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Dr. Shainess's book is the culmination of many years of observations and thoughts about the phenomenon of masochism, as personally experienced and as seen in friends, acquaintances, and patients. In fact, on going through my files, I came across an article she had presented in January 1968, entitled “Images of Woman: Past and Present, Overt and Obscured.” In it she concluded that psychiatrists should examine their prejudices about feminine psychology, which women also have tended to accept, and to think more searchingly about interpreting feminine behavior.
She starts her book with the Hans Christian Andersen story of “The Little Mermaid,” as told to her by a patient. This story she calls “a nearly perfect parable of masochism in that it expresses the self-punishment, the submission to another, and the sense of suffering as a way of life.” She further revises Descartes' declaration, “I think, therefore I am” to “I suffer, therefore I am.” This is the theme of her book.
The masochist, putting pain in the pivotal position, “perpetuates the pattern of suffering in her life,” which alerts others “to her submissiveness and her fear of their power over her.” She develops her thesis that the masochistic syndrome is much more common among women than men because cultural elements continually reinforce it in women, an observation written much about by Horney. For a woman to become assertive and autonomous she must understand the psychological sources of her behavior. The common origin of these feelings, she finds, involves abuses of power in the parent/child relationship.
At the end of her first chapter she addresses women readers of the book, stating, “You may, as you read, identify a problem of your own because no woman in our culture can be completely free of masochism…. It is learned behavior that can be altered, and, in some instances, eliminated altogether.” With the premise that the pattern can, with treatment, be altered, I agree, but such absolute statements, as “elimin