The Mastery of Submission : : Inventions of Masochism / / John K. Noyes.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Noyes, John K.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.)

Individuals sometimes derive sexual pleasure from submission to cruel discipline. While that predilection was noted as early as the sixteenth century, masochism was not codified as a concept until 1890. According to John K. Noyes, its invention reflected a crisis in the liberal understanding of subjectivity and sexuality which continues to inform discussions of masochism today. In essence, it remains a political concept.Viennese physician Richard von Krafft-Ebing coined the term masochism, based on the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Noyes analyzes the social and political problems that inspired the concept, suggesting, for example, that the triumphant expansion of European colonialism was in part animated by an ambivalence in masculine sexuality.Noyes documents the evolution of the concept of masochism with scenes in literature from John Cleland's Fanny Hill through Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs and Pauline Reage's Story of 0. Analysis of Freud's vastly influential rereading of masochism precedes an exploration of the work of his successors, including Wilhem Reich, Theodor Reik, Helene Deutsch, and Karen Horney. Noyes suggests that the thematics of feminine masochism emerged only gradually from an exclusively male concept.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Inventions of Masochism -- I. Beaten Women, Biology, and Technologies of Control -- 2. Reason, Passion, and Nineteenth-Century Liberalism Kraffi-Ebing and Sacher-Masoch -- 3. Technologies of Punishment, Penance, and Pleasure -- 4. Imperialist Man, Civilizing Woman, and the European Male Masochist -- 5. Narratives of Mastery, Fantasies of Failure -- 6. Beyond the Death Instinct -- 7. Disappearing and Reappearing Subjects -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index