Deleuze meets Freud: sexuality deconstructed based on a lecture of Sacher-Masoch

Abstract

This essay discusses the relationship between femininity, passivity and masochism based on a critical-clinical reflection on the work of Sacher-Masoch interpreted by Deleuze and about Freud's theory of drives. Starting from the castration complex concept, in both sexes, it is inferred the urge for the perverse-polymorphic infantile drives, especially the anal-sadistic aggressive impulse, to go astray towards marriage. This process would lead, in the case of perversions, to a hypothetical sadomasochistic unity in Freudian psychoanalysis. Deleuzian reflection on SacherMasoch, however, shows that, while sadism recapitulates the Oedipus complex, masochism is linked to the orality of the mother Aphrodite. The essay concludes that, unlike inciting marriage with the conception of a child, Freud's psychoanalysis might give rise to an empowered femininity of which the complexity of the human fetish is a part.