Sadism and Masochism As Medical Terms - Freud and Psychoanalysis

Freud and Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud made masochism and sadism integral to psychoanalysis, thus, in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), he described the tendency to inflict and receive pain during sexual intercourse as “the most common and important of all perversions”, and that both psychosexual tendencies usually occur in the same person. That masochism is a form of sadism against the Self, and that sadism and masochism are manifested variously as “primary masochism” and “secondary masochism”, and as the subordinate forms of “feminine masochism” and “moral masochism”. In the Freudian theory of psychosexual development, guilt is integral to sadistic and masochistic sexual tendencies, signalling either an incomplete or an incorrect sexual development of the child.

In the event, Freud’s successors, Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich, and Theodor Reik, modified and developed his ideas with new terms and supporting concepts. Elsworth Baker attributed the origin of masochistic character to parental inconsistency. Helene Deutsch postulated that women are naturally of masochistic character, reinforcing the theories of Krafft-Ebing and Freud. The Freudian theory of sadomasochism and the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade were developed by intellectuals, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Gilles Deleuze, whose writings influenced the popular, mainstream perception of sadism, masochism, and sadomasochism in the mid–20th century.