The Clinical Problem Of Masochism

The problem of how to understand and to treat masochism has plagued the vast majority of clinicians. The Clinical Problem of Masochism, edited by Deanna Holtzman, PhD, and Nancy Kulish, PhD, focuses on the common and difficult clinical problems posed by masochistic patients who are spread throughout all diagnostic categories. Foremost psychoanalytic clinicians in the field from various theoretical backgrounds demonstrate their approaches to working clinically with these problems. Each expert provides detailed clinical examples, making their approaches and suggestions come alive. This volume, unique in its varied clinical and practical focus, offers therapists of all theoretical persuasions ideas on how to think about and help individuals suffering from masochistic difficulties.

The problem of how to understand and to treat masochism has plagued the vast majority of clinicians. The Clinical Problem of Masochism, edited by Deanna Holtzman, PhD, and Nancy Kulish, PhD, focuses on the common and difficult clinical problems posed by masochistic patients who are spread throughout all diagnostic categories. Foremost psychoanalytic clinicians in the field from various theoretical backgrounds demonstrate their approaches to working clinically with these problems. Each expert provides detailed clinical examples, making their approaches and suggestions come alive. This volume, unique in its varied clinicaland practical focus, offers therapists of all theoretical persuasions ideas on how to think about and help individuals suffering from masochistic difficulties.

An anthology of essays examining the nature and practice of sexual masochism The contested psychoanalytic concept of masochism has served to open up pathways into less-explored regions of the human mind and behavior. Here, rituals of pain and sexual abusiveness prevail, and sometimes gruesome details of unconscious fantasies are constructed out of psychological pain, desperate need, and sexually excited, self- destructive violence. In this significant addition to the Essential Papers in Psychoanalysis series, Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly presents an anthology of the most outstanding writings in the psychoanalytic study of masochism. In bringing these essays together, Dr. Fitzpatrick Hanly expertly combines classic and contemporary theories by the most respected scholars in the field to create a varied and integrated volume. This collection features papers by S. Nacht, R. Loewenstein, Victor Smirnoff, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Laplanche, Robert Bak, Leonard Shengold, K. Novick, J. Novick, S. Coen, Margaret Brenman, Esther Menaker, S. Lorand, M. Balint, Bernhard Berliner, Charles Brenner, Helene Deutsch, Annie Reich, Marie Bonaparte, Jessica Benjamin, S.L. Olinick, Arnold Modell, Betty Joseph, and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel.

This volume provides an integrative theory firmly grounded in current psychology of the self, and offers a fresh, compelling account of one of psychology's most enigmatic behavior patterns. Professor Baumeister provides comprehensive coverage of historical and cross-cultural theories and empirical data on masochism and presents recent, original data drawn from a large data set of anonymous masochistic scripts of fantasies and favorite experiences. Drawn from the latest social psychological research and theories, Professor Baumeister returns the emphasis to the original and proto-typical form of masochism -- sexual masochism - - and explains these phenomena as a means of releasing the individual from the burden of self-awareness. It is the first volume to present a psychological theory compatible with the mounting evidence that most masochists are not mentally ill nor does masochism derives from sadism. Instead, Professor Baumeister finds that masochism emerges as an escapist response to the problematic nature of selfhood and he attempts to foster an understanding of sexual masochism that emphasizes both "escape from self" and "construction of meaning" hypotheses. The book is directed at all those interested in the self and identity in paradoxical behavior patterns and in the construction of meaning, presenting specific clinical recommendations.

Just as psychoanalytic interest in masochism dates from the earliest days of psychoanalysis, the various approaches to its understanding have reflected the developmental vicissitudes of psychoanalytic theory as it moved from its early focus on instinct to considerations of psychic structure and oedipall dynamics, object relations, separation-individuation, self-organization, and self-esteem regulation, and as it progressed into more systematic investigation of child development. Masochism: Current Psychoanalytic Perspectives offers an updated review of perspectives on masochism influence by current developments in psychoanalytic research and theory. The newer emphasis on and investigations of early preoedipal events have, as Cooper stresses in this volume, provided a significant scientific and clinical yield. The application of these newer perspectives to the issue of masochism holds considerable promise.

Just over a century has passed since the sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing coined the term “masochism” in a revised edition of his Psychopathia Sexualis (1890). Put into circulation as part of the fin-de-siècle process through which sexuality and sexual practices considered deviant became medicalized, this suspicious concept grew in significance and explanatory power in the expanding new context of psychoanalytic discourse. Today the study of masochism shows signs of becoming a discipline in its own right, the political, social, and cultural ramifications of which exceed and, indeed, render problematic, traditional psychoanalytic perspectives on the phenomenon. The essays in this volume demonstrate, however, that the concept of masochism still offers a point of entry into psychoanalytic theory that, while revealing a number of its most vexing insufficiencies and problematic constructions, evokes also a sometimes surprising illuminative potential and capacity to adapt to changing social realities. And as the volume's title is meant to suggest, the authors represented here tend to agree that the continued rich viability of psychoanalytic theory in cultural analysis is best appreciated and ensured through engaging the theory's own social-historical and cultural contexts. The volume includes clinical perspectives on masochism, and articles on medieval romance, Goethe, Sacher-Masoch, Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Multatuli, Fassbinder, and masochism and postmodernism.

Are dominance and submission inevitable in human relationships? Believing that sadomasochism is becoming an ever more obtrusive phenomenon in developed countries, the author surveyed 48 self-declared sadomasochists (43 male, 5 female) and 35 controls (26 male, 9 female) in an effort to elicit information on early family relationships, morale, and sexual behavior and fantasy; she also looks at the philosophy of masochism and its damaging effects.

A psychological treatise on mankind's attitudes towards pain, inflicting pain and causing pain to others. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Individuals sometimes derive sexual pleasure from submission to cruel discipline. While that predilection was noted as early as the sixteenth century, masochism was not codified as a concept until 1890. According to John K. Noyes, its invention reflected a crisis in the liberal understanding of subjectivity and sexuality which continues to inform discussions of masochism today. In essence, it remains a political concept. Viennese physician Richard von Krafft-Ebing coined the term masochism, based on the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Noyes analyzes the social and political problems that inspired the concept, suggesting, for example, that the triumphant expansion of European colonialism was in part animated by an ambivalence in masculine sexuality. Noyes documents the evolution of the concept of masochism with scenes in literature from John Cleland's Fanny Hill through Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs and Pauline Reage's Story of 0. Analysis of Freud's vastly influential rereading of masochism precedes an exploration of the work of his successors, including Wilhem Reich, Theodor Reik, Helene Deutsch, and Karen Horney. Noyes suggests that the thematics of feminine masochism emerged only gradually from an exclusively male concept.

Delineates a point of view about masochism through clinical narrative. Chapters cover patients diagnosed as neurotic, character disordered, borderline, narcissistic and schizophrenic. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR