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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MASOCHISM IN THE MENTAL

LIFE OF WOMEN
BY
HELENE·DEUTSCH
VIENNA

PART I
• FEMININE' MASOCmSM AND ITS RELATION TO FRIGIDITY.1
In the analysis of women we became familiar with the masculinity-
complex before we learnt much about the •femininity' which emerges
from the conflicts accompanying development. The reasons for this
later recognition were various. First of all, analysis comes to know
the human mind in its discords rather than in its harmonies, and, when
we turn the microscope of observation upon the woman, we see with
special distinctness that the main source of her conflicts is the mascu-
linity which she is destined to subdue. It followed that we were able
to recognize the • masculine' element in women earlier and more
clearly than what we may term the nucleus of their • femininity'.
Paradoxical as it may sound, we approached the feminine element
with greater interest when it formed part of a pathological structure
and, as a foreign body, attracted a closer attention. When we
encountered in men that instinctual disposition which we designate
feminine and passive-masochistic, we recognized its origin and the
weighty consequences it entailed. In the case of women we discovered
that, even in the most feminine manifestations of their life-men-
struation, conception, pregnancy and parturition-they had a constant
struggle with the never wholly effaced evidences of the bisexuality of
their nature. Hence, in my earlier writings 2 I shewed with what
elemental force the masculinity-complex flares up in the female repro-
ductive functions, to be once more subdued.
My aim in this paper is different. I want to examine the genesisof
. femininity', by which I mean the feminine, passive-masochistic
disposition in the mental life of women. In particular I shall try to
elucidate the relation of the function of feminine instinct to the func-
tion of reproduction, in order that we may first of all clarify our ideas

1 Read at the Eleventh International Psycho-Analytical Congress,

Oxford, July 27, 1929.

I Helene Deutsch: Psychoanalyse der weiblichen Sexualfunktionen.
Neue Arbeiten zur arztlichen Psychoanalyse, Nr. V.
48
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SIGNIFICANCE OF MASOCHISMIN MENTAL LIFE OF WOMEN 49

about sexual inhibition in women, that is to say, about frigidity. The

discussion will concern itself with theoretical premisesrather than with
the clinical significance of frigidity.
But first let us return to the masculinity-eomplex.
No one who has experience of analysis can doubt that female
children pass through a phase in their libidinal evolution, in which
they, just like boys, having abandoned the passive oral and anal
cathexes, develop an erotogenicity which is actively directed to the
clitoris as in boys to the penis. The determining factor in the situa-
tion is that, in a certain phase, sensations in the organs, which impel
the subject to masturbate, tend strongly towards the genital and effect
cathexis of that zone which in both sexes we have called the ' phallic '.
Penis-envy would never acquire its great significance were it not
that sensations in the organs, with all their elemental power, direct the
child's interest to these regions of the body. It is this which first
produces the narcissistic reactions of envy in little girls. It seems that
they arrive only very gradually and slowly at the final conclusion of
their investigations: the recognition of the anatomical difference
between themselves and boys. So long as onanism affords female chil-
dren an equivalent pleasure they deny that they lack the penis, or
console themselves with hopes that in the future the deficiency will be
made good. A little girl, whom I bad the opportunity of observing,
reacted to the exhibitionistic aggression of an elder brother with the
obstinate and often repeated assertion: ' Susie has got one', pointing
gaily to her clitoris and labia, at which she tugged with intense enjoy-
ment. The gradual acceptance of the anatomical difference between
the sexes is accompanied by conflicts waged round the constellation
which we term penis-envy and mascu1inity-eomplex.
We know that, when the little girl ceases to deny her lack of the
penis and abandons the hope of possessing one in the future, she
employs a considerable amount of her mental energy in trying to
account for the disadvantage under which she Iabonrs, We learn
from our analyses what a large part the sense of guilt connected with
masturbation commonly plays in these attempts at explanation. The
origin of these feelings of guilt is not quite clear, for they already exist
in the phase in which the <Edipus complex of the little girl does not seem
as yet to have laid the burden of guilt upon her.s

3 Freud: • Some Psychological Consequences of the ,Anatomical

Difference between the Sexes ' (This JOURNAl., Vol. VIII, 1927). The argo-
..
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5° HELENE DEUTSCH

Direct observation of children shows beyond question that these

first onanistic activities are informed with impulses of a primary
sadistic nature against the outside world.' Possibly a sense of guilt
is associated with these obscure aggressive impulses. It is probable
that the little girl's illusion that she once had a penis and has lost it is
connected with these first, sadistic, active tendencies to clitoral mas-
turbation. Owing to the memory-traces of this active function of the
clitoris, it is subsequently deemed to have had in the past the actual
value of an organ equivalent to the penis. The erroneous conclusion
is then drawn: I once did possess a penis'.
t

Another way in which the girl regularly tries to account for the loss
is by ascribing the blame for it to her mother. It is interesting to note
that, when the father is blamed for the little girl's lack of a penis,
castration by him has already acquired the libidinal significance
attaching to this idea in the form of the rape-phantasy. Rejection of
the wish that the father should have been the aggressor generally
betokens, even at this early stage, that rejection of the infantile feminine
attitude to which I shall recur.
In his paper t Some Consequences of the Anatomical Difference
between the Sexes', Freud sees in the turning of the little girl to her
father as a sexual object a direct consequence of this anatomical
difference. In Freud's view, development from the castration to the
<Edipus complex consists in the passing from the narcissistic wound of

ment in this paper of Freud's is that the ffidipus complex does not develop
in girls until after the phase of phallic onanism. Cf. also Deutsch: Op. cit.
t In his paper on ' The Economic Problem in Masochism' (Collected

Papers, Vol. II), Freud points out that the important task of the libido
is to conduct into the outside world the instinct of destruction primarily
inherent in living beings, transforming it into the' instinct of mastery ',
This is effected by means of the organ of motility, the muscular system.
It appears to me that part of these destructive tendencies remains attached
to the subject's own person in the earliest form of masturbation, which has
as yet no libidinal object, andthat it is thus intercalated between organic
pleasure and motor discharge into the outside world. At any rate I have
been able with some degree of certainty to establish the fact that children
who are specially aggressive and active have a particularly strong urge to
masturbation. (I am speaking here of the earliest masturbation, which
is as yet autoerotic). We see too that in little children frustration may
provoke an outburst of rage and at the same time attempts at mastur-
bation.
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SIGNIFICAJ."'iCE OF MASOCHISM IN MENTALLIFE OF WOME.N 51

organ-inferiority to the compensation offered: that is to say, there
arises the desire for a child. This is the source of the ffidipus complex
in girls.
In this paper I shall follow up the line of thought thus mapped out
by Freud. After the phallic phase, where the boy renounces the
ffidipus complex and phallic masturbation, there is intercalated in the
girl's development a phase which we may call 'post-phallic'; in this
the seal is set upon her destiny of womanhood. Vaginal cathexis,
however, is as yet lacking.
In spite of my utmost endeavours, I am unable to confirm the
communications that have been made with reference to vaginal
pleasure-sensations in childhood. I do not doubt the accuracy of
these observations, but isolated exceptions in this case prove little.
In my own observations I have had striking evidence in two instances
of the existence pf vaginal excitations and vaginal masturbation before
puberty. In both, seduction with defloration had occurred very early
in life.s If there were in childhood a vaginal phase, with all its bio-
logical significance, it surely could not fail to appear as regularly in
our analytical material as do all the other infantile phases of develop-
ment. I think that the most difficult factor in the 'anatomical
destiny' of the woman is the fact that at a time when the libido is still
unstable, immature and incapable of sublimation, it seems condemned
to abandon a pleasure-zone (the clitoris as a phallic organ) without
discovering the possibility of a new cathexis. The narcissistic estima-
tion of the non-existent organ passes smoothly (to use a phrase of
Freud's) , along the symbolic equation: penis-ehild, which is mapped
out for it '. But what becomes of the dynamic energy of the libido
which is directed towards the object and yearns for possibilities of
gratification and for erotogenic cathexes ?
We must also reflect that the wish-phantasy of receiving a child
from the father-a phantasy of the greatest significance for the future
of a woman-is, nevertheless, in comparison with the reality of the

IiEven if further observations should prove the occurrence of vaginal

sensations in childhood, the subsequent cathexis of the vagina as a sex-
organ would still seem to be scarcely affected by the question of whether
it had transitorily been a zone of excitation, very soon repressed so as to
leave scarcely a trace, or whether it were only in later years of development
that it assumed for the :first time the role of the genital apparatus. The
same difficulties arise in either case.
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HELENZ DEUTSCH

penis, for which it is supposed to be exchanged, a very unreal and

uncertain substitute. I heard of the little daughter of an analyst
mother who, at the time when she was experiencing penis-envy, was
consoled with the prospect of having a child. Every morning she woke
up to ask in a fury: 'Hasn't the child come yet '? and no more
accepted the consolation of the future than we are consoled by the
promise of Paradise.
What, then, does happen to the actively directed cathexis of the
clitoris in the phase when that organ ceasesto be valued as the penis?
In order to answer this question we may fall back on a familiar and
typical process. We already know that, when a given activity is
denied by the outside world or inhibited from within, it regularly
suffers a certain fate-it turns back or is deflected. This seems to be
so in the instance beforeus: the hitherto active-sadisticlibido attached
to the clitoris rebounds from the barricade of the subject's inner recog-
nition of her lack of the penis and, on the one hand, regressively
cathects points in the pregenital development which it had already
abandoned, while, on the other hand, and most frequently of all, it is
deflectedin a regressive direction towards masochism. In place of the
active urge of the phallic tendencies, there arises the masochistic
phantasy: 'I want to be castrated', and this forms the erotogenic
masochistic basis of the feminine libido. Analytic experience leaves
no room for doubt that the little girl's first libidinal relation to her
father is masochistic, and the masochistic wish in its earliest distinc-
tively feminine phase is: • I want to be castrated by my father '.'
In my view this turning in the direction of masochism is part of
the woman's' anatomical destiny', marked out for her by biological
and constitutional factors, and lays the first foundation of the ultimate
development of femininity, independent as yet of masochisticreactions
to the sense of guilt. The original significance of the clitoris as an
organ of activity, the masculine-narcissistic protest: 'I won't be
castrated' are converted into the desire: 'I want to be castrated '.
This desire assumes the form of a libidinal, instinctual trend whose
object is the father. The woman's wholepassive-feminine disposition,
the entire genital desire familiar to us as the rape-phantasy, is finally
explained if we accept the proposition that it originates in the castra-

• That' feminine' masochism has its origin in this regressive deflection

of the libido is clear evidence of the identity of • erotogenic' and' feminine'
masochism.
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SIGNIFICANCE OF MASOCHISM IN MENTAL LIFE OF WOMEN 53

tion-complex, My view is thattheCEdipus romple% in girls is itulugurale4

by the castration-comple%. The factor of pleasnre resides in the idea of
a sadistic assault by the love-object and the narcissistic loss is rom-
pensated by the desire for a child, which is to be fulfilled through this
assault. When we designate this masochistic experience by the name
of the wish for castration, we are not thinking merely of the biologica.I
meaning-the surrender of an organ of pleasure (the clitoris)-but we
are also taking into account the fact that the whole of this defiection
of the libido still centres on that organ. The onanism belonging to
this phase and the masochistic phantasy of being castrated (raped)
employ the same organ as the former active tendencies. The astonish-
ing persistency of the feminine castration-complex (including all the
organic vicissitudes with which is associated a flow of blood) as we
encounter it in the analyses of our female patients is thus explained by
the fact that this complex contains in itself not only the masculinity-
complex, but also the whole infantile set towards femininity.
At that period there is a close connection between the masochistic
phantasies and the wish for a child, so that the whole subsequent
attitude of the woman towards her child (or towards the reproduc-
tive function) is permeated by pleasnre-tendencies of a masochistic
nature.
We have an illustration of this in the dream of a patient whose
subsequent analysis unequivocally confirmed what had been hinted
in the manifest content of her dream; this occurred in the first phase
of her analysis before much insight had been gained.
• Professor X. and you (the analyst) were sitting together. I
wanted him to notice me. He went past my chair and I looked up at
him and he smiled at me. He began to ask me about my health. as a
doctor asks his patient; I answered with reluctance. All of a sudden
he had on a doctor's white coat and a pair of obstetrica.I forceps in his
hand. He said to me: Now we'll just have a look at the little
If

angel". I clearly saw that they were obstetrical forceps, but I had the
feeling that the instrument was to be used to fore- my legs apart and
display the clitoris. I was very much frightened and struggled. A
number of people, amongst them you and a trained nurse. were stand-
ing by and were indignant at my struggling. They thought that Pr0-
fessor X. had specially chosen me for a kind of experiment, and that I
ought to submit to it. As everyone was against me, I cried out in
impotent fury: No, I will not be operated on, you shall not operate
onme " . . II
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54 HELENE DEUTSCH

Without examining the dream more closely here, we can see in its
manifest content that castration is identified with rape and parturition,
and the dream-wish which excites anxiety is as follows: 'I want to be
castrated (raped) by my father and to have a child '-a three-fold wish
of a plainly masochistic character.
The first, infantile identification with the mother is always, inde-
pendently of the complicated processes and reactions belonging to the
sense of guilt, masochistic, and all the active birth-phantasies, whose
roots lie in this identification, are of a bloody, painful character, which
they retain throughout the subject's life. 7
In order to make my views on frigidity intelligible I had to
preface. them with these theoretical considerations.
I will now pass on to discuss those forms of frigidity which bear the
stamp of the masculinity-complex or penis-envy. In these cases the
woman persists in the original demand for possession of a penis and
refuses to abandon the phallic organization. Conversion to the
feminine-passive attitude, the necessary condition of vaginal sensation,
does not take place.
Let me mention briefly the danger of the strong attachment of all
sexual phantasies to clitoris-masturbation. I think I have made it
clear that the clitoris has come to be the executive organ, not only of
active but of passive masochistic phantasies. By virtue of its past
phase of masculine activity, a kind of organ-memory constitutes it the
great enemy of any transference of pleasure-excitation to the vagina.
Moreover, the fact that the whole body receives an increased cathexis of
libido (since it has failed to find its focus) brings it about that, in spite
of an often very vehement manifestation of the sexual instinct, the
libido never attains to its centralized fonn of gratification.
In far the largest number of cases, feminine sexual inhibition arises
out of the vicissitudes of that infantile-masochistic libidinal develop-
men which I have postulated. These vicissitudes are manifold, and
every form they assume may lead to frigidity. For instance, as a
result of the repression of the masochistic tendencies a strong nar-
cissistic cathexis of the feminine ego may be observed. The ego feels
that it is threatened by these tendencies, and takes up a narcissistic

7 In the second section of this paper I will revert to the part that the
sense of guilt plays in feminine masochistic phantasies. In the present
argument I am indicating the purely libidinal origin of feminine maso-
chism, as determined by the course of evolution.
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SIGNIFICANCE OF MASOCHISM IN MENTAL LIFE OF WOMEN 55

position of defence. I believe that, together with penis-envy.this is

an important source of SO-called feminine narcissism.
Akin to this reaction of repression is another reaction-formation
which Karen Horney calls the flight from .femininity,' and of which
I

she has given a very illuminating description. This flight from the
incest-wish is, in my view, a shunning not only of the incestuous object
(Horney), but most of all of the masochistic dangers threatening the
ego which are associated with the relation to this object. Escape into
identification with the father is at the same time a flight from the
masochistically determined identification with the mother. Thus
there arises the masculinity-complex, which I think will be strong and
disturbing in proportion as penis-envy has been intense and the
primary phallic active tendencies vigorous.
Repression of the masochistic instinctual tendencies may have
another result in determining a particular type of object-choice later in
life. . The object stands in antithesis to the masochistic instinctual
demands and corresponds to the requirements of the ego. In accord-
ance with these the woman chooses a partner whose social standing is
high or whose intellectual gifts are above the average, often a man
whose disposition is rather of an afIectionateand passive type. The
marriage then appears to be peaceful and happy, but the woman
remains frigid, suffering from an unsatisfied longing-the type of the
I misunderstood wife'. Her sexual sensibility is bound up with con-
ditions whose fulfilment is highly offensive to her ego. How often do
such women become the wretched victims of a passion for men who
ill-treat them, thus fulfilling the women's unconscious desires for cas-
tration or rape.
I have also observed how frequently-indeed, almost invariably-
women whose whole life is modelled on the lines of masculine sublima-
tion-tendencies are markedly masochistic in their sexual experiences.
They belong to that reactive masculine type which yet has failed to
repress its original masochistic instinctual attitude. My experience is
that the prospect of cure in these cases of relative frigidity, in which
sexual sensation depends on the fulfilment of masochistic conditions,
is very uncertain. It is peculiarly difficult to detach these patients
from the said conditions and, when analysis has given them the neces-
sary insight, they have consciously to choose between finding bliss in
suffering or peace in renunciation.
The analyst's most important task is, of course, the abolition of the
sexual inhibition in his patients, and the attainment of instinctual
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HELENE DEUTSCH

gratification. But sometimes, when the patient's instincts are so

unfortunately fixed and yet there are good capacities for sublimation,
the analyst must have the courage to smooth the path in the so-called
masculine' direction and thus make it easier for the patient to
renounce sexual gratification.
There are women who have strong sexual inhibition and intense
feelings of inferiority, the origin of which lies in penis-envy. In such
cases it is evidently the task of analysis to free these patients from the
difficulties of the masculinity-complex and to convert penis-envy into
the desire for a child, i.e. to induce them to adopt their feminine role.
We can observe that during this process the < masculine aims' become
depreciated and are given up. Nevertheless we often find that, if we
can succeed in making it easier for such women to sublimate their
instincts in the direction of ' masculine tendencies' and so to counter
the sense of inferiority, the capacity for feminine sexual .sensibility
develops automatically in a striking manner. The theoretical explana-
tion of this empirically determined fact is self-evident.
It is but rarely in analytic practice that we meet with such cases of
conditioned frigidity as I have described or indeed with any cases of
frigidity unaccompanied by pathological symptoms, i.e. of sexual
inhibition without symptoms of suffering. When such a patient comes
to us, it is generally at the desire of the husband, whose narcissism is
wounded, and who feels uncertain of his masculinity. The woman,
actuated by her masochistic tendencies, has renounced the experience
of gratification for herself, and, as a rule, her desire to be cured is so
feeble that the treatment is quite unsuccessful.
As we know, hysteria which expresses itself in symptom-formation
is extraordinarily capricious and varied as regards the nature of the
sexual inhibition displayed. One type of hysterical patient is driven
by an everlasting hunger for love-objects, which she changes without
inhibition: her erotic life appears free, but she is incapable of genital
gratification. Another type is monogamous and remains tenderly
attached to the love-object, but without sexual sensibility; she
exhibits other neurotic reactions which testify to her morbid state.
Such women often dissipate the sexual excitation in the fore-pleasure,
either owing to the strong original cathexis of the pregenital zones or
because by a secondary and regressive reaction they are endeavouring
to withhold the libido from the genital organ which prohibitions and
their own anxiety have barricaded off. Here one often receives the
impression that all the sense-organs, and indeed the whole female
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SIGNIFICANCE OF MASOCHlSMIN MENTAL LIFE OF WOMEN 57

body, are more accessible to sexual excitation than is the vagina, the
organ apparently destined for it. But conversion-symptoms tum out
to be the seat of false sexual cathexes, Behind the hysterical. pleasure-
inhibiting, genital anxiety we discover the masochistic triad: castra-
tion, rape and parturition. The fixation of these wish-phantasies to
the infantile object here becomes, as we know, the motive factor in
the neuroses. If this attachment is resolved by analysis, sexual
sensibility as a rule develops.
In touching briefly on the question of frigidity accompanying
phobias and obsessions, mention must be made of the remarkable fact
that in these cases the sexual disturbance is emphatically not in direct
ratio to the severity of the neurosis, There are patients who remain
frigid long after they have overcome their anxiety, and even after they
have got rid of the most severe obsessionalsymptoms, and the converse
is also true. The uncertainty of obsessionalneurosis-in so far as the
genital capacity of female patients is concerned-is most plainly
manifested in certain cases (several of which have come under my
observation) in which the most violent orgasm may result from hostile
masculine identifications. The vagina behaves like an active organ,
and the particularly brisk secretion is designed to imitate ejaculation.
At the beginning of this paper I endeavoured to show that the
masochistic triad constantly encountered in the analyses of women
corresponds to a definite phase of feminine libidinal development and
represents, so to speak, the last act in the drama of the vicissitudes of
the' feminine castration-complex '. In neurotic diseases, however,
we meet above all with the reactions of the sense of guilt, and hence we
find this primary-libidinal feminine masochism already so closely
interwoven and interlocked with the moral masochism, originating
under pressure of the sense of guilt, that we miss the significance of that
which is in origin libidinal. Thus many obscure points in connection
with the feminine castration-complex become clearer if we recognize
that, behind the castration-anxiety, there is further the repressed
masochistic wish characteristic of a definite infantile phase of develop-
ment in the normal feminine libido.
The task of psycho-analysisis to resolvethe conflicts of the individual
existence. The instinctual life of the individual, which is the object of
analytical scrutiny, strives towards the ultimate goal, amidst con-
flicts and strange vicissitudes, of attainment of pleasure. The preserva-
tion of the race lies outside these aims,and, if there be a deeper sig-
nificance in the fact that the same means are employed to achieve
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HELENE DEUTSCH

the racial aim as to subserve the pleasure-tendency of man's instincts,

that significance is outside the scope of our individualistic task.
Here I think wehave a fundamental and essential difference between
• feminine' and • masculine '. In the woman's mental life there is
something which has nothing at all to do with the mere fact of whether
she has or has not actually given birth to a child. I refer to the psychic
representatives of motherhood which are here long before the neces-
sary physiological and anatomical conditions have developed in the
girl. For the tendency of which I am speaking the attaining of the
child is the main goal of existence, and in woman the exchange of the
racial aim for the individual one of gratification may take place largely
at the expense of the latter. No analytical observer can deny that in
the relation of mother to child-begun in pregnancy and continued in
parturition and lactation-libidinal forces come into play which are
very closelyallied to those in the relation between man and woman.
In the deepest experience of the relation of mother to child it is
masochism in its strongest form which finds gratification in the bliss
of motherhood.
Long before she is a mother, long after the possibility of becom-
ing one has ended, the woman has ready within her the maternal
principle, which bids her take to herself and guard the real child or
some substitute for it.
In coitus and parturition the masochistic pleasure of the sexual
instinct is very closely bound up with the mental experience of con-
ception and giving birth; just so does the little girl see in the father,
and the loving woman in her beloved-a child. For years I have
traced out in analyses this most intimate blending of the sexual
instinct with that of the reproductive function in women, and always
the question has hovered before my mind: When does the female
child begin to be a woman and when a mother? Analytic experience
has yielded the answer: Simultaneously, in that phase when she
turns towards masochism, as I described at the beginningof this paper.
Then, at the same time as she conceives the desire to be castrated
and raped, she conceives also' the phantasy of receiving a child from
her father. From that time on, the phantasy of parturition becomes
a member of the masochistic triad and the gulf between instinctual
and the reproductive tendencies is bridged by masochism. The
interruption of the little girl's infantile sexual development by the
frustration of her desire for the child gives to the sublimation-tenden-
cies of the woman a very definite stamp of masochistic maternity.
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SIGNIFICANCE OF MASOCHISMIN MENTAL LIFE OF WOMEN 59

If it is true that men derive the principal forces which make for sub-
limation from their sadistic tendencies, then it is equally true that
women draw on the masochistic tendencies with their imprint of
maternity. In spite of this symbiosis, the two opposite poles, the
sexual instinct and the reproductive function, may enter into conflict
with one another. When this occurs, the danger is the greater in pro-
portion as the two groups of tendencies are in close proximity.
Thus, a woman may .commandeer the whole of her masochistic
instinctual energy for the purpose of direct gratification and abandon
sublimation in the function of reproduction. In the relation of the
prostitute to the souteneu, we have such an unadulterated product of
the feminine masochistic instinctual attitude.
At the opposite end of the.pole, yet drawing upon the same source,
we have the mate, dolorosa, the whole of whose masochism has come
to reside in the relation of mother to child.
From this point I return to my original theme. There is a group
of women who constitute the main body figuring in the statistics
which give the large percentage of frigidity. The women in question
are psychically healthy, and their relation to the world and to their
libidinal object is positive and friendly. If questioned about the
nature of their experience in coitus, they give answers which show
that the conception of orgasm as something to be experienced by
themselves is really and truly foreign to them. During intercourse
what they feel is a happy and tender sense that they are giving keen
pleasure and, if they do not come of a social environment where they
have acquired full sexual enlightenment, they are convinced that coitus
as a sexual act is of importance only for the man. In it, as in other
relations, the woman finds happiness in tender, maternal giving.
This type of woman is dying out and the modern woman seems to
be neurotic if she is frigid. Her sublimations are further removed
from instinct and therefore, while on the one hand they constitute a
lesser menace to its direct aims, they are, on the other, less well adapted
for the indirect gratification of its demands. I think that this psycho-
logical change is in accordance with social developments and that it is
accompanied by an increasing tendency of women towards masculinity.
Perhaps the women of the next generation will no longer submit to
defloration in the normal way and will give birth to children only
on condition of freedom from pain.
And then in after-generations they may resort to infibulation and
to refinements in the way of pain-s-ceremonials in connection with
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60 HELENE DEUTSCH

parturition. It is this masochism-the most elementary force in

feminine mental life-that I have been endeavouring to analyse.
Possibly I have succeeded in throwing light on its origin and,
above all, on its importance and its application in the function of
reproduction. This employing of masochistic instinctual forces for
the purpose of race-preservation I regard as representing in the mental
economy an act of sublimation on the part of the woman. In certain
circumstances it results in the withdrawal from the direct gratification
of instinct of the energy involved and in the woman's sexual life
becoming characterized by frigidity without entailing any such conse-
quences as would upset her mental balance and give rise to neurosis.
Let me now at the close of my paper give its main purport:
lYomen UJould never have suffered themselves throughout tke epochs of
history to have been withheld by social ordinances on the o'te hand front
possibilities of sublimation, and on the other from sexual gratifications,
were it notthat in the function of reproduction they have found magnificent
satisfaction for both urges.
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