The notion that women are inherently masochistic, however, has been controversial, to say the least, and Freud did not help matters with his unclear ideas about “female masochism.”43 Within the psychoanalytic community there have been conflicting views on the extent to which women are masochistic.44 Some feminist psychologists have vigorously attacked “the myth of women’s masochism.”45
There are some empirical data to go on. For example, Frederic Kass, in a study of what is nowadays called “self-defeating personality disorder” by many in the American psychiatric community, found that the following “masochistic personality criteria” were significantly more frequent in female patients than in male patients:
Remains in relationships in which others exploit, abuse, or take advantage of him or her, despite opportunities to alter the situation.
Believes that he or she almost always sacrifices own interests for those of others.
Rejects help, gifts, or favors so as not to be a burden on others.
Responds to success or positive events by feeling undeserving or worrying excessively about not being able to measure up to new responsibilities.
Thinks only about his or her worst features and ignores positive features.46
It is possible, however, that many of the women in Kass’s sample were living in abusive home situations. After all, when spouse abuse occurs, it is women, not men, who are usually the victims. The higher figures for self-defeating attitudes in women could reflect, in part, a natural reaction to being traumatized or to having been traumatized: “There is no justification for labeling as a core part of someone’s personality pattern the reactive behavior which victims develop,” says feminist therapist Lynne Rosewater.47
When Rosewater assessed a group of battered women using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), she found remarkably high scores for anger directed inward. This anger, moreover, was “often experienced as guilt—a feeling of being personally responsible for the bad things that happen.”48 Such findings are in keeping with the general tendency for women to direct feelings inward and to blame themselves (whereas men tend to direct feelings outward and blame others).49
Battered women who direct anger inwards clearly exhibit masochism (in Freud’s sense of sadism directed inwards). But feminist psychologists prefer to avoid both the term “masochism” and the expression “self-defeating personality disorder” in making a diagnosis: “To label victims as self-defeating personality disorders is simply to revictimize them.”50 “To perpetuate victimization in the name of nosology is unconscionable.”51
I doubt that most masochists read diagnostic manuals or are given access to their diagnosis by their therapists, and therefore they are not likely to be harmed by the diagnosis itself. It is possible, however, that some therapists are so insensitive as to allow the diagnosis of “masochism” or “self-defeating personality disorder” to adversely influence the way they treat their women patients. That is, some therapists may be tempted to blame the patient rather than help the patient get out of a traumatic situation. For such therapists—and there are many of them, if the feminists are to be believed—it is probably better to speak of battered woman syndrome,52 learned helplessness,53 or some other term that does not in any way lead the therapist to make a negative evaluation of the victim. Such an approach should also be taken to judges and juries, for they are in a position to do legal harm to women.54
For purposes of this book, however, it is possible to call a spade a spade. Battered women do tend to stay in their abusive relationships, that is, they behave in accordance with the definition of masochism given at the beginning of this book (p. 7). But no therapy is being proposed here, nor is any expert opinion being offered to a court. I am doing applied psychoanalysis, not therapeutic or forensic psychoanalysis.
In any case, I am quite aware that victims are not necessarily responsible for their victimization. Iosif Stalin, for example, is at least partially responsible for the terrible things that befell the Soviet people (including his second wife), as I have argued elsewhere.55 One may legitimately study how some victims (abused women, slavish Russians, etc.) allow themselves to be victimized without denying that (1) sadists and other victimizers do exist, and (2) some victims play no welcoming role whatsoever in their victimization, that is, some victims are not masochists at all. Also, having an inferior social status (e.g., female or serf) does not necessarily mean that one is a masochist. Masochism may help one endure low status, but tolerating low social status does not necessarily mean one is masochistic, or masochistic all of the time.
Even when victims are behaving masochistically they are not necessarily suffering from a “personality disorder” (this is why I prefer the simple term “masochism” to the gratuitously evaluative “self-defeating personality disorder”). Masochistic behaviors can be adaptive, both in the clinical and Darwinian senses of the word. For example, initiation of dangerous physical combat may lead to self-destruction, yet it may be the only reasonable thing to do in certain situations. It may both enhance the probability of survival and eliminate the unbearable emotional tension of waiting for the enemy to attack. Similarly, a battered woman may in effect welcome further injury by staying with her abusive mate, but she may also be gaining the advantage of some fathering for her children, and the abusive situation may satisfy emotional needs of her own that other situations cannot.
The Masochist’s Questionable Self and Unquestionable Other
Masochists can be extremely resistant to psychotherapy. In this connection Freud spoke of a “negative therapeutic reaction.” Stuart Asch describes what he (after Bergler) calls the “malignant” masochist: “These masochistic characters are extremely resistant to analyzing behavior and attitudes that they maintain in order to perpetuate a primitive attachment to an internal object, a preoedipal conflict. The attachment is a residual of incomplete separation-individuation from the early mothering object.”56 According to Asch, these patients are still so influenced by the internal representation of a “devouring, sadistic mother” that they try to appease that image by sabotaging the therapy:
The gratification in failure, with its associated aim to make the therapist or parent or surrogate helpless to stop the patient, is often tied to a specific fantasy. The primary love object, usually the preoedipal mother, is somehow aware of this jousting and is watching and approving of the defeat of the analyst. The patient experiences it as reuniting him with his preoedipal object. The negative therapeutic reaction in these instances is intended to defeat the analyst’s aim of disengaging the masochist from his death embrace with the internalized preoedipal, engulfing mother figure.57
Sometimes these patients do succeed in bringing the therapy to a complete halt. The analyst simply has to give up, and the patient may walk out, never to return.
Helen Meyers takes a somewhat more optimistic attitude toward malignant masochists. She, like many other analysts, recognizes the importance of the pre-Oedipal mother: “Unconsciously, the masochist continues to ‘seduce’ his internalized, critical, maternal object and repetitively reenacts, in current relationships and in the transference, the old scenario learned at his mother’s knee.”58 But Meyers also pays particular attention to the important role that masochism can play in the child’s attainment of self-definition and separateness from the mother, and this leads her to be tolerant of the masochist’s need to be negativistic: