Enantiodromia in Zen and BDSM

In explaining BDSM, I often give Freudian explanations evoking the Id as the devil on our left and the Superego as the angel on our right. The Id is the reptile brain, interested in food and sex.  Can I eat it, or can I fuck it?  The Superego is the civilized part of us that says, “One does not behave like that.”  I suspect that Freud was onto something when he figured that all forms of eroticism are based on going against the superego – what is erotic is precisely what proper ladies and gentlemen do not do.  Giving expression to the Id, Steven King once wrote:  “Sex will certainly continue to be the driving force in the horror genera… [and] much of the sex in horror fiction is deeply involved in power… where one partner is largely in control of the other…  [A] bug-eyed-monster or the mummy striding through the darkness… w/ the body of some lovely in its arms. Beauty and the beast. You are in my power.”

But for right now, let’s turn from Dr. Freud to his colleague Dr. Jung and think about BDSM and the shadow.  “Shadow” was a technical term for Jung, sort of related to Freud’s Id. To quote the Doc: “It is our own ‘dark side,’ characterized by inferior, uncivilized or animal qualities which the ego wishes to hide from others. Not wholly bad, but primitive and un-adapted.”  The shadow is our own inner Werewolf, so to speak – the animal within.  Maybe immoral… or maybe more accurately, amoral – not adapted to civilized life.

Noteworthy is that Jung also used the word “inferior,” which is also a technical term for Jung. It generally refers to the weaker functions in our personality. In Jung’s typology there are four cognitive functions which result in eight personality types.

Two of Jung’s functions involve acquiring info: intuition (time-focused) and sensing (space-focused).

Two of the functions involve processing info: thinking (analytical, abstract and step-by-step process oriented) and feeling (the big-picture, systems theory, composition/design – how it all fits together). (The thinking/feeling distinction was already present in the eighteenth century work of Goethe who wrote about the principles of Gesetz [law] and Gestalt [form], and later got echoed in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintinace where he called it Classical vs. Romantic)

One of these four functions would be dominant in a person (though none would be absent), and to that Jung added his introvert/extrovert distinction and came up w/ his eight personality types:

Extrovert Thinking (scientists, engineers, economists)
Introvert Thinking (philosophers, mathematicians, computer programmers)
Extrovert Feeling (talk show hosts, politicians)
Introvert Feeling (monks/nuns, musicians)
Extrovert Sensation (builders, mechanics, craftsmen)
Introvert Sensation (artists)
Extrovert Intuition (adventurers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists)
Introvert Intuition (day-dreamers, poets, novelists)

(My examples should be taken purely as shorthand generalizations.)

The inferior functions would be the ones diametrically opposite the dominant ones: Thinking opposite Feeling, for instance.  But sometimes these poles could flip, a phenomena Jung labeled enantiodromia – from the Latin enatio, “to turn about,” and droma, “to run” – to turn and run in the other way. Jung’s idea was that it was possible for a person’s personality type to switch around under certain circumstances such as mid-life crisis, a love affair, the sudden death of a loved one, a religious conversion or spiritual experience, etc.

Personally, I’m an Introvert Thinking-Intuition type… so, theoretically, my own shadow, my animal w/in, could be the flip side of those – my inferior functions: Feeling and Sensing. Getting in touch w/ my Feeling/Sensing side is always a challenge. Years ago, when I was doing meditation up at the Zen Center, my big obstacle was always my thinking-intuitive head.  It’s so easy for me to sit and day-dream or analyze – to visit “Idea Space” – but the goal of Zen is to cut one off from past and future and logical analysis, and put one in touch w/ immediate surroundings, sensations and the current moment; to see things as pure “objects in space” w/o any set of mental associations w/ them.

BDSM and puppy play turned out, for me, to be a better enantiodromia than meditation.  What I found was that, when I get into a good pup-space, it allows me to flip over to those inferior, shadow functions.  Usually I “think” everything into rationally organized hierarchies (the “Classical quality” in Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and spend most of his time thinking temporally – i.e. day-dreaming and imagining other events and situations.  My shadow (or animal totem) “feels” things holistically w/o step-wise analytical thought (the “Romantic quality” in ZMM) and exists in the Now.

It’s a little bit of a different spin than the Freudian perspective… but it also works for me.