The author describes the development of the idea of masochism in Freud's thinking, its relationship to depression, and the schism in his followers. Those, such as Abraham, described depression as originating in the child's excessive demands, while Ferenczi emphasized that the hostile parent had inflicted real cruelty on the child. As Freud used the term Oedipus complex, he omitted the first part of the Oedipal myth with its attempted infanticide. Bloch argues that such a restricted definition should not be called the nucleus of neurosis.