ABSTRACT
There is an old Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times.’These are analytically interesting times, in which, more than ever before in the history of psychoanalysis, accepted paradigms have been called into question, and a congeries of new and old ideas competes for attention and allegiance. In intellectual history, such periods of enthusiastic creative ferment have led to the development of new ideas. Sciences make their great advances when new techniques lead to new experiments, when new data contradict old theories, and when new ideas lead to new theories. Since the early 1970s, much of the interesting creative tension in psychoanalysis has focused on the crucial role of pre-Oedipal experiences and the centrality of issues of self or narcissism in character development. I propose that masochistic defenses are ubiquitous in pre-Oedipal narcissistic development and that a deeper understanding of the development of masochism may help to clarify a number of clinical problems. I suggest that a full appreciation of the roles of narcissism and masochism in development and in pathology requires that we relinquish whatever remains of what Freud referred to as the ‘shibboleth’ of the centrality of the Oedipus complex in neurosogenesis. I further suggest that masochism and narcissism are so entwined, both in development and in clinical presentation, that we clarify our clinical work by considering that there is a narcissistic-masochistic character and that neither appears alone.
