Depression and Masochism: An Account of Mechanisms. Nathan Leites. New York:  W. W. Norton & Company, 1979,  145pp.

This is an unusual book. While short and spare, it nonetheless requires a considerable amount of active thought on the part of the reader.

There are a number of features that contribute to its uniqueness. First, the author's voice is almost never heard: Leites is not a practicing analyst, although he has had formal analytic training. He has chosen to present the information he thinks is relevant by using the case material of clinicians as reported in the psychoanalytic literature. Second, no metapsychological or historical account is presented. Typically, psychoanalytic writers present this framework so that their own contribution can be viewed as an extension or innovative departure. Leites presents no formal history and restricts himself to “low level” theoretical formulations, that is, those directly rooted in clinical observation. Thus, formulations about masochism and depression are presented only where the clinical literature offers corroborative case evidence. The metapsychological issue of whether or not masochism is a primary drive is never raised.

The reader is on his own to make sense of the material presented. There is no rationale offered for the book's idiosyncratic organization; there are no definitions and no explanations when new terms are introduced.

What Leites has attempted is a form of clinical research. From his thorough study of the vast clinical literature he presents the manifold motives that can lead to masochistic responses, to take one of the syndromes he elucidates.