The Concept of Masochism

Few concepts in psychoanalysis are as much in need of clarification as the concept of masochism. Originally the name of a particular sexual perversion, the term became later almost synonymous with neurotic suffering in general, and its connotation became that of an instinctual trend the aim of which is pain and self-destruction. How such a trend can exist, if mental processes are governed by the pleasure principle, appeared to Freud mysterious.

Two issues, particularly, seem to be involved:

1. What is the instinctual aim in masochism? Are pain and feelings of distress ends in themselves (Freud)? What is the source of pleasure and gratification in masochism? Is it really pain? What is the relationship between pain and lust?

2. Why have “moral masochism”, which is immensely frequent and almost a common element in all neurotic conditions, and the masochistic sexual perversion, which is a comparatively rare condition, the same name “masochism”? The term was primarily given to the sexual perversion. What justifies its extension over the vast field of neurotic disturbances and its application to phenomena in which nothing sexual is any longer recognizable?

The term was introduced by Krafft-Ebing after the name of the Austrian novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch who lived from 1836 to 1895. Sacher-Masoch not only wrote a great number of novels, all more or less masochistically colored, but he was also personally known as a sexual pervert of the masochistic type. His biography is an interesting case contribution.

Sacher-Masoch was born in Lemberg in Galicia, a Polish province of the old Austrian empire. He was the son of a police director; his mother was of Russian descent. He was a very weak infant whose life was saved only by a Ruthenian wet-nurse who stayed with him as his governess. She is described as a strong, handsome peasant girl of superb stature. He wrote that he owed her not only his life but also “his soul”. She sang to him the melancholy folk-songs of her homeland and told