ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud stated that behind the neurotic symptom lay unconscious infantile sexual aims, which would be described as perverse in the widest sense of the word if they could be "expressed directly in fantasy and action without being diverted from consciousness". When beating fantasies are obligatory in sexual intercourse, one notes that the fantasy serves an additional function—the subject does not give herself over to the experience with the other person insofar as an unshared private world of fantasy is created. The phenomenon of the humiliating or masochistic fantasy is therefore more complex and enigmatic than Freud's essay would imply. The pleasure derived from a beating fantasy cannot be explained only by reference to incestuous desires for the father and libidinal regression to an anal erotogenic zone. For Anna Freud, the presentation of her own paper, "Beating fantasies and daydreams," was the means through which she chose to become a psychoanalyst rather than a teacher.
