maybe its just a sexual fetish, you are the submissive sort that
likes to be dominated. or maybe you feel a perverse subconscious
urge to feel pain and hurt although it scares you, in which case
read the story below. you aren't loosing your mind.
IN THE consideration of the faculties and impulses- of the prima
mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make
room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a
radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally
overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded
them.
Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as
an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical
something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more
characteristic term.
Through its promptings we act for the reason that we should not. In
theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but, in fact, there is
none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it
becomes absolutely irresistible.
I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of
the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable
force which impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this
overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of
analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a
primitive impulse-elementary.
It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because
we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a
modification of that which ordinarily springs from the
combativeness of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of
this idea.
The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity
of self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle
regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well is excited
simultaneously with its development. It follows, that the desire to
be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which
shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of
that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is
not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment
exists.
There lives no man who at some period has not been tormented, for
example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by
circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he displeases; he has
every intention to please, he is usually curt, precise, and clear,
the most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance
upon his tongue, it is only with difficulty that he restrains
himself from giving it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of
him whom he addresses; yet, the thought strikes him, that by
certain involutions and parentheses this anger may be engendered.
That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the
wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the
longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and
in defiance of all consequences) is indulged.
We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know
that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of
our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action.
We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with
the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on
fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off
until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel
perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle.
To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our
duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a
nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for
delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last
hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the
conflict within us,- of the definite with the indefinite- of the
substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus
far, it is the shadow which prevails,- we struggle in vain. The
clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time,
it is the chanticleer- note to the ghost that has so long overawed
us. It flies- it disappears- we are free. The old energy returns.
We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss- we
grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the
danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and
dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling.
By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape,
as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in
the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's
edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than
any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought,
although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our
bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is
merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping
precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall- this
rushing annihilation- for the very reason that it involves that one
most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome
images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves
to our imagination- for this very cause do we now the most vividly
desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the
brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is
no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who,
shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.
To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be
inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and
therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm
to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate
ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are
destroyed.
Examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them
resulting solely from the spirit of the Perverse. We perpetrate
them because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this
there is no intelligible principle.
