ABSTRACT
In Sigmund Freud’s famous paper, “A child is being beaten”, the title captures the fantasy the masochist has of being identified with an imagined child being beaten. The masochist is sacrificing or destroying a child in some form in order to achieve a triumphant feeling of control, and to avoid responsibility for their own feelings and experience. To understand what is going on, analysts need to look in detail at the various aspects of the child’s experience and how, in later adult life, this forms the attitudes of the individual to the child parts of their own personality and to external children. One of the most dramatic discoveries that emerged from Melanie Klein’s pioneering work of psychoanalysis with children was that even very small children give clear indications of transference. Sometimes the sacrifice of the child might occur in a very tangible way, despite being heavily disguised.
