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Notes
Gilles Deleuze Middlesex University White Hart Lane Tottenham London N17 8HR UK E‐mail: [email protected]
Originally published as “De Sacher Masoch au masochisme” in Arguments, 5e année, no. 21, 1er trimestre (1961): 40–46.
Reprinted in Gilles Deleuze and Leopold von Sacher Masoch, Masochism, trans. Jean McNeil (New York: Zone, 1989) 277–79. Translator's note. All notes by the translator are hereafter marked “TN.”
In a forthcoming study, M. Perruchot studies the problem of masochistic symptoms and puts in question their unity with sadism.
All of these preceding and following themes find their illustration in Venus in Furs.
Deleuze's French for “to draw up” a contract is “projetter.” This word expands to assume its psychoanalytic connotation below. See n. 18. TN.
Sacher Masoch, Venus in Furs, in Deleuze and Sacher Masoch, Masochism, op. cit. 145. TN.
Ibid. 149. TN.
Ibid. 145; trans. modified. TN.
Cf. J.J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht. (Selected pages of Bachofen have been translated by Turel, ed. Alcan, 1938.) [For an English selection, cf. Myth, Religion and Mother Right, trans. R. Manheim (New York: Princeton UP, 1967). TN.] – On analogous themes, Pierre Gordon has recently written a very beautiful book, L'Initiation sexuelle et l'évolution religieuse (Paris: PUF, 1946) [translated by R. and H. Spodheim as Sex and Religion (New York: Social Sciences Publishers, 1949)].
Cf. Sacher‐Masoch, The Black Czarina in Venus in Furs & The Black Czarina, trans. H.J. Stenning (New York: Tower, n.d.). On “communism” as seen by Masoch, cf. Le Paradis du Dniestr [Das Paradies am Dniester].
Sabathai Zweg (or Cevi/Zweig) was one of the most important of the messiahs who caused a stir across Europe in the seventeenth century. Numerous messiahs appeared in Galicia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: cf. Graetz, Histoire des Juifs, vol. 5.
In fact psychoanalysis attempts to avoid the problem which it has itself provoked: that the feminine object would not be such at all, since it is imbued with “virile qualities.” The masochist would be making do with a sort of compromise, through which he will evade making an explicit homosexual object‐choice. Cf. Freud, “A Child is Being Beaten” in SE, vol. 17 175–204; Nacht, Le Masochisme, ed. Le Francois 40–41; Reik, Masochism in Sex and Society, trans. M.H. Beigel and G.M. Kurth (New York: Grove, 1962) 207. – The whole difficulty arises from the fact that psychoanalysis, going against all appearances, had first of all postulated that the devouring Mother, the furs, the whip, etc., were images of the father. Reik: “Whenever we had the opportunity to study a case we found the father or his representative hidden behind the figure of the beating woman” (21). However, in the same book, Reik experiences doubts on several occasions: notably on pp. 209–11. But he does not draw any consequences from this.
The distinction between “objective” and “subjective” approaches to the unconscious is a frequent theme in Jung. Cf. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, trans. R.F.C. Hull (London: Routledge, 1966) 84. The objective unconscious is composed of memories attached to actual events and objects in the subject's life, while the “subjective” unconscious indicates the presence of symbols and images which are impersonal in origin. TN.
Reik, op. cit. 143–65.
Reik, op. cit. 149, 160. “He exhibits the punishment but also its failure” 145.
Reik: “The punishment or the humiliation precedes the satisfaction … Because pleasure results from suffering for the masochist, it was assumed as self‐evident that discomfort causes pleasure in him” (op. cit. 267–70); “[The masochist] gets pleasure out of the same things we all do, but he cannot get it before he has suffered” (401).
Reik, op. cit. 132–33. On the role of anxiety in masochism, cf. also Nacht, Masochism.
As noted in n. 5, Deleuze's French for the “drawing up” of the contract above is “projection.” Now the use of the word “projection” appears in its psychoanalytic significance. TN.
Jung, Métamorphoses de l'ăme et ses symboles, part II, chapters 4 and 5. [This book, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, was published in two widely different editions, first in 1911–12, and then in 1952. The first edition was translated by B. Hinkle as Psychology of the Unconscious (London: Kegan Paul, 1917); the second edition was translated by R.F.C. Hull as Symbols of Transformation (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1956, 2nd ed. 1967). TN.]
In fact the assurance of success is not quite as great as we are saying. Often the hero will not be reconstituted completely, or even remains swallowed up in the mother: the terrible Mother then gets the upper hand over the Mother of life. Is it necessary to identify this as a stage in the degradation of the myth? It seems rather that the myth, and also neurosis as we are seeing it, presents two aspects according to whether the accent is placed on the dangerous regression or the progression which can emerge from it. The third party in the experience of the masochistic contract seems to be a projection of the happy result or final success, that is, of the new man who emerges from these sufferings and mutilations. But it is precisely in so far as this emergence is not certain and the accent falls on the regression that the third party deforms the final end: he represents in this case a vengeance of the ridiculed father, a reapparition of the father under the form of sadism, who reacts just as much against the mother as against the son.
Freud, “The Economic Problem of Masochism,” SE, vol. 19 155–72.
Often the second mother is an animal, a beast with a fur pelt. In the case of Masoch himself, one of his aunts plays this role of second mother: the young Masoch conceals himself in a wardrobe of fur coats to spy on her (Choses vécus (Paris: Revue bleue, 1888)). This episode reappears transposed in Venus. In the same way, rituals of suspension play a large role in Masoch and in masochism, a role analogous to the one they have in the incestuous myths of the second birth. Compare this with Reik on the “factor of suspension.”
Cf. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
Cf. Jung, “The Real and the Surreal” in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works, vol. 8, trans. R.F.C. Hull (London: Routledge, 1969) 382–84. TN.
On Freud and Jung. All these points refer us back generally to the differences between Freud and Jung. In order to understand these essential differences properly, one has to take into account that the two authors did not work on or privilege the same clinical material. The primary Freudian concepts (for example, repression) are marked by the domain of hysteria. They always will be, even though Freud's genius was to sense the necessity of reformulating them in terms of other cases which deepen their meaning (such as obsession and anxiety). It is, moreover, the case that Freudian methodologies are appropriate mainly for young neurotics whose disorders are related to personal reminiscences and whose problems are about reconciling themselves with the real (loving, making oneself lovable, adapting, etc.), without regard for the role of any interior conflicts. But there are neuroses of quite another type which are nearer to psychosis. There are adult neurotics who are burdened by “Images” which transcend every experience; their problem is to be reconciled with themselves, that is, to reintegrate in their personality those very parts which they neglected to develop, and which are as if alienated in Images, where they lead a dangerously autonomous life. Freud's analytic method is no use for relating to these primordial Images. They are irreducible and they can be approached only by a synthetic method which searches beyond the experience of the subject for the truth of the neurosis, and looks to this truth for possibilities by means of which the subject might personally assimilate for himself the content of these images. Jung can therefore reproach Freud for having left in the dark both the real dangers present in a neurosis and the treasures it can contain. He said that Freud had a deprecating outlook on neuroses: “it is nothing but …” On the contrary, according to Jung, “what resides in a neurosis are really the elements of the personality that have not yet been developed, a precious parcel of soul without which man is condemned to resignation and bitterness. The psychology of neurosis which never sees anything but the negative side throws out the baby with the bath water.”; “in neurosis resides our most relentless enemy or our best friend” (cf. Correspondence with Löy, 1930, in La Guérison psychologique. [A correspondence between Jung and R. Löy is translated as “Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis: A Correspondence between Dr Jung and Dr Löy,” in Jung, Collected Works, vol. 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961) 252–89. Although these specific passages are not to be found in it, see Jung's last letter on pp. 283–89 for similar views. TN.]) This is not to rule out that a neurosis might be amenable to a Freudian interpretation up to a certain point, but this interpretation loses its rights as soon as one begins to penetrate into the more profound strata of the unconscious, or equally as the neurotic develops and is transformed or reawakened with age.