Salo represented the culmination of Pier Paolo Pasolini's career as a filmmaker and engages several questions concerning the nature of perversion and the excitement with the negative. Through exploration of Pasolini's motives and techniques for creating this film, an analysis is offered of the creative process that does not seek to create an aesthetically pleasing compromise formation of psychic conflict, nor a form of erotizing sadomasochism. Rather, this film is explored as an example of a lucid and psychoanalytically informed artwork that speaks to the psychic fascination with what is purely negative—thanatos—which is not mediated by libido.