The depth-psychology corpus approaches domination and submission not as a singular perversion or a fixed clinical entity but as a polysemous psychic structure that ramifies across eroticism, political psychology, mystical theology, and developmental theory. Fromm’s sustained analysis in Escape from Freedom remains the most architecturally ambitious treatment: he reads the sadomasochistic dyad as the psychological substrate of authoritarianism itself, a flight from unbearable freedom into either absolute power over others or ecstatic self-surrender to a superior force. This formulation positions dominance and submission as complementary poles of the same symbiotic character structure, not as opposites. Perel, writing from a clinical-erotic standpoint, reframes the same polarity: consensual rituals of domination and submission function as a subversive technology for eroticizing precisely those power dynamics that egalitarian culture forbids naming. Abraham supplies the metapsychological scaffolding, tracing the domination–submission axis to component instincts that, without sublimation, crystallize into sadism and masochism respectively. Corbin introduces an esoteric dimension, finding in Ibn Arabi’s Sufi metaphysics a sacred homology—loving domination and loving submission—that structures the very hierarchy of being. Hillman excavates the etymological depth: Western language has lordship and subjugation built into the word ‘power’ itself. Taken together, these voices reveal domination and submission as a constitutive tension in human psychic life, never merely behavioral, always revealing something about selfhood, freedom, and the longing for union.
One surrenders one’s own self and renounces all strength and pride connected with it, one lose one’s integrity as an individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges.
Fromm identifies submission to an overwhelming power as a masochistic escape from freedom in which self-integrity is traded for borrowed security and identity.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
One is to make others dependent on oneself and to have absolute and unrestricted power over them, so as to make of them nothing but instruments, ‘clay in the potter’s hand.’
Fromm delineates the sadistic pole of the domination–submission dyad as a compulsive need to reduce the other to an instrument, paired systematically with masochistic tendencies in the same character structure.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
Rituals of domination and submission are a subversive way to put one over on a society that glorifies control, belittles dependency, and demands equality.
Perel argues that erotic domination and submission serve as a culturally subversive enactment of power differentials that egalitarian ideology suppresses, accounting for their growing mainstream appeal.
, Mating in captivity sex, lies and domestic bliss, 2007thesis
It was filled with a craving for submission to as well as for domination over those who were powerless. These feelings were used by an entirely different class for a regime which was to work for their own interests.
Fromm demonstrates how the psychological coupling of submission-craving and domination-craving in the anxious lower middle class became the psychic raw material exploited by Nazi political power.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
Gahr and ma-habba, loving domination and loving submission, homologous to rubibiya and ‘ubiidiya… the structure of each being is represented as an unus ambo.
Corbin locates a sacred metaphysical archetype of domination and submission in Suhrawardi’s and Ibn Arabi’s esoteric hierarchies, where these poles constitute the ontological structure of every being as an interdependent duality.
, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
Dominus (our dominate, dominant) is the lord, the master, the possessor… already hierarchy and subordination, even despotism, are built into this idea of power.
Hillman traces the etymology of ‘power’ to reveal that domination and subordination are not aberrations but the very conceptual foundations of the Western idea of agency and action.
, Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses, 1995thesis
The one impels the individual to dominate his sexual object, the other to submit to its will. Feelings of pity, horror, etc., originate from the sublimation of these tendencies. If sublimation does not take place we get the perversions called sadism and masochism respectively.
Abraham frames domination and submission as paired component instincts whose fate determines whether the outcome is sublimated affect or overt sadistic and masochistic perversion.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927thesis
Nature is the great power we have to submit to, but living beings are the ones we should dominate… the craving for power over men and the longing for submission to an overwhelmingly strong outside power.
Fromm identifies Hitler’s ideology as the clearest expression of the authoritarian character’s fundamental polarity: domination of weaker beings paired with masochistic submission to an overwhelming natural or historical force.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
The sadist wants to dominate his object and therefore suffers a loss if his object disappears… ‘loving’ sadism has found classical expression in Balzac’s Lost Illusions.
Fromm distinguishes sadism from pure destructiveness by emphasizing the sadist’s dependency on the dominated object, illustrating the paradoxical bond at the heart of the domination–submission structure.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
What pathology, several participants asked, might underlie the man’s need to sexually objectify his wife, and her desire for bondage in the first place?
Perel documents the prevailing clinical reflex to pathologize erotic domination and submission, a bias she proceeds to interrogate and complicate throughout her analysis.
, Mating in captivity sex, lies and domestic bliss, 2007supporting
The very dynamics of power and control that can be challenging in an emotional relationship can, when eroticized, become highly desirable.
Perel argues that eroticization transforms the threatening relational dynamics of power and control—including dependency, surrender, and aggression—into sources of pleasure rather than conflict.
, Mating in captivity sex, lies and domestic bliss, 2007supporting
The only possible happiness lies in the submission to these forces. The powerlessness of man is the leitmotif of masochistic philosophy.
Fromm identifies submission to extra-human forces as the defining axiom of authoritarian-masochistic philosophy, anchoring the submission pole of the dyad to a broader ideology of human powerlessness.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
What the concept of equality does not mean is that all men are alike… Positive freedom also implies the principle that there is no higher power than this unique individual self.
Fromm contrasts authentic positive freedom—grounded in individual self-realization—with the pseudo-solidarity of domination-submission structures, arguing that true equality is not uniformity but the precondition for escaping the sadomasochistic bind.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
Participants are typically submissive, or dominant; they like to be hurt, or do the hurting, respectively… status… raising our social status, being better than others, elicits a positive emotional reaction.
Burnett offers a neuropsychological account of BDSM’s domination–submission dynamic, connecting it to the brain’s status-reward and social-bonding pathways rather than pathology.
, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023supporting
Compliance or rebellion and acquiescence or domination are usually the only options available in these patients’ limited repertoire of responses… relationships degenerate into sadomasochistic patterns.
Flores identifies the domination–submission binary as the impoverished relational vocabulary of substance abusers whose attachment failures have foreclosed the capacity for genuine mutuality.
, Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004supporting
The psychological impact of subordination to coercive control may have many common features, whether that subordination occurs within the public sphere of politics or within the private sphere of sexual and domestic relations.
Herman extends the submission pole into clinical trauma theory, arguing that coercive domination produces structurally equivalent psychological damage across political captivity and intimate domestic abuse.
, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992supporting
‘People want nothing at all, except to be governed decently’… how weak and empty he feels unless he has power over somebody and how this power gives him new strength.
Fromm cites Goebbels’ own account to illustrate the sadistic character’s structural dependency on having dominion over others, demonstrating the hollow core of the dominating position.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
For others, where a partner has a history of being controlling, the domination often starts when dating. However, as with Anisha, for many couples the glaze of new love seems to cover up the true meaning of the controlling behavior.
Shapiro observes, from a trauma-processing perspective, that controlling domination in relationships is often masked by early romantic idealization, surfacing destructively as intimacy deepens.
, Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy, 2012aside
Previously, they had acted out fantasies of domination and submission; now, following the birth of their second child, the wife wanted more conventional sex.
Perel introduces a clinical case in which the emergence of parenthood disrupts established domination–submission erotic dynamics, opening the broader inquiry into how power-laden fantasies interact with relational context.
, Mating in captivity sex, lies and domestic bliss, 2007aside
The woman was enslaved by the lord, and the children were cowed into submission. The peasants who toiled around the castle (the instinctual contents of the psyche) were admitted to the castle under strict supervision.
Rudhyar employs the imagery of feudal domination and submission as a structural metaphor for the ego’s tyrannical control over unconscious instinctual life in European psychological history.