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This text presents how Freud thinks about the masochism. In 1915, it is the return of active sadism in a passive drive which is characteristic of masochism, always secondary. In 1919, he sees in masochism the genesis of perversions. And the article of 1924 knows a primary masochism and distinguishes erotogenic masochism, feminine masochism and moral masochism. After Freud, many studies of clinical forms of masochism can be noted, and in France there is a thesis about the masochism as a first psychic link (Benno Rosenberg, Marilia Aisenstein). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benno Rosenberg's work has been little translated into English. Yet, his work on masochism is a landmark in France. He set himself the goal of deploying all the richness and implications of the second Freudian drive theory and the introduction of the death drive. He therefore returns to "the Economic Problem of Masochism" to give all its value to the drive fusion that it achieves internally and which is therefore for it "guardian of life", even if it is can also be fatal. He draws consequences on the psychic construction of the ego, the superego and on that of temporality. He also describes a "work of melancholy" which is different from mourning. Thinking it necessary to push the consequences of the new theorizing further than Freud was able to do, he revisits "Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety" to articulate the triggering of anxiety by a libidinal demand and the threat to the unity of the ego who comes from the death drive due to conflict. Starting from the psychosomatic descriptions of Pierre Marty, whose options are specified, he also proposed a metapsychology of somatization during the overflow of the psyche by the destructiveness which will then threaten the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the theories of psychoanalysis in France. Topics discussed include the characteristics of psychoanalysis in the country such as its divergence, the view of philosopher Sigmund Freud on psychoanalysis, the centrality of consciousness, the concept of author Jean Laplanche on masochism.

This article presents a critique of the story "Lai de Guigemar," by Marie de France. The story revolves around the life of a cursed man who can only be saved from his malady through an intimate relationship with a woman. According to the author, the love symptoms manifested by the hero and his lover are quite similar to the Ovidian love repertory. The story is considered a typical medieval French work that plays around suffering, love and sex that is obscure in manner.

Examines the theoretical masochism of France's feminist writer Luce Irigaray. Inventive metaphorization of the female body politic; Characteristics of Irigaray's neologism.

Relationships may be perserve without"normal" sexuality being replaced by deviant acts and fantasies. The link between perversion and genital sexuality can be loosened without the term becoming inapplicable. Moreover perversions manifest themselves in almost any idiosyncratic form, just like defences. Next to a seemingly not for perverse aim and object, split-off fantasies and acts exist, which form the condition for the "normal" genital sexual relationship. Such a fantasy may be the idea that one's partner has a secret homosexual adventure like in Proust's novel. It can be the need to be unfaithful, or the fantasy of having two lovers instead of one husband, as in the examples given. Perversions can be understood as regulators of self-esteem, and defence against (pre)oedipal conflict. Proust, an expert on perversion and the pre-oedipal, gives us insight into its development, and manifestations: in the mother-child relationship, in love life, in social life and as a sexual perversion in the strict sense of the term. We go into some detail regarding what he tells us about the sado-masochistic fantasies in a love relationship, where paradox seems to be another word for perversion. This is followed by three clinical examples of perverted relationships between partners, with safeguarding of genital aim and object. Perversion seems still more pervasive, more enigmatic and difficult to delineate than in Freud's time.