ABSTRACT
Surrender, in striking contrast to masochism, is a word that is seldom encountered in the psychoanalytic literature, and even then it often bears an ambiguous meaning. The author's goal in this chapter is to give the term a certain clarity of definition and to study its relation to submission and masochism, which he regards as antitheses to surrender. The main hypothesis is that it is this passionate longing to surrender that comes into play in at least some instances of masochism. The chapter attempts to illumine the shroud of mystery that still hangs over this curious human phenomenon—the seeking out of submission, pain or adversity—by drawing attention to another dimension that in my view plays a major and often deeply buried role in its varied expressions. Masochistic phenomena have often been traced to deprivation, traumata and developmental interferences suffered in the early preoedipal years.
