On Fantasies of Being Beaten

Freud describes a fantasy commonly found in the analysis of every type of patient, namely, that of a child being beaten. He adds that such fantasies can be found irrespective of whether the patient actually has been beaten in childhood and concludes that the ubiquity of these ideas is due to the fact that they are regressively distorted sexual impulses.1 Freud's observation has been confirmed by many analysts and has become an analytic commonplace.

In the following I want to deal with a different aspect of this problem. Beating phantasies are not only regressively distorted genital impulses but progressively modified pregenital libidinal and sadistic ideas. Beating is more sadistic than intercourse, but less sadistic than torture. The worse forms of beating are still nearly related to torture. Beating phantasies are derivatives as well as defenses against pregenital anxieties and sadism; this is one reason for their ubiquity and their great importance in analysis.

Masturbation phantasies often contain, consciously or unconsciously, ideas of being beaten or beating others, or watching somebody getting beaten. Beating phantasies are often extremely elaborate. Some patients must invent every time a new detail in order to achieve orgasm. Often all possible elements of humiliation, apprehension, and mental sadism are added to the beating. One patient imagines that a definite number of beating instruments of beating (rod, cane, birch, strap, etc., etc.) are exhibited; sometimes they are very elaborate and costly, mounted as if they were in expensive travelling cases, with gold or ivory handles. She has to choose the manner, number of strokes, frequency of beatings, days on which she gets beaten, the instruments used, etc. Sometimes a combination of instruments is used, e.g. a certain number of strokes inflicted with one and a number with another one. Sometimes certain instruments are to be used on certain days of the week. The patient has to bring these instruments herself