ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author uses the term "masochistic" in a particular restricted way. He refers to a style of relating in which, in the analyst's opinion, the patient winds up being repeatedly mistreated. The author wants to clear that he was not subscribing to a drive theory conception of masochism as seeking pain as a necessary precondition for, or accompaniment of, sexual pleasure. Based on P. Janet's conception of different centres of the mind and the primacy of dissociation and W. R. D. Fairbairn's idea of the multiplicity of ego states, Multiple Self-State Theory (MSST) views mind as frequently shifting between different self states characterized by different senses of self. The process of dissociation is central to the MSS model of mind. Berliner characterized masochism as "a disturbance of interpersonal relations, a pathological way of loving". The author talks about the relationship and the transference-countertransference configuration.
