Freuds Consideration Of Masochism English Literature Essay

Freuds considerateness Of Masochism English Literature EssayFreuds first detailed consideration of masochism appears in his discussion of familiar perversions in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. At this early date, Freud writes that sadism and masochism are inverse variances of a single versed perversion centring on pain as an avenue to joy.1Sadism and masochism, at this point in Freuds theoretical earning are inextricably bound the drawer creationness the active, extern all toldy directed version of the perversion the latter creation its passive, internally pointed determine. In fact, it is passivity that defines masochism, not a appetency for pain, abjection or punishment.The margin masochism comprises any passive strength towards internal vitality and the devolve onual goal, the extreme instance of which appears to be that in which contentment is conditional upon anguish physical or mental pain at the hands of the sexual object.2Freud considers sad ism and masochism to be the most plebeian and most signifi tidy sumt of all perversions.3Although he fails to elaborate the rea boys for choosing the second adjective, the choice of the first is most probable related to an understanding of sadism as an caricature of the normal obstreperous sexual intelligence in men.4Because there is, on Freuds understanding, an intimate connection amidst cruelty and the sexual instinct an active or violent posture toward the sexual object is to be expected it is notwithstanding where sexual ecstasy is entirely conditional on the humiliation and maltreatment of the object that the term sadism, as a signifier of perversion of the sexual aim, is entirely appropriate.5 period Freud opines that masochism is further removed from the normal sexual aim than its counter leave-taking, the logic of the translation of a single sexual instinct into an active and passive form path that masochism shares sadisms purported naturalness. Even if sadism, the n, is delineate as an propagation or exaggeration of normal impulses and dis military posts most likely because it is more comfortably aligned with a culturally normative understanding of masculinity as active and aggressive it is important to note that masochism, which is an intrinsic carve up of this pain-related perversion, inevitably shares in the northward afforded sadistic impulses, given the terms of the analysis.The former(a) feature of masochism from this early exhibition that merits aid is Freuds comment of the transition from sadism to masochism. According to Freud, masochism is often nothing more than an extension of sadism turned round upon the subjects own self, which takes the place of the sexual object.6Although Freud identifies the castration interwoven and the subjects sense of guilt as part of the mechanism that effects this transformation from sadism to masochism, masochism is at least partially motivated by near form of libidinal interest in cardina ls own self as a sexual object, i.e., masochism is linked in some way with narcissism.In Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, pen a decade after the first edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud explicitly pull backs the mechanism of transformation from sadism to masochism as being fuelled by narcissistic investment in unrivaleds own self.7Freud retains his understanding that sadism and masochism are inextricably bound and turn upon a single axis he continues to describe sadism as cruelty directed toward an other(a) for the purpose of sexual satisfaction and masochism as the desire for cruelty directed toward oneself as a means of sexual satisfaction.8The presence of masochistic desire in sadistic coif complicates the picture of how the instincts mutate and transform.A sadistic child takes no explanation of whether or not he inflicts pains nor does he intend to do so. But when once the transformation into masochism has taken place, the pains are real well fitte d to provide a passive masochistic aim for we fall in e precise reason to believe that sensations of pain, like other unpleasuable sensations, trench upon sexual excitation and produce a pleasurable condition, for the sake of which the subject result tear down willingly experience the unpleasure of pain. When once feeling pains has manufacture a masochistic aim, the sadistic aim of causing pains rump arise also, retrogressively for while these pains are being inflicted on other people, they are enjoyed masochistically by the subject by dint of his identification of himself with the suffering object. The enjoyment of pain would thus be an aim which was sooner masochistic, but which can only become an instinctual aim in psyche who was genuinely sadistic.9Although Freud will abandon some of these ideas, his pattern that sadistic and masochistic desire hides other forms of desire will continue to develop.In his screen A tike is Being Beaten A Contribution to the watch of th e Origin of Sexual Perversions, Freud attempts to clarify how masochistic magic and practice disaccord by gender by considering what he exampleises as the very common fancy, both for those in analysis and those who are not, of a child is being beat.10This short phrase is the only description of the day-dream Freud provides as he observes, those who indulge in the romance are often quite indistinct as to the individualism and number of the victims or perpetrators of the beat, their own coitusship to the victims and perpetrators, their muddle in the fantasy or raze whether the pleasure derived from the fantasy is out do described as sadistic or masochistic.11Freud reports that his male patients in both fantasy and murder always select a woman to exercise the role of chastiser.12In addition, in both performance and fantasy, the male masochists eer transfer themselves into the part of the woman that is to say, their masochistic attitude coincides with a female one.13W hile the exercise of woman appears to play an important role in male masochistic fantasy, it is the preceptor who is central. Freud contends that the fantasy of a woman chastiser is a translation of a prior, now un certain fantasy of being get the better of by the fuck off. This unconscious, now repressed, fantasy recovered by and accessible only to the analyst-author Freud works a further disavowal of an even earlier hunger to be loved by the stick.In the male phantasy the being beaten also stands for being loved (in a genital sense), though this has been debased to a lower level owing to regression. So the original form of the unconscious male phantasy was not the provisional one that we redeem hitherto given I am being beaten by my father, but rather I am loved by my father. The phantasy has been transformed by the processes with which we are now familiar into the conscious phantasy I am being beaten by my spawn. The boys whipstitch is therefore passive from the very b eginning, and is derived from a female attitude towards his father. The beating-phantasy has its origin in an incestuous attachment to the father.14Freud fails to elaborate on the character of the transfer to the feminine or the features of the attitude that mark it so. Given the indication he has drawn between an active sadism and a passive masochism, it whitethorn be the passive status of the male masochist alone that commits his fantasy/performance feminine. The meaning of passivity is troubled, however, if we remember that the male masochist conjures the fantasy or seeks the sexual encounter. While passivity has come to mean a willingness or desire to be penetrated in certain male homosexual cultural codes, it is ill-defined whether the transfer to the womans role is meant to imply this, given that the chastiser in the masochistic fantasy is always a woman.The incestuous desire for the father cogitate the boys and little girls beating fantasies. One way to read this commo n desire is to understand it as a longing to be daddys little girl whether one has a penis or a vagina. On the other hand, this commonality, while target the boy as feminine, secures the fathers role as the only legitimate object of libidinal connection, even in masochistic fantasies. In other words, even in fantasy structure where it appears the male child is assigning some form of value or surrendering some bit of power to the mother/woman, Freud explains that the fantasy, ultimately, when unravelled, is all near the significance and desirability of the father and that this feature of the fantasy is the only one shared across gender. Although the masochistic fantasy ineluctably entails an adoption of a feminine attitude and identity on the part of the male child, this attitude and identity work to reinforce the primacy of the maternal(p) position. utter his understanding of the fetish, Freud explains that the conscious masochistic fantasy the translation from love to violence , from father to mother enables the male child to evade homoeroticism.In the case of the girl what was originally a masochistic (passive) situation is transformed into a sadistic one by means of repression, and its sexual quality is almost effaced. In the case of the boy the situation remains masochistic, and shows a bulkyer analogy to the original phantasy with its genital significance, since there is a difference of sex between the person beating and the person being beaten. The boy evades his homoeroticism by repressing and remodelling his unconscious phantasy and the remarkable thing about his later conscious phantasy is that it has for its content a feminine attitude with a homosexual object-choice.15Like the complicated relationship between fetishistic and homoerotic desire, masochistic fantasy and performance has an uncertain and unstable relationship to heterosexual identity. To state it somewhat differently and more pointedly, this supposed evasion is a retention. Moreove r, this homoerotically focused retention, despite its instantiation of the boy in a position of femininity and passivity, creates a bond between the boy and the father and makes men, the masculine ideal, the agnatic signifier and male-to-male relationships the uncreated figures of desire and desirability. According to Butler, Freuds constant conjoining of the evasion of homosexuality with an admission of the homoerotic character of heterosexual male identity forecloses the initiative of masculine homoerotic desire. According to Butlers reading of Freud, desire is always represented as heterosexual, where it appears homosexual, the gender of the desiring subject is refigured so that the heterosexual dynamic can be preserved.16This re-signification, on Butlers view, depends less on the character of the desire in question than on cultural prohibitions of homoeroticism.Finally, in The Economic Problem of Masochism, Freud seeks to understand how to square masochistic desire with his u nderstanding of the pleasure principle a basic instinctual impulse. In this essay, Freud distinguishes three types of masochism feminine, erotogenic and moral.17Feminine masochism, the most easily discernible form, is found in male patients, who, like those considered in A Child is Being Beaten, conjure fantasies or seek sexual activity in which they are gagged, bound, painfully beaten, whipped, in some way maltreated, forced into bland obedience, dirtied and debased.18These masochistic fantasies generally signify, according to Freud, being castrated, or copulated with, or swelled birth to a baby.19Erotogenic masochism, which underlies and supports the other forms, is characterised by a libidinal pleasure in pain.20In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud had rejected the notion that the extreme and exceptional stimuli of painful experiences could carry a sufficient libidinal charge to explain the origin of masochism. In this later essay, Freud turns to the destruction instinct to find the origin of what he now concedes is a primary masochism, one that does not depend on the transformation of a prior sadistic instinct. According to Freud, one task of the libido is to meet the death instinct and render it innocuous It fulfils the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwards towards objects in the external world.21When this will to power is sexualised, it becomes sadism proper.22 erupt of this instinct, however, remains inside the organism and becomes libidinally bound there. It is in this portion that we have to recognise the original, erotogenic masochism.23Freud admits that analysis can explain neither the precise temper of the interaction between sexual and death instincts nor the precise reasons why the death instinct becomes externalised or internalised. The internalisation of a libidinised death instinct, however, manifests in a desire to be beaten, a fascination with castration and a focus on the buttocks and anus as erotogen ic zones.24Moral masochism, the third form that Freud considers, is principally remarkable for having loosened its connection with what we recognise as sexuality.25All other masochistic sufferings carry with them the condition that they shall emanate from the loved person and shall be endured at his command. This restriction has been dropped in moral masochism. The suffering itself is what matters whether it is decreed by someone who is loved or by someone who is indifferent is of no importance. It may even be caused by impersonal powers or by circumstances the true masochist always turns his cheek, whenever he has a chance at receiving a blow.26As Freuds discussion reveals, however, this desexualisation and depersonalisation is only apparent. Moral masochism is characterised by anxiety stemming from unconscious guilt or severe limitation in light of moral sensibilities.27According to Freud, the super- ego, the agency that serves as the moral sense, comes into being by the introje ctions into the ego of the first objects of libidinal impulses namely, the two parents.28The punishing force whose attention the masochistic ego seeks, therefore, has a personal identity. As Freud notes elsewhere, the father is the primary figure behind the super-ego. Along with the retention of a personal identity behind the masochistic relationship to the super-ego, the connection between the masochistic ego and the paternal super-ego also retains a sexual charge.We now know that the wish, which so frequently appears in phantasies, to be beaten by the father stands very close to the other wish, to have a passive (feminine) sexual relation to him. If we insert this explanation into the content of moral masochism, its hidden meaning becomes work to us. Conscience and morality have arisen through the overcoming, the desexualisation, of the Oedipus complex but through moral masochism morality becomes sexualised once more. Masochism creates a temptation to perform sinful action, whic h must then be expiated by the reproaches of the sadistic conscience or by chastisement from the great parental power of Destiny.29In a manner similar to the analysis of the beating fantasy of feminine masochism, this description of the mechanics of moral masochism, while representing masochism as both turnaround to the interests and perhaps even threatening to the existence of the subject, functions to aggrandise the site of paternal authority and mark the father as the focus of desire.30Moral masochism, the form among the three that seems most impersonal and non-erotic, turns out, upon analysis, to (also) be about sexual desire for the father. In addition, similar to the way in which the discussion of the beating fantasy introduces homoerotic desire as a feature of heterosexual identity, this description of the homosexualised substratum of conscience and morality complicates the notion of the masochists sexual identity. More interestingly, perhaps, heretofore as moral masochism is only an exaggerated form of the normal track down of development of the id, the conscience generally.This account of the critical potential of masochistic fantasy depends on the ability of such fantasies to emphasise the conditions of lack that are part of male subjectivity, the ability of such fantasies to challenge the dominant fiction that links the penis to the phallus thus rendering the actual father and by implication all men equivalent to the symbolic father. Although Freuds description of the male masochists fantasy and practice emphasises the feminine position that the fantasist adopts (toward the father) within the fantasy and even draws attention to the male masochists fascination with castration, his account also creates a closed circuit of male-to-male desire that underlines the desirability of both the father and the paternal position and strongly intersects the male child who longs to acquire the phallus with the paternal figure who is understood to possess it. Feminine conduct within this fantasy castration, copulation, nascency while putatively inscribing lack on the male subject also functions to drive out the woman from the fantasy space. While undergoing an imaginary experience of castration may be the price of admission to the masochistic scene, in this arena the son becomes the object of the fathers desire, the source of his sexual satisfaction and the bearer of his children. Far from emphasising universal proposition conditions of lack and loss facing all subjects, the masochistic fantasy has as much potential to render female subjects irrelevant, reducing the world to fathers and sons by circumscribing desire to male homoerotic negotiations and aggrandising male subjects by marking the father as the ultimate object of virtually all desire.