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A Child is Being Beaten. S. Freud.
Erotism as Portrayed in Literature. F. J. Farnell.
A Note on Hazlitt. L. L. Martin.
A Trivial Incident.
Word-Play in Dreams. D. Bryan.
Collective Reviews: Book Reviews; Reports of International Psychoanalytical Society.
A Child is Being Beaten.— Freud here gives another of his penetrating and illuminating discussions of human phantasy formation. This time bearing upon genesis of the sadomasochistic tendencies which in one guise or another are universal, even if with great variations in amperage, as it were. Certain cases of the phantasy in question show the relations between the “phantasy of a child is being beaten” its pleasurable content, and direct onanistic gratification. Its analysis is protected behind much resistance and shame and guilt are attached to it. This type of phantasy usually has an early inception—five to six years—and frequently is related to school whippings. Later renewals of the phantasy are occasioned by reading of cruel whipping incidents. The interesting point arises as to the real significance of corporal punishment in the scheme of pedagogics. The attempt to get to any invariable formulations was not successful. The phantasy of a child being beaten, and this is the usual form—who, why, or where, or male or female, the self or another—these questions cannot always be answered; in fact, are rarely get-at-able, but analysis seems to show that such a phantasy, possibly accidental as to its inception, is preserved for autoerotic gratification, and contains a primary trait of perversion. Some one component of the sex function has developed in advance of others, has then become fixed, withdrawn from further development, and reveals itself in some personality anomaly. It need not have persisted, since repression, symptom formation, or sublimation may have become effectual. If, however, persisting, one may expect lying behind a perversion some such infantile fixation factor. Others, like Binet, before ps