The Pleasures of Cruelty

Cruelty is a fundamental part of existence and is always pleasurable.

There is a growing realization in psychoanalysis that cruelty is a fundamental structural part of existence and human life. In her book Cruelty, Sexuality, and the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis, Touria Mignotte relates Freud's opinion that "hatred is more primordial than love and that he relates it not to sexuality but, from the outset, to the drives of…