*cue tribal drums*
All of us have it…An aggressive inner force, an animalistic energy that we encounter occasionally, usually in times of extreme emotional or physical duress. Sometimes it comes to our aid, allowing the proverbial 100lb mother to lift a car off her injured child situation. Sometimes it lashes out at random, injuring or killing innocent bystanders.
Psychologist Konrad Lorenz famously titled it the “Killer Instinct”, and believed it to reside within each of us, in varying degrees. Freud wrote of the “id”, Carl Jung of the “shadow”. I refer to mine as the “Dark One”.
Many people who participate in scenes feel that an “animal self” emerges during play, often a creature of great strength, endurance and rich, carnivorous appetites (I know of one particular person who becomes like a wolf, complete with snarling, growling and howling) A better example would be the popular horse and pony equestrian extravaganzas that have allowed hundreds to open up about their secret identities as human horses, ponies, puppies, bunnies, kittens etc.
Many often wear accessories such as the animal themed butt plugs, headbands and whiskers. Even the majority of BDSM nicknames forms a virtual bestiary; “Raven”, “White Owl”, “Wolf”, various references of “Cat”…You get the idea.
This is not just idle talk. You can see it in the structure of our brains in the continued presence of the limbic cortex (the lizard brain) still operating the instinctual level of the four basic “F”s (fight, flee, feed and fuck), while the neo-cortex and cerebrum hones our higher level reasoning capacities. Evolution did not replace our animal instincts and lusts, but merely added to them.
You can see it in our apelike bodies, covered with bestial hair. Look at our canine teeth, made for tearing flesh from living prey. Look at our toenails and fingernails, remnants of animal claws. Look at our dietary needs. While we cannot eat, as vultures and consume the flesh of the long dead, we crave the meat of creatures cut down in the full blush of youth. That is the kind of steak I like. You like it too, even if the idea scares you.
Hell, even Vegetarians demand their “meat” freshly killed. I highly doubt that there is a cookbook out there with recipes for putrid tomatoes, rotting spinach, or apples picked off the ground. Biblical history states that Eve plucked her apple from the tree and so do we. The archetypal leather gear that a majority of us wear and use is yet another example. You did not get that leather jacket, flogger or harness from a cow that was lying dead in a field…it is a relic from the slaughter.
Though it is rarely discussed, I feel S&M in BDSM is somewhat driven by these primal forces. While some may find this to be a distasteful idea, in reality, those who deny the inner animal’s reality do so at their own, and society’s peril. We have all have either heard stories, or lived them…seemingly harmless, decent people who quietly warp into bitter, angry, deranged creatures, one day snapping, and entering history as killers, rapists, war criminals and worse. Whole civilizations go crazy sometimes, becoming barbarous wolf packs in which it is acceptable, even mandatory for citizens to unleash their inner aggressions against enemies of the state.
The psychology of the herd, whether it is the Nazi programs, the Stalinist purges or the merciless oppression of our own lifestyle gossip circles should be proof enough of the inner animal’s dark potential in S&M…However, we try to free the inner animal to feed, fuck, and purge the blood lust in a way that does no harm.
THAT is the difference between BDSM practitioners and the thousands of killers, wife batterers, child abusers, rapists and their soul annihilating acts of hatred, desperation and rage.
S&M’s greatest gift is that it does not rely on denial of natural aggressions, but on our proper management of them. There is no doubt that the inner animal will eat. The question is whether you will to be the one to feed it, or whether fate will decide who and what the inner animal consumes.
Some may be able to starve their inner animal into submission, but may also starve themselves (and contend with the insanity of the starved). Some may simply never hear the roar of their inner beast, and have no consequent need for deep, intense S&M but for those who do, feeding the inner animal with the raw meat of the scene can be beautiful. There is a surprising tenderness and intimacy in letting the inner animal show, or bringing out the animal in someone you care about.
