Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Two of the discussants, Dr. Leo Eidelberg and Dr. Isidor Bernstein took issue with the author's proposition that a certain degree of masochism is normal. Dr. Eidelberg emphasized that a person who reacts to the strictures of his superego is not a masochist. Sexualization of the superego interferes with normal self-criticism. The moral masochist enjoys the punishment, which has become a final aim, and thus he has no reason to improve, nor to be successful. The normal person accepts justifiable punishment from the superego and from the world and tries to change himself. Dr. Bernstein affirmed that normalcy indicates a less instinctualized relationship between the superego and the ego. He agreed with the nuclear importance of the Oedipal conflict in the genesis of normal masochism, and added that masochistic behavior may be a defense against latent depression, due to early object loss. Negative therapeutic reactions in these patients represent their struggle against the emergence of the childhood depression. The author's comprehensive approach, he felt, might deter us from the continued search to determine specific pathogenicity for the development of the masochistic character.

Dr. Anita Bell observed that in development we have also to give attention to vicissitudes of drive, rather than view the problem solely from the point of view of structure. She agreed with the universality of masochism, but stressed that individual pregenital problems make necessary a certain degree of technical flexibility in working through these problems in the transference.

Dr. Victor Rosen disagreed that the negative therapeutic reaction is merely a variant of masochism when it is persistent, recurrent, and intractable. It represents rather a serious disturbance of reality testing. This, technically, has to be approached differently from the approach to masochism which is a secondary result of a hysterical symptom, or is part of an obsessional neurosis. Dr. Leo Spieg