ABSTRACT
Benno Rosenberg is a philosopher, a psychologist and a full member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. From 1975 on, he participated in the development of the Centre for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy with E. Kestemberg, C. Guedeney and A. Gibeault. Masochism, as a clinical fact, poses a twofold problem for the pleasure principle: on the one hand, there is a theoretical problem concerning the intelligibility of masochism and of the pleasure principle, by the same token. On the other hand, there is a clinical if not vital problem, 'For if mental processes are governed by the pleasure principle in such a way that their first aim is the avoidance of unpleasure and the obtaining of pleasure, masochism is incomprehensible'. The pleasure principle resulted therefore from a modification made to the Nirvana principle, a modification which the libido brought or imposed on the law of functioning of the death drive.
