Disgust can be as much part of erotic love as violence although the evocation of disgust has rarely reached the extremes portrayed in the fiction of Marquis de Sade. In de Sade’s stories, erotic unions are routinely preceded, accompanied or followed by the smearing and eating of faeces, drinking of or bathing in urine, the licking of spit and vomit, a reveling in bodily odours – all in the service of heightening the excitement of erotic union. Violence, too, physical or mental, is part of many contemporary depictions of love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sudhir Kakar
Sudhir Kakar is a distinguished writer and psychoanalyst based in Delhi. He has taught at several leading universities in India, Europe and the United States. His many honours include the Goethe Medal, the Boyer Prize of the American Anthropological Association and the Bhaba, Nehru and ICSSR National Fellowships as well as fellowships with the Institutes of Advanced Studies, Princeton and Berlin. His many books, translated into languages round the world, include The Inner World; Shamans, Mystics and Doctors; Tales of Love, Sex and Danger; The Analyst and the Mystic; The Colours of Violence; Culture and Psyche; The Indian Psyche and The Ascetic of Desire.
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