ABSTRACT
In her novel, The sacred and profane love machine (1976), Iris Murdoch tells the story of a husband who falls in love with another woman and decides he needs both her and his wife in his life. He admits that he is a ‘pure egoist’ in this desire, and supposes that most men probably are; nevertheless, he found himself faced with a ‘love which involves with the flesh all the most refined sexual being of the spirit, which reveals and perhaps even ex nihilo creates spirit as sex’. 1 Having confessed to his wife – finally told her the truth after years of deceit and fear – the husband accedes to a sense of freedom: he feels much better, empowered now to do his’duty’ by both wife and mistress. When Murdoch has the husband proclaim, ‘Men who are failures often disguise their castration fears as a desire to engulf everything. When you’ve swallowed the world there’s nothing left to be frightened of. It’s the pattern of the failed artist’, we are shown him – a psychotherapist by profession – as ultimately foolish: still deceiving himself concerning the full extent of his self-centredness and hypocrisy. 2
