Sadism in The Nude Orchard. Perversion as the structure of Polishness

Abstract

The first part of the article investigates perspective of perversion employed in the analysis of the Polish collective psychology in its pathologies identified in books of Jan Sowa, Andrzej Leder and Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz. The category of perversion itself is reconstructed chiefly after works of Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze. In our opinion, the cultural model of Pole is the pervert. Depending on the social class, he is a sadist or a masochist, as opposed to a psychotic or a classical Oedipal neurotic. The category of perversion allows for the explanation of an ambivalent relationship between the Polishness and the State; the relationship which is neither a simple rejection (such as a psychosis) nor an unequivocal affirmation (such as a neurosis).
The second and the third part are case-studies: in a collective psychology of the heroes of Rymkiewicz’s essays and in an individual psychology of the heroes of The Nude Orchard (pol. Nagi sad) by Wiesław Myśliwski. This juxtaposition shows the difference in perception of the same phenomenon, i.e. sadism – the difference between the point of view from within the mind affirmatively indentifying with the perverse attitude (Rymkiewicz) and the distanced point of view of a neurotic (Myśliwski). It also allows for grasping the isomorphism of structures behind these twoperceptions.