An anthology of essays examining the nature and practice of sexual masochism The contested psychoanalytic concept of masochism has served to open up pathways into less-explored regions of the human mind and behavior. Here, rituals of pain and sexual abusiveness prevail, and sometimes gruesome details of unconscious fantasies are constructed out of psychological pain, desperate need, and sexually excited, self- destructive violence. In this significant addition to the Essential Papers in Psychoanalysis series, Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly presents an anthology of the most outstanding writings in the psychoanalytic study of masochism. In bringing these essays together, Dr. Fitzpatrick Hanly expertly combines classic and contemporary theories by the most respected scholars in the field to create a varied and integrated volume. This collection features papers by S. Nacht, R. Loewenstein, Victor Smirnoff, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Laplanche, Robert Bak, Leonard Shengold, K. Novick, J. Novick, S. Coen, Margaret Brenman, Esther Menaker, S. Lorand, M. Balint, Bernhard Berliner, Charles Brenner, Helene Deutsch, Annie Reich, Marie Bonaparte, Jessica Benjamin, S.L. Olinick, Arnold Modell, Betty Joseph, and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel.

An essential collection on leading psychoanalyses of narcissism Narcissism has recently been the focus of debate among professionals, in large part due to the controversies surrounding the world of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. Yet much has been written about narcissism throughout the history of psychoanalysis and this carefully selected collection brings together the essential work on narcissism. The book first puts forth the major theoretical formulations - self-psychology, object relations, psychodynamics - and then explores diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The book offers landmark classic and contemporary contributions by authors such as Annie Reich, Heinz Kohut, Otto Kernberg, Alice Miller, Arnold Modell, and many others.

Rather, masochism is viewed as a self-defeating way of loving and individuating that reflects a pathology of object relations.

Psychoanalysis and Woman collects for the first time in one volume the most important psychoanalytic writings on female sexuality and women from Freud's contemporaries through French feminisms to postmodernism and post-feminism. These primary texts introduce the reader to a broad spectrum of works by primarily women theorists writing within a number of different psychoanalytic traditions.Psychoanalysis and Woman makes available a number of fundamental, yet obscure and inaccessible early psychoanalytic documents by women and places them within the context of later women psychoanalytic theorists. Editor Shelley Saguaro provides a concise contextual introduction addressing some of the sexual political issues raised by psychoanalysis, while each section of the volume is prefaced with more specific biographical and cultural introductory material. Topics addressed include new reproductive and sexual technologies, cybernetics, androgyny, the third sex, pornography, and psychoanalysis and contemporary media/film theory.Contributors include Sigmund Freud, Karen Horney, Helene Deutsch, Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, Joan Riviere, Maria Torok, Melanie Klein, Nancy Chodorow, Juliet Mitchell, Noreen O'Connor and Joanna Ryan, Carl G. Jung, Esther Harding, Maria von Franz, Marion Woodman, Jacques Lacan, H l ne Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julie Kristeva, Mary Jane Sherfey, Monique Wittig, Jacqeline Rose, Camille Paglia, Judith Butler, and Jane Flax.

Dr. Zanardi approaches the development of psychoanalytic theories of women on two fronts: the psychoanalytic and the political. The first part includes papers by Ruth Mack Brunswick, Melanie Klein, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, D. W. Winnicott, Joyce Macdougal, Edith Jacobsen, Annie Reich, and Judith Kestenberg, among others, illustrating the psychoanalytic development concerning female sexuality from the 1940s on. the different views - Freudian, Kleinian, Horneyan, object relation, and Lacanian - are presented, showing both American and European views to underline their theoretical differences. Controversial issues - phallocentrism, penis envy, homosexuality, masochism, wish for a child - are brought into focus and analyzed from different theoretical and clinical points of view. The second part draws attention to the influence of the Women's Liberation Movement on psychoanalytic theory. The papers included show attempts to integrate psychoanalysis into the ideological political discourse. It includes the work of leading feminists and psychoanalysts in the United States and Europe, including Carol Gilligan, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Jean Baker Miller, Juliet Mitchell, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva.

Character refers to the unique aspects of behavior which make up each individual's patterns of thought, attitude, and effect. In this collection, Ruth Lax has put together the seminal papers which both define the contstuence of character and its disorders and elucidate some of the persistent controversy regarding the treatment of character neurosis.

An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose--from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers. At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better—a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer—they’re an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience? By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain—a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.

The Twilight saga, a series of five films adapted from Stephanie Meyer's four vampire novels, has been a sensation, both at the box office and through the attention it has won from its predominantly teenaged fans. This series has also been the subject of criticism and sometimes derision - often from critics and on occasion even from fans. However, it also offers rich opportunities for analytic and critical attention, which the contributors to Screening Twilight demonstrate with energy and style. Through examining Twilight, the book unpacks how this popular group of films work as cinematic texts, what they have to say about cinema and culture today, and how fans may seek to re-read or subvert these messages. The chapters addressTwilight in the context of the vampire and myth, in terms of genre and reception, identity, gender and sexuality, and through re-viewing the series fandom. Screening Twilight is also a revelation of how a popular cinematic phenomenon like Twilight rewards close attention from contemporary critical scholars of cinema and culture.

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.

Rancour-Laferriere (Russian, U. of California, Davis) discusses the theme of suffering in Russian history, religion, folklore, and literature, and brings to light examples of self-defeating behaviors that have become an integral part of the Russian psyche. He look at folktales of the fool and his mother, gender issues in Russian masochism, the masochism of Russian bathhouse rituals, masochism and the collective, and the post-Soviet antimasochistic trend. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR