woman. The greatest union is that between man and woman. Ibn al-`Arabi ‘Bezels of Wisdom’
).
