Freedom and Anxiety

In the tradition of psychoanalysis, we work with the assumption that people have motivations and beliefs that are unconscious and that primary bonds (i.e., bonds a child has with parents) are severed in the individualization process and the result is the facing of the world as a separate entity that experiences the inherent grief of separateness and powerlessness (see e.g., Lacan). 

This anxiety of freedom is also at the basis of existentialist thought shared by, for instance, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. For Camus, the focus is on the realization of the absurdity of the human condition that is searching for meaning in an uncaring universe: The need to understand life that cannot be fulfilled - a question without an answer. In Fromm’s words this is expressed that people are “free in a negative sense: alone with themselves and confronting an alien, hostile world.”

In the face of this existential anguish people either realize themselves in the world or panic in the face of its weight and try to escape . One way of escape, offered by Fromm, is the adoption of the authoritarian attitude to find a quick fix: The giving up of one’s self and independence, and fusing the self with another self  or something else to compensate for the lacking and loneliness of the self at the root of the anxiety. In other words, the escape is backwards by trying to replace the primary bonds of childhood dependence on parents with secondary, but similar, bonds. This, however, is not ever truly possible (Lacan again), and such attempts will perpetuate a cycle of neuroticism. 

Sado-masochism

At the core of such escape attempts are sadistic and masochistic tendencies, since both attempts at escaping the unbearable aloneness. Masochistic and sadistic tendencies are always found in the same characters, since they fulfill the same need. Hence, sado-masochism. However, the extent to which each is present oscillates, but people can be characterized mostly as either one over the other. Thus, they both coexist and conflict with each other in a struggle to want to feel independent and strong and the feelings of powerlessness and insignificance found at the core of these characters. 

While sadism and masochism both seek completion from symbiosis of the self with the self of another in complete dependence, the difference is that in masochistic tendencies one abandons the self for another, whereas in sadistic tendencies the parts of the self lacking are “filled” by absorbing another via dominance. Indeed, masochism abandons the self and sadism attempts to fill it with something that will fix what is perceived as a lack. Moreover, both sadism and masochism entail two forms that are always found together in individuals: bodily and moral. Moral sado-masochism is found in correlation with the sexual, bodily sado-masochism, in which the “perversions” are the sexual expression of a masochistic character. 

A little Freud reading here as a treat: He thought that people have the options of either destroying themselves or others if they fail to amalgamate destructiveness in sex. So get kinky or kill or get killed I guess.

Masochism

Being two sides of the same coin, and always found in the same individual, let us still characterize them separately beginning with masochism. Masochism stems from feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, and insignificance. Masochists often make themselves weak and do not master things. They destroy all their egos aim towards. They try to eliminate the burden of their anxiety: the self. In the physical sense, this can culminate in hurting oneself and making oneself suffer. In this quest to make oneself small and disappear in the face of unbearable aloneness, suicidal fantasy is the final solution to solving the posed problem.

The other side of masochism in addition to the extermination of the self is the desire for capability and power. However, it is seen as absent from the self and is found in becoming a part of an external, bigger, more powerful whole, such as other people, institutions, god, or some virtue or conscience. Thus, masochists attempt to embody something powerful while abandoning the self. With such external sources of authority and power, the masochistic person becomes free of making choices, and free from having to decide the fate of himself, free from doubt about who he is - they are determined by the greater whole he has become part of. 

Sadism

Sadistic tendencies are found in the same type of characters that embody masochistic tendencies. Just like the core of masochism is not to get hurt but to submit the self away, the core of sadism is not to hurt but to dominate and control others; To become God, while masochists want to find something to be their God. However, we must make a distinction over wielding power and dominating others here: Power has a twofold meaning, potency and domination. Thus, will to power is not inherently the will to dominate at the root of sadism. 

While masochists rationalize their character by seeing their feelings of inferiority as based on truth and evidence, sadists also rationalize their feelings in ways such as “I’m wonderful, so it makes sense for me to control over people” and more extreme ones, such as “by striking first I’m defending myself,” but these are rationalizations - not the essences of these behaviors. This is common in parent-children relationships in which it is assumed the parent knows better and stunts the child’s attempts at individualization and self search. This results in children like these becoming afraid of “love”, since they conceptualize it as being blocked from their own freedom. 

The Authoritarian

Masochists depend on external power structures, such as powerful people or institutions. They do not assert themselves or do what they want, but tide their actions over to factual or alleged orders of outside forces. Thus, the sado-masochistic character can be found in the authoritarian character, who admires authority, submits to it, but at the same time wants authority for himself and others to subject to it. For instance in finding power in institutions and joining them at the willing sacrifice of the self. 

A characteristic of the authoritarian is that he loves beyond anything being submitted to fate, the conviction that life is determined by powers outside of the self. His heroism is the submitting to fate, not trying to change it. He sees himself to lack an offensive potency that he can find in being subservient to another, strong power, like in joining an organization to assert the power he sees as himself lacking. 

For the authoritarian, equality does not exist - the word is empty for him for it is outside his emotional experience. The world is composed of people with and without power. The irony in this is that these powers are completely subjective, which makes authority relationships dissolve when the authoritarian perceives weakness in their powerful subject. This often then turns into an antagonistic relationship of the authoritarian to the entity he had been attached to previously. Thus, those with mostly sadistic tendencies are dependent on their subjects, masochists, while dependent on a subject, will find themselves abandoning their conceptualized sources of power when they see them as weak and adopt an antagonistic relationship to perceived weakness. 

The Emotional Child

A milder form of the same need for dependency and abandonment of the self that does not necessarily take on sado-masochistic character is the need for a “magical helper”. For those in need of a magic helper, their whole lives are in relation to a power outside themselves driven by the inability to stand alone and express their individual potentialities. In the lack of reliance on the self, they need an external source of protection, guidance, and help that will never leave them. This can take on a personified form in a god or another person, but the need for the magical helper exists a priori before the personification of one. However, the embodiment of these qualities is a “magic helper” that is imbued with magical qualities. The one requiring the helper hopes to get everything one expects from life through the magical helper instead of their own actions. 

Often, the one in need of the helper becomes dependent himself on the helper in the sense that he asks himself questions in striving for the helper to not leave like “would he be displeased with this?”, “agree with that?”, “scold me for that?”. Moreover, in its dependant nature, for him his life becomes about manipulating the helper not to leave, how to make the helper do what one wants, how to make the helper responsible for the things one ought to be responsible for oneself. In essence, these people are not emotionally mature enough to realize their selves and look for an authority figure like a parent. Indeed, the need for a magic helper often stems from parents stunting children's strivings for individuality and the building of the concept of the self. For these people, there is no feeling or thought not colored by the need to manipulate the helper, there is truly no act that is spontaneous and free. 

Vegas and Pete

Pete

Masochistic tendencies in Pete are fairly obvious, but he expresses them explicitly in their core in the moment of vulnerability when he asks for Vegas to kill him and the self-harm that preceded it: ““Kill me”, “I got nothing, not even my humanity left”, “I’ve always been useless - I don’t exist - I have no feelings”. These are the active mental elimination of the self in this masochistic drive and they end in the ultimatum of suicidal ideation. 

Pete is a capable bodyguard, but does not seem ambitious in it - he seems content with occupying a position of power and not mastering it in the way masochists make themselves weak and do not aim to succeed, and yet try to find external sources of power, like, well, the mafia. By being in the mob, Pete can embody the power and strength masochists strive for while becoming free of deciding who he is and making choices: someone tells him to kill and main, Pete kills and maims. Someone tells him to watch series he doesn’t like? Pete watches. He has power and yet he does not exist. 

However, these masochistic drives are always a temporary solution and compulsory neuroticism, which is why you see its metastable nature between this abandonment of the self and the drive to power. For instance, right after making himself nothing in opening up to Vegas, he changes his tone: “I’m a human, I have feelings”, “I’m not for emotional projection” and punches the fuck out of Vegas and goes back to the main family - his source of power. This conflict is present when he questions himself about having had sex with Vegas: “I don’t like it”, he slaps himself and asks, “Then why didn’t I say no?”, with which he acknowledges he made the choice to have sex and that in saying yes he raises for himself the question: “So did I like it?”. Masochism is pleasure in abandoning the self so it makes sense he’s feeling both well and true. 

However, with the masochism there’s always the sadism and Pete is a manifestation of the authoritarian attitude: He joined the mafia, to which he submits and from which he gains himself authority and the possibility to dominate others by the way of finding from it the offensive capabilities he seems himself to lack otherwise. He even offers his solution to Vegas when he asks Vegas to give himself to Korn and submit to the main family: If Vegas is so struggling with being seen as powerless and pointless, then he can also become powerful through the abandonment of the self and embodying that external power without having to fight for it. For Pete there are no good or bad guys, there is only power and the lack of it, so it does not matter where it comes from - unlike for Vegas. 

From the authoritarian attitude we find the highest virtue of being submitted to fate, to the conviction of a life determined by the powers outside of the self in Pete’s emotions: “I just live in the present,” “What I’m feeling, that’s all I think about,” and “You have to accept who you are” imply that Pete submits to his whims instead of engaging in an agentic manner in his own life. No wonder he feels like an animal without a sense of self: for Pete, his immediate feelings are the guiding fate that tells him the truth. 

Since authoritarians are prone to changing their sources of power into more attractive ones when they perceive weakness in previous ones, it raises the question whether Pete was always attracted to that power in Vegas and the minor family: Their outright violence and brutality in comparison to what appear bureaucrats in comparison. Did a change occur in his subjective view of the main family, Kinn and Tankhun, as becoming weaker when he saw Vegas use power over him? These are not necessarily rational sentiments, and often rooted in childhood, so Vegas using a power like Pete’s father used to have over him and Pete understanding violence as power, it would make sense for him to register that as power. However, Pete demonstrates he is an independent self apart from his father in that he knows his fathers opinion of him does not matter - there is no enmeshment.  

Vegas

The sado-masochistic character is obvious in Vegas as well. The weakness, powerlessness and feelings of insignificance are, funnily enough, very Freudian in their emergence: “Who’s weak?” when Pete calls him sensitive, him calling Pete “acting weak” when Pete is having his breakdown. He is extremely sensitive to being seen as weak and in the authoritarian manner blames it all on external circumstances: He’s weak because he is in the minor family and everything he feels due to that is caused by and the fault of the main family: “Isn’t my life like this because of them?”

When he is presented by Pete with Pete’s solution to the anguish of freedom (joining the main family), Vegas is faced with the concept of having a choice, which threatens his understanding of his self as completely dictated by outside forces. This directs him to look at the weakness he feels and Vegas is a character who cannot face himself. Having his gaze directed into himself instead of the outside world, he gets instantly reactive and that sadistic tendency kicks into basically overdrive and turns into abusing Pete.

Clearly, despite the instances of self-harm and self-berating, the sadistic character is more prevalent in Vegas: He dominates and controls people to create that symbiosis of the self with another and by absorbing the targets of his sadism, they “fill” his sense of self. The perfect example, outside the obvious, is the way he attempts to dominate both sexually (proxyfucking) and emotionally Kinn’s love interests, because by doing so he can gain something over Kinn for his self’s fulfillment. Moreover, according to Fromm, it is quintessential of the sadistic character to try to drive their object away, but when it becomes a real threat, they break down and plead, because they are dependent on them: Pete with the knife. 

What makes Vegas’ case particularly interesting is the enmeshment with his father. His situation is, to me, clear narcissistic abuse, in the sense that he has always been a tool and an extension of his father and never his own person. When you’re an extension of a parent instead of seen as an actual human, the mind has no option except to perceive the self through the Other. You feel as if you are how your parent sees you and how you make the parent look. This does not enable the development of a separate sense of self, this type of self keeps looking out for attachments and other selves to see itself through. Because of this, the sadistic character is the natural option: The self is not abandoned, but in constant connection and augmentation and in view to the other selves it attaches to. You can only abandon the dependent self masochistically as a joint entity with another: You merge the self with the subject and abandon that by sadism. 

The disruption of the developmental process is what makes Vegas an emotional child . The undeveloped self looks for the magical helper in its object, which can be seen first in his father when he asks: “What do you want me to do?”. However, naturally, there is the conflict and struggle of the self trying to form in these circumstances and the will to power when he tries to create the self “hidden” from his father in his plans hidden from his father. And later on, this helper becomes personified in Pete. This becomes clear when he begins to look for Pete for the responsibility and confirmation of his experiences. When after they have had sex, Vegas says “I thought I was a freak” and expects Pete to make himself (Vegas) okay for him. He goes to Pete for emotional regulation after getting slapped by his dad. And most importantly, everything for Vegas becomes about not losing Pete after the personification has happened: He looks worried when Pete reacts “wrong” to Vegas calling him a fool, he begs for Pete not to leave, he goes after him. Every action becomes about having access to the magic helper, both in manipulating the personification as well as constant self-scrutiny over how Vegas is being perceived by Pete.

VegasPete

In the instance when Pete tells Vegas it’s “his choice” to choose his loyalties, we see the main difference in these characters in whether it is masochism or sadism that comes out on top. Vegas is incapable of looking at himself and thus he cannot have a sense of a self to abandon, he cannot find his self-hatred and thus tries to fill it from the outside compulsively. Pete, on the other hand, has a sense of self, he knows how he feels and admits it to himself, “I’ve always been worthless”, thus he has a whole self to abandon and thus, masochism becomes possible for him in a way it is not possible for Vegas to abandon a self he does not have. 

Moreover, this stability of the self sets them apart in the progression in the same journey: Recovering from parental abuse. Pete still feels worthless and alone, but he has gained a sense of self. Vegas feels worthless and alone, but is making haphazard attachments with his self. In this sense, Pete knows where Vegas’ mind is, his mental state, because he has likely been there himself at some point. He knows what is emotional projection - the enmeshment - and calls Vegas out for it when he sees it, while Vegas likely does not know what that is, for him the world simply exists like that and there’s no special concept to call it. 

The “it’s not fun if you don’t give in” part could be seen from the sadistic perspective in wanting to have confirmation of the power of the object of sadism: Confirmation that they want you and you have that power over them. However, that’s not the case since Vegas is evidently surprised by Pete’s kiss, and thus, he was expecting something else: rejection. He just talked about how everything leaves him. Here his masochistic side comes into play and he wants confirmation for his trauma: he’s trying to make Pete leave after Pete initially stayed. He wants to confirm his worthlessness and loneliness, but when that doesn’t happen, we witness Vegas’ immediate and complete infatuation with Pete: Pete becomes the personified magical helper.

Vegas would honestly rather die than be without Pete, he thinks it would be best if he was killed by Pete and maybe even is waiting for Pete to kill him. Pete, on the other hand, could find other places to submit to and has that power over Vegas. Pete would have been completely okay not seeing Vegas after the safehouse, even accounting for the conflict he felt over it. He did tell Vegas to get out of his life, and would have let him leave. Vegas needs his personified magical helper, while Pete needs a place for losing himself and gaining external power.

Furthermore, Pete has emotional maturity Vegas does not have, and a clear as day view into where Vegas is at and is capable of pulling those strings should he want to. This has implications in that there is all possibility for Pete to come to see Vegas as lacking and powerless in which he would come to abandon Vegas as a submission project. On the other hand, he can find a place to turn to sadism and “fill” his own self with the power he once saw in the minor family and Vegas himself by dominating Vegas with his emotional advantage.

Frequently sado-masochism is confounded with love. Self-denial for the sake of another person and the surrender are seen as great love. However, this “love” is only just masochistic yearning and rooted in a symbiotic need of another person involved and the process of personification of a magic helper is often what people refer to as “falling in love” often accompanied with sexual desires. According to Fromm, actual love is the passionate affirmation and active relatedness to the essence of a particular person, the union with another person on the basis of independence and integrity. If love is based on equality and freedom - then love and masochism are opposites. Thus, what is present is not love.

And so I have managed to make myself sad over this ship. The possibilities for Pete to become abusive or continue his own abuse. Vegas finding someone to stay only out of masochistic yearning and not love and never getting to experience his self as a whole. Possibilities for Pete never overcoming his slavery to his whims and feelings. Even his choice at the end to follow Vegas could be seen as something he saw himself forced to do because of his feelings. Even Vegas’ declaration of Pete being the most important thing for him being rooted in a need for a magical helper. 

But that’s not what is compelling about this ship and these characters, because we get to see something beyond these compulses. And compulses are exactly what they are. While they can overtake so many aspects of these characters, no one is only a caricature of an archetype and everyone has needs of belonging and being respected that are yearned for. Compulses only sabotage these attempts, but accepting the self is always in the realm of possibilities. So it is also for Vegas and Pete. 

In the tub, being tended to by Porsche and later eating noodles, we see Pete grapple with conflicting emotions. He’s reflecting on himself and what he had experienced was too raw to talk about. When he chose to leave the main family, maybe he was choosing to abandon himself, but he is making a choice. He chose after reflecting on how he was feeling. He chose Vegas who had just lost everything, his power. Pete made a choice away from institutional power and into a power he saw crumble before his eyes when Vegas laid lifeless on the ground.

Vegas is capable of care. We see it with Macau, his hedgehog, when he was cooking for Pete. There was no indication of being worried about how the Other was perceiving him, he didn’t appear to be concerned about what Pete would think of his cooking - he just wanted to do something nice. He wanted to do something. And when he reached Pete behind the bar after his escape he recognized Pete as a separate person for the first time: “You know why.” It’s possible he was projecting his own feelings of needing and dependency, but at least to me, he seemed to consider Pete first. Vegas seemed to recognize and understand what Pete meant with emotional projection. This is a smart, broken man, and fast to learn. 

Thus, even with all the obstacles laid before them, there’s hope. There’s the possibility to choose to escape into freedom. Possibilities for them to choose themselves and each other, and, somewhere along the way, gain confidence in their own selves so much that they no longer depend on each other, but choose to rely on each other. And if we were to listen to Mr. Freud on it, that’s going to be all the more likely if they have a healthier, confined to bed, outlet for the yearnings to be free of the self in moments of relief in each other.