The multiple meanings of masochism in psychoanalytic discourse

The term masochism was originally used in a narrow, specifically sexual sense (referring to perversions ), but has come to encompass for many analysts an exceedingly broad and variably determined range of clinical phenomena that bear no consistent relation to sexual excitement. In addition, these expanding clinical perspectives have long been entangled with Freud's shifting metapsychological constructions designed to ground masochism in instinctual theory. As a result, the term is used with little consistency and at varied levels of abstraction: loosely descriptive, dynamic, theoretical. It is not always explicit which meaning is intended or what inferences, if any, are meant to be drawn from the term. When used in its broadest sense, masochism may falsely suggest dynamic similarity between diverse phenomena, and is often ambiguous with respect to the presence or absence of underlying erotic or perverse excitement. In the clinical situation, the categorization of material as masochistic may evoke an associated set of genetic, dynamic, or theoretical ideas which may alter the perception, ordering, and interpretation of clinical data. Particularly conducive to this subtle steering process are the enduring influence of the early concept of feminine masochism and the related concept of sadistic and masochistic paired opposite component sexual instincts--a theoretical, physicalistic , linear concept incompatible with the clinical model of overdetermination and multiple function. This paper includes a review of the terminological and conceptual history of masochism, briefly touches on the parallel history of sadism , and offers some provisional definitional solutions.