ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud's essay consists of six sections. The first four examine a subtopic of sadomasochism—namely, the evolution, form, and significance of beating phantasies, which can bear the contradictory meanings of feeling unloved and feeling loved in a genital sense. At the outset of section 5, Freud points to three general matters that remain to be considered: the origin of perversion, the origin of perverse masochism in particular, and the role of sexual difference in the dynamics of neurosis. In the final section of his essay, Freud proceeds to use Wilhelm Fliess and Adler as his own whipping boys since they distortedly sexualized the theory of repression. Freud and a number of the early German-speaking analysts were given to formulating the patient's phantasy as part of an internal monologue in the first person.
