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The title of this book could more appropriately be called Collected Papers. Although the authors do discuss sadomasochism (its development, diagnosis, and treatment), it is only one of many subjects addressed. This is a wide-ranging book that covers many issues. For example, it stresses the importance of understanding personality and pathology from a developmental point of view, an area that was dear to Anna Freud. In fact, the book is very much influenced by her thinking and it is also dedicated to her memory.
The authors take up the concept of externalization in considerable depth. This is an area largely neglected by “adult” psychoanalysis. However, it has a profound impact on a child's psychological development. Externalization is an important mechanism used by parents in unloading their own pathology onto their children.
In addition to these central topics, the authors provide readers with a “how-to” element in the book in that there is much supervision, of a good kind, in discussing how to treat sadomasochistic disorders, how to treat interminable cases, how to talk to toddlers, and how to terminate a case. Furthermore, it is also a case book, loaded with many illuminating case histories. A number of the chapters had previously been presented at meetings and have subsequently been revised for this book. In order to try to make the book cohesive, the authors have sometimes stretched their ideas to try to encompass the concept of sadomasochism as central to all the chapters.
The authors found that beating wishes and beating games are universal, but that beating fantasies are not. Like Freud, they found that beating fantasies