I like emotions, but I really don't like sentimentality, and I don't like when things break their spell.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
The knowledge that there is a part of the psychic functions that are out of conscious reach, we did not need to wait for Freud to know this!