By: Charlie Buckreis
I think this is the first book I’ve ever had that I could not make myself read. Most other school books, such as Romeo and Juliet or Frankenstein (can you tell that I’m not a fan of old writing) I was able to force myself to read, because I had to for a project. Did I enjoy them? A little, once I really got into them. But it was an effort to start. With Sodom, however, I could barely make myself start.
I couldn’t finish this book. Once I got into the actual content, I couldn’t read more than a few sentences before feeling physically ill, and eventually I decided to just stop because I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish it. This book is indescribable. It is hard to fathom how twisted someone would have to be to do stuff like that, let alone write about it. However, as a psychologist, I do wonder about why those men acted and thought the way they did.
One theory I have is an inability to feel empathy. Lack of empathy can have a number of causes, including genetics, mental disorders, and childhood trauma. With Sade and the others, I expect trauma is the most likely reason for their behavior. Sade’s parents were absent for most of his childhood, which as a result was spent mostly in an abbey. Historians debate whether he was abused, physically and/or sexually, while he was there, but his behaviors later in life suggest either childhood abuse trauma or some sort of cognitive dysfunction. The psychology of sadism is not well-documented, but a number of studies have agreed that those people typically have cognitive abnormalities.
One of the effects of a lack of empathy is a difficulty or inability for sadists/abusers to process victim-related information. This lines up with some reviews I found about 120 Days saying that it was easiest to identify with the victims when it was mostly Sade listing the events instead of trying to tell a story. For Sade, who likely couldn’t empathize, turning the victims into characters in a story may have made it easier for him to process the information, whereas for us, the readers, who can empathize, seeing the victims as story characters could make it more difficult to process their experience.
One final thought. The word “sadism”, the tendency to derive pleasure, including sexual gratification, from inflicting pain or humiliation on others, has its roots in Marquis de Sade’s last name. Think about that. His actions were so despicable, so inhumane, so unique, that a new word was invented to describe him.