14 - paraphilias - part 5

• Donatein was quite young to have been uprooted so many times. He was 10 years old when he was enrolled at the prep school. Although the Jesuits had a remarkable reputation as educators, they were infamous for their practices involving sodomy and corporal punishment. The Jesuits would beat, whip, or flog the young boys in front of an assembled student body to humiliate them. The humility of the beatings, oddly enough, could also be sexually arousing. This practice came to be known as sado-masochistic behavior. As an adult, the Marquis de Sade was unable to be aroused by normal sex, so it appeared that his sexuality was arrested at the infantile anal stage.
• After 4 years with the Jesuits, Donatein was transferred to a military academy upon this father's request. In 1755, shortly following his arrival, Donatein served in the King's light cavalry regiment as a sub leutenant. He was only 15 years old at the time. The young Marquis served in the war and was considered a brave and decisive leader. Unsatisfied with Donatein's success in the cavalry, his father had him placed with a cavalry company commanded by one of the members of the royal family. Donatein's bravery, good looks, and social charm made him a very successful soldier. His superiors were quite impressed by the Marquis; therefore, he was promoted to captain at the young age of 18. Donatein seemed able to impress everyone but his own father. His father never praised his son for his many accomplishments, yet had no difficulty pointing out his shortcomings.
• When the Marquis de Sade returned from the war in 1763, he had his sights set on a particular lady whom he wished to marry. However, his father was opposed to the union. Instead, he arranged for the Marquis to marry her elder sister, Renee-Pelagie de Montrieul. The couple had 3 children, 2 boys and a girl.
• The same year the couple was married, the Marquis de Sade frequently traveled away from home for "business" reasons. While away on his travels, he rented several different maisons around Paris where orgies were held. One particularly disturbing encounter took place between the Marquis and a young prostitute. After he was alone with her, he quizzed the young prostitute about her religious convictions regarding the Roman Catholic Church. When he discovered that she was a faithful Roman Catholic, he began degrading her with inconceivable vile insults.
  
  To the young woman's horror, he proceeded to perform sexually explicit acts on her with the aid of religious objects that were extremely blasphemous and sacrilegious in nature. When the young prostitute refused his request to beat each other with a hot whip, he pleasured himself sexually with a pair of crucifixes. Then he held her at knife point, forcing her to repeat vulgarities in the most blasphemous manner. This resulted in the Marquis de Sade's first imprisonment; however, his lewd and debaucherous behavior would result in numerous other imprisonments during his lifetime. He died in 1814 and was buried in Charenton. Later his skull was removed from the grave for phrenological examination.

13 - paraphilias - part 4

• Donatein's mother was a distant cousin to the Prince de Conde, a junior branch of the royal Bourbon family. She served as a lady in waiting to the Princess de Conde and was a governess to her son, the young Prince de Conde. An early account of Donatein's violent nature involved an altercation between he and his young cousin over a toy. When the young Prince tried to retrieve one of his favorite toys from the grasp of his 4-year-old cousin, Donatein pummeled his cousin with increasing blows of violence. Soon after this incident, the young Marquis was sent to live with his paternal grandmother in Avignon.
• The troubled young boy spent his formative years in Avignon surrounded by female relatives who indulged his every need and enveloped him with sensual affection. Donatein's grandmother and aunts continually doted on the child and indulged every one of his selfish demands. There was no mention of discipline in the boy's upbringing. These actions were only detrimental to the child's development; consequently, his behavior became increasingly unruly. When the Comte de Sade (Donatein's father) received report of his son's unconventional upbringing, the young Marquis was sent to live with his father's brother. The Comte hoped that his brother, Abbe de Sade, would be able to provide a masculine presence and influence that was obviously lacking in Donatein's life.
• Abbe de Sade was a noted author, clergyman, and scholar of his time. He was also very much like his sisters in the sense that he enjoyed the sensual side of life and indulged himself with many pleasures. He was referred to as "sybarite of Saumane" meaning one inordinately attached to pleasure and luxury. Once again the young boy was in an atmosphere that encouraged sexuality and sensual indulgence as an expectation rather that an exception to the rule. During Donatein's stay at his uncle's home, the abbe housed many female companions which included a local prostitute.
• Throughout this period of time in Europe, men and women of the cloth, indulged themselves in various sexual escapades with little remorse. There was rumor of orgies taking place in abbeys and convents, where priests, nuns, prostitutes, and nobles all engaged in debaucherous behavior. Abbe de Sade had a library filled with a genre of literature, and some were pornographic in nature. Donatein was free to read all of the literature in the library at his leisure. After becoming abreast of the ever present debauchery in Donatein's life, his father moved him to Paris where he was enrolled in a Jesuit prep school for young men of nobility.