One Hundred Years of Masochism: Literary Texts, Social and Cultural ContextsMichael C. Finke, Carl Niekerk Just over a century has passed since the sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing coined the term "masochism" in a revised edition of his Psychopathia Sexualis (1890). Put into circulation as part of the fin-de-siècle process through which sexuality and sexual practices considered deviant became medicalized, this suspicious concept grew in significance and explanatory power in the expanding new context of psychoanalytic discourse. Today the study of masochism shows signs of becoming a discipline in its own right, the political, social, and cultural ramifications of which exceed and, indeed, render problematic, traditional psychoanalytic perspectives on the phenomenon. The essays in this volume demonstrate, however, that the concept of masochism still offers a point of entry into psychoanalytic theory that, while revealing a number of its most vexing insufficiencies and problematic constructions, evokes also a sometimes surprising illuminative potential and capacity to adapt to changing social realities. And as the volume's title is meant to suggest, the authors represented here tend to agree that the continued rich viability of psychoanalytic theory in cultural analysis is best appreciated and ensured through engaging the theory's own social-historical and cultural contexts. The volume includes clinical perspectives on masochism, and articles on medieval romance, Goethe, Sacher-Masoch, Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Multatuli, Fassbinder, and masochism and postmodernism. |
Contents
7 | |
Clinical Dimensions of Masochism | 15 |
Masochism and Identity | 33 |
Pain Pleasure and the Language of Power | 53 |
Romance and the Redistribution of Suffering | 71 |
An Example of 16 | 91 |
On the Relationship between Artistry | 109 |
The Case of SacherMasoch | 139 |
Lev Tolstoys Moral Masochism in the Late 1880s | 155 |
Race and Gender in Multatulis Max Havelaar and Love Letters | 171 |
Masochistic Fantasy and Racialized Fetish in Rainer Werner | 191 |
Contributors | 207 |
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aesthetic aggression Ali's antisemitism becomes behavior body Bollas Buru Quartet century character chism Chrétien's colonial concept context critical cultural Deleuze desire discourse dominant dominatrix Dutch Emmi Emmi's erotic European fantasy Fassbinder Fassbinder's feelings female feminine feminization fetishization film film's Freud gender German Gilles Deleuze Gilman Goethe Goethe's grief Höhe homosexual humiliation ideal identity inverts Jewish Jews Kernberg Krafft-Ebing Krafft-Ebing's Kreutzer Sonata Leopold von Sacher-Masoch literary literature loss Lotte male masochists Manon Lescaut maso masochistic Max Havelaar moral masochism Multatuli narcissistic narrative narrator novel object relations oedipal pain pathological patients personality disorder perversion phantasies pleasure political preoedipal Press psychoanalytic Psychopathia Sexualis racial readers Reik relationship romance Russian Sacher-Masoch sadistic sadomasochistic Salem scene self-mutilating sense Severin sexologists sexual bondage Sexual Inversion social structure submission suffering superego term theory tion Tolstoy Tolstoy's Trans Turgenev unconscious Venus in Furs victim Wanda Werther's whip woman women writing York Yvain
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Page 11 - I cannot evade the notion (though I hesitate to give it expression) that for women the level of what is ethically normal is different from what it is in man. Their superego is never so inexorable, so impersonal, so independent of its emotional origins as we require it to be in men.