The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 1986/3. [antikvár]

NOTES ON MASOCHISM: A DISCUSSION OF THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF A PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPT BY WILLIAM I. GROSSMAN, M.D. The concept of masochism is used in both descriptive and explanatory ways to cover a wide variety of clinical phenomena. Although the concept has been thought to refer to a ubiqiátous, fundamental, and paradoxicai phenomenon, recent discussions reveal growing uncertainty about the clinical value of the term. The origins of the problem are traced here to Freud's early reliance on concepts borrowed from Krafft-Ebing's sexology. Freud later emphasized structural and object-relations issues. This shift of emphasis was associated with the use of child behavior rather than perversion as the prototype of mentái function. INTRODUCTION Psychoanalysis as a method of investigation and masochism as a subject of research came into existence at about the same time. The designation of masochism is about ten years older, depending upon the date one chooses for the beginning of psychoanalysis. As a result, the ideas about the special place of the newly defined perversion in sexuality and mentái life exerted an influence on the development of psychoanalysis. There were many disagreements among Freud's contemporaries in their efforts to delineate and define a syndrome named masochism, Briefer versions of this paper were presented to the New York Psychoanalytic Society as the A. A. Brill Memóriái Lecture on November 29, 1983, to the Ninth Régiónál Conference of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society 011 March 25, 1984, to the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis on April 27, 1984, and to the Centro Psicoanalitico di Roma on April 10, 1985.