ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the concept from two points of view—one clinical, from which is derived an approach to the theme of eroticism, and the other philosophical, in which feminine masochism fits into a biological metaphor underlain by a truth of the human condition which is closely linked with nothingness. From the point of view of its evolution, Freud considers feminine masochism as a ramification of the definitive sexual organization from which are derived the characteristic conditions of femininity: being castrated, being sexually possessed, giving birth. Feminine masochism, midway between the biological and the imaginary, calls to a woman's space, a feminine space, a habitat-receptacle that introduces the subject into a real or imaginary inwardness in which the wail of "the obscure" is heard, in which there is a regression to a sinister familiarity of unknown origin. Feminine masochism is a link between eroticism and death.
