ABSTRACT
Marie Bonaparte’s important piece on ‘Passivity, Masochism and Femininity’ was first read at the Thirteenth International Psycho-Analytical Congress in Lucerne (1934). The present version was published in 1935.
Bonaparte teases out here the distinction between masochism and passivity as they relate to the psychosexual development in girls. She starts with the observation that in the sphere of reproduction, and through experiences such as defloration, women experience much more suffering than men. This implies that from a biological and causal perspective women are predisposed towards masochism. She notes Freud’s characterization of masochism as having a feminine form and Deutsch’s claim that masochism is necessary to woman’s psychosexual development.
On the basis of observations of children, with their sadistic conception of coitus, Bonaparte takes her distance from both Freud and Deutsch by ascertaining that women can experience erotic pleasure unpredicated on masochism. The problem, though, is not only that the woman has two erogenous zones for sexual enjoyment, but also that the maternal function seems to highlight pain, fear, and suffering. Thus, Bonaparte’s question is, how does the woman negotiate the dualism of erotic pleasure from the maternal function? or, how does woman obtain passive erotic pleasure without sliding into a defensive masochism that shuns penetration and eroticizes the clitoris over the vagina?
In Marie Bonaparte’s view, there are two main outcomes in female psychosexual development: a woman will either accept coitus masochistically, or she will replace her infantile fantasies with reality, thereby dissociating coitus from other reproductive functions and accepting it passively as a pleasurable act.
