The depth-psychology corpus approaches ‘masochist’ not as a fixed diagnostic category but as a site of contested interpretation spanning drive theory, social character analysis, archetypal psychology, and phenomenological critique. Freud’s foundational claim — that sadism and masochism are habitually found together in the same individual, each representing an aspect of a single instinctual disposition — establishes the sadomasochistic dyad as the conceptual baseline from which all subsequent depth-psychological treatments depart. Fromm’s sociological inflection is decisive: he repositions masochism away from perversion and toward a characterological escape from freedom, arguing that the masochistic person surrenders selfhood to an overwhelming power precisely to be relieved of the intolerable burden of individual existence and existential choice. This social-character reading transforms the masochist from a clinical curiosity into a diagnostic figure for modern unfreedom. Hillman’s archetypal counter-reading challenges both Krafft-Ebing’s nosological closure and the corrective therapeutic model, proposing instead that masochism be understood as a psychic phenomenon referring to death, ecstatic release, and soul-deepening rather than dysfunction requiring repair. Rank connects masochistic experience to birth trauma and the longing to re-enter primal union. Abraham grounds it in clinical observation of pleasure-in-suffering. Liz Greene distinguishes Saturnian suffering from masochism proper, insisting the former yields psychological freedom rather than pleasurable self-subjugation. Together these voices reveal the term’s persistent tension between pathology and meaning, between reduction to mechanism and elevation to existential symbol.
Masochism is one way toward this goal. The different forms which the masochistic strivings assume have one aim: to get rid of the individual self, to lose oneself; in other words, to get rid of the burden of freedom.
Fromm identifies masochism as a characterological strategy for escaping the anxiety of selfhood by dissolving individual identity into an overwhelmingly powerful other.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
As long as masochism is regarded as a sexual anomaly only and sexuality is taken only as a concrete ‘function,’ the psychological import is reduced to piecemeal localizations in the sexual function or in one’s personal history.
Hillman argues that restricting masochism to sexual pathology forecloses its archetypal meaning as a soul-phenomenon related to dying and ecstatic release.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
The masochistic person, whether his master is an authority outside of himself or whether he has internalized the master as conscience or a psychic compulsion, is saved from making decisions, saved from the final responsibility for the fate of his self.
Fromm elaborates masochism as the psychic mechanism by which the individual purchases security from existential doubt at the cost of autonomous selfhood.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
There is a phenomenon, however, which proves that suffering and weakness can be the aim of human striving: the masochistic perversion. Here we find that people quite consciously want to suffer in one way or another and enjoy it.
Fromm uses the masochistic perversion as empirical evidence that human striving can be directed toward pain and self-weakening, contradicting simple pleasure-principle models of the psyche.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
A sadist is always at the same time a masochist, although the active or the passive aspect of the perversion may be the more strongly developed in him and may represent his predominant sexual activity.
Freud establishes the structural unity of sadism and masochism in the same subject as a foundational proposition of psychosexual theory.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905thesis
As Esquirol’s definition of hallucinations was decisive for the visions of the soul, so was Krafft-Ebing’s definition of masochism decisive for the sufferings of the soul.
Hillman critiques the nosological naming of masochism by Krafft-Ebing as a conceptual closure that reduced the sufferings of the soul to a catalogued sexual anomaly.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
Masochistic dependency is conceived as love or loyalty, inferiority feelings as an adequate expression of actual shortcomings, and one’s suffering as being entirely due to unchangeable circumstances.
Fromm identifies the characteristic rationalizations through which masochistic strivings disguise themselves as virtues, making them clinically difficult to recognize.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
Whilst the masochist seeks to re-establish the original pleasurable condition by means of affective revaluation of the birth trauma, the sadist personifies the unquenchable hatred of one who has been expelled.
Rank locates masochism within his birth-trauma theory, reading it as a regressive longing to reconstitute primal intrauterine pleasure through pain’s affective transformation.
, The Trauma of Birth, 1924supporting
Her phantasies used to induce a state of still greater suffering in her and one of absolute passivity; and from this she obtained masochistic pleasure.
Abraham documents clinical evidence of masochistic pleasure derived from induced states of passivity and suffering in a hysterical patient, grounding the concept in observable case material.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927supporting
Anyone who enjoys his pain is considered to be a masochist; however, it is not enjoyment of pain which Saturn fosters, but rather the exhilaration of psychological freedom.
Greene distinguishes Saturnian suffering from masochism proper, arguing that what appears as pain-seeking under Saturn’s influence is in fact the pursuit of genuine psychological liberation.
, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, 1976supporting
Echo is in love with an unatainable object (Narcissus). This is an impossible love, since Narcissus can’t, and continually rejects her. Echo in this view is a kind of masochist.
Berry notes the conventional reading of Echo as masochist — defined by self-defeating passion for the unattainable — before proceeding to challenge this reduction through archetypal analysis.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
As he wanted to stop the masochist-monk from maltreating the body, and kept advocating discretion and its accompanying moderation, so he wanted the corporate office, even if frequent, to be of a restrained length.
Cassian’s Conferences, as glossed here, applies the masochist concept to ascetic excess, positioning bodily self-maltreatment as a spiritual pathology requiring the corrective of discretion.
, Conferences, 426aside