Masochism is a form of pleasure obtained through suffering. The term was initially defined by Kraft-Ebbing in his book on sexual perversion, and is derived from the name of the author of Venus in Furs, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Initially considered by Freud as one of the infantile polymorphous perversions present in all human beings, masochism was associated with its opposite, sadism, with which it is generally paired. Although Freud originally saw masochism as deriving from sadism, he reversed this conception with the introduction of the second theory of drives: masochism became primary, the initial fusion of the death instinct with the life instinct, protecting the human being from the self-destruction toward which the death instinct drove it.
In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Freud, referring to a bunch of violets present in a dream, identified, through association with the English term violation, a masochistic character trait in the dreamer. In a 1909 note he refers to unpleasant dreams as satisfying masochistic functions. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901b), Freud for the first time makes a parallel between the hysterical fantasies of sexual cruelty, delusions of persecution (of which Judge Schreber was an illustration), and the deviant behavior perverts engaged in to satisfy their desires.
In his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d), Freud remarked (in a note added in 1910) that the masochistic component of sexual instinct allowed the subject to form an unconscious fixation on the figure of the hypnotist, which accounts for the hypnosis. He then described sadism and masochism, the latter always being derived from the first through a process of reversal—the subject becomes object. Masochism is associated with passivity and sadism with activity. An essential characteristic of the perversions is that the active and passive forms are found in the same individual. Since neurosis is the "negative of perversion," this holds true for every human being. It is the anal-sadistic pregenital phase that clearly reveals the opposition between active and passive, a precursor of the later opposition between masculine and feminine. "The skin functions as an erotogenic zone in the component sexual instincts," and one of the infantile erogenous sources of masochism is the "painful stimulation of the skin of the buttocks" (1905d, p. 193), a phenomenon that has been well known since the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the Three Essays Freud describes libidinal coexcitation, prefiguring what would become erotogenic masochism in 1924.
"Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" (1915c) provides the first full Freudian description of masochism, which is derived from sadism turning back upon itself. First it turns back on the individual—the subject takes the place of the object—then activity turns into passivity. The pair of opposites that is formed is compared to another pair—voyeurism and exhibitionism. Freud, however, must address the following difficulty: although the child's first aggressive acts are directed only at inflicting pain and are associated with self-preservation, he is logically led to consider that it is only when the subject has become capable of reversing his masochism that he can become truly sadistic. Once this component of sexual excitation has been confirmed, the "pains inflicted on other people [can be] enjoyed masochistically by the subject through his identification of himself with the suffering object" (p. 129). There is an even greater satisfaction: The sadist can enjoy the sexual excitation associated with pain without experiencing pain himself. Freud resolves this contradiction with a temporal paradox where two originals are postulated, entailing a strange process of deferral: "The enjoyment of pain would thus be an aim which was originally masochistic, but which can only become an instinctual aim in someone who was originally sadistic" (p. 129).
In "A Child is Being Beaten" (1919e), Freud discusses the "genesis of masochism". This appears to be based on clinical material drawn in part from Freud's analysis of his daughter Anna. Freud maintains there is an initial period of sadism, with a growing tendency toward masochism. Masochism is described as participating in fantasy and autoeroticism, in the repression of oedipal jealousy. Expanding a child's fantasy of punishment, Freud reveals the presence of an oedipal jealousy satisfied through sadism that leads, during a second stage, to a masochistic reversal, which remains unconscious under the influence of guilt: to be beaten by the father. The third stage—that of fantasy—whose protagonists have become anonymous, is sadistic only in appearance; the pleasure is in fact masochistic.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g) Freud notes (in a passage added in 1921) that a traumatic dream could reveal "the mysterious masochistic trends of the ego" (p. 14). For the first time he sees that "there might be such a thing as primary masochism could also be primary" (p. 55). He then connects the negative therapeutic reaction to the feeling of unconscious guilt and its satisfaction through experiencing suffering as punishment.
It is in "The Economic Problem of Masochism" (1924c) that Freud describes his second theory of masochism, now adjusted to accommodate the second topographical subsystem and the new duality of drives that accompanies it: the death and life instincts. Masochism is broken down into erogenous masochism (pleasure in pain), feminine masochism (the expression of the female component in both sexes), and moral masochism (behavior associated with the unconscious feeling of guilt)—the latter two expressions being based on the former.
Original erogenous masochism, or primary masochism, enables the libido's initial control of the death instinct within the individual, thus protecting him from destruction. One part of the death instinct is diverted outward by the libido, giving birth to destructive drives, drives of control, and sadistic drives, by putting it at the service of the sexual function. The other part, which remains within the organism, is bound through libidinal coexcitation; this is the original erogenous masochism. While masochism can, like a "drug" of self-preservation, lead the human being toward death, it is also a means for the libido to bind and thereby contain the death instinct and protect it from self-destruction.
Freud would maintain this model throughout his work and in "Analysis, Terminable and Interminable" (1937c) insisted on the role of masochism in the need for punishment, in the unconscious feeling of guilt in the resistance to treatment, and in the negative therapeutic reaction, thus providing a foothold for modern theorizations of these fundamental problems.
The evolution of Freud's theory of masochism is an integral part of his need to conceptualize a second theory of instincts, "beyond the pleasure principle," and recenter masochism as the foundation of the human psyche.
Benno Rosenberg has insisted on masochism's role as a "guardian of life," promoting survival under extreme external conditions, and as an internal organizer of the psyche. This conception makes masochism a primary kernel of the ego. By emphasizing the "internal" capacity of the psyche to fuse the life and death instincts, and thus organize itself, it contradicts theorizations that promote an external genesis for drives, whether this is reflected in the structuralism promoted by Jacques Lacan, the generalized seduction of Jean Laplanche, or the claims of "object relations" theory. Lacan was not unaware of erogenous masochism, which he referred to as "jouissance." Similarly, in the case of female femininity and maternity, female masochism served as a powerful impetus for the ego.
Karl Abraham and Melanie Klein made extensive use of the concept of sadism in their treatment of sado-masochism. For Klein, who agreed with Freud's formulation of the second theory of drives, sadism soon came to embody the destructiveness of the death drive, which can be compared to the prevalence and precocity of projection in her theorization.
Edmund Bergler provided an original contribution to the theory of masochism, which he felt played an early, and significant, role in the development of libidinal stages. His theory of what he termed basic neurosis was based on oral masochism, the underlying structure for all other mental structures.
Bibliography
Bergler, Edmund. (1949). The basic neurosis—oral regression and psychic masochism. New York: Grune and Stratton.
Freud, Sigmund. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.
——. (1915c). Instincts and their vicissitudes. SE, 14: 109-140.
——. (1924c). The economic problem of masochism. SE, 19: 155-170.
Rosenberg, Benno. (1991). Masochisme mortifère et masochisme gardien de la vie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
—DENYS RIBAS
