Below I share an excerpt from Liz Green’s book, “Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption,” which I find particularly valuable because it shows some very important distinctions between the sick manifestations of masochism and the healthy forms of the quest for redemption.
“Defining masochism solely as a pathology is a lopsided and simplistic approach to a highly complex issue. When confronted its complexity, we are particularly handicapped by its inextricable entanglement to the idea of suffering as a means of coming nearer God, cherished troughtout our Western religious history…
The essence of masochism is the intimate relationship between pain and pleasure…
It is the seeking or pursuit of mental or physical pain, discomfort or humiliation, when displeasure becomes satisfying or pleasurable; but either the seeking or the pleasure, or both, may be unconscious. Indeed, frequently the masochist, unaware of his own agency and satisfaction, is conscious only of the suffering that is experienced as imposed from outside by fate or others, who are angrily blamed for the pain.
When we penetrate beyond the veil of this characteristically Neptunian manner of dealing with powerful but unacceptable drives and desires, we enter the domain of the infant.
But the complicated childhood patterns of the masochistic personality are intermingled with the nobler aspirations of Neptune in a manner often very difficult to disetangle. A longing to heal the suffering of humanity can coincide with a longing to heal the suffering of the mother as well as the suffering of one’s infancy.
Neptune’s sensitivity to the suffering of others is a psychological fact, as evident in childhood as in adulthood.
Through the eyes of the child, all the world is full of suffering, because the mother is the world at the beginning of life. There is no cure save to relinquish one’s own emotional needs, in order to achieve a semblance of safety in the environment.
Because the young Neptunian intuits unspoken cues as a good actor intuits the ebb and flow of audience interest, it is precisely this emotionally gifted child who will suffer most from the overly needy mother. The message is clear enough: Do not exist apart from me, for without you I have nothing and am nothing, and you are the only salvation for my misery and loneliness. What receptive child could resist such a plea? Certainly not the Neptune’s children. Identification with the mother also means identification with her suffering.
One of the deeper dimensions of “moral masochism” is that one dare not be happy, because that means leaving the original mother-child unity based on shared victimisation and disappointment. Achieving something with your own life is an act of separation; and it is extremely difficult to part from what one has never had.
Thus the Neptunian child may assume the onerous task of redeeming the mother. This can become a theme in adult life where identification with the victim-saviour leades the individual to try to “save” a damaged or ill partner. One may be drawn from the field to helping professions that are temperamentally unsuitable or which crush the spirit through overwork, frustration, or intolerable bureaucracy – simply because one feels compelled to save a suffering parent who is secretly an infant herself. This is the darker dimension of Neprune’s urge to heal, and it often reflects a mother who has passed onto her child’s shoulders the mantle of the redeemer.
Whether formulated in conventional religious language or in sociological terms, the combination of altruism and infantilism operates in complex ways within the individual identified with the archetypal victim-redeemer. It takes a certain amount of courage to adopt this deeper perspective, because self-sacrifice is generally viewed by the collective as the noblest of acts. Stuart Asch comments chat it has been institutionalised by the Church for many centuries in the form of a doctrine of renunciation and suffering in this world in exchange for rewards in the next; and thus it manages, if the believer is miserable enough, to both assuage guilt and produce a species of narcissistic gratification at the same time.
The problem we face here is the distinction between a compassion which readily identifies with suffering in others, responding with a desire co heal or comfort even ar one’s own expense, and a masochism which dictates that such a response must be absolute and preclude any personal fulfillment or joy. It is finding a balance which is so tricky, and which is such an individual affair. There are no guidelines for ‘’normality” here. But no balance of any kind can be found if the masochistic dimension of self-sacrifice is not explored…
How truly blurred is the line between the spiritual and the erotic, and between self-sacrifice and masochism…
The religious ecstasy of suffering is generally linked with the millenarian vision, for the sufferer consciously or unconsciously awaits the Day of Judgement when the wicked will be punished and the innocent given power over the world.
The shame which so often forms a part of Neptune’s psychology, is a profound recognition of human flawedness and inadequacy. It is connected with humility, rather than humiliation. Humility makes possible compassion and a sense of human fellowship. Self-humiliation, which is the product of the darker and more infantile side of Neptune, can disguise itself as humility; yet it usually results in someone else eventually being humiliated instead, as the more sadistic unconscious fantasies of the gentle Neptunian suggest.”
Source, Greene, Liz. The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption
