Some Dynamics of Suffering: Effect of the Wish for Infanticide in a Case of Schizophrenia*

Perhaps no area of human experience has been more mystifying than the suffering that can be defined as “psychological pain.” Although its comprehension and treatment are the chief concern of psychoanalysis, for the most part suffering is discussed under another title and is most frequently referred to as “masochism.” An individual who suffers is very often called a “masochist,” even by himself.

Although Freud's theory of moral masochism has been considerably modified or even discarded by subsequent investigators, in its general application the term still connotes “the enjoyment of suffering.” The modification that holds that the individual does not enjoy pain for its own sake, but only as a condition for gratification seems to have made little difference in the attitude toward the suffering, which is very readily accepted by the patient and may actually reinforce his illness. He almost invariably employs the term “masochism” in self-mockery, as a further means of devaluing himself, and regards his suffering as a form of self-indulgence to which he is scarcely entitled. That this “Alice-in-Wonderland” reversal has prevailed, in which the pain of suffering has been regarded as self-indulgent pleasure, or even as a condition for pleasure, is in part a measure of the