Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty

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Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty
Cover of Masochism, Coldness and Cruelty (French edition).jpeg
Cover of the first edition
Author Gilles Deleuze
Original title Le Froid et le Cruel
Translator Jean McNeil and Aude Willm
Country France
Language French
Subject Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Published
1967 (Editions de Minuit, in French)
1989 (Zone Books, in English)
Preceded by Le Bergsonisme (1966)
Followed by Différence et répétition (1968)

Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (French: Présentation de Sacher-Masoch) is a 1967

book by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, originally published in French as Le Froid
et le Cruel (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967), in which the author philosophically
examines the work of the late 19th-century Austrian novelist Leopold von Sacher-
Masoch. In the Foreword Deleuze states that Masoch has a particular way of
"desexualising love while at the same time sexualizing the entire history of
humanity". Deleuze attempts to "cut through" the various forms of expression and
content that are the artistic creation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. He also
attempts to develop a problematic of masochism in contradistinction to sadism,
concluding that the two forms of 'pornology' are non-communicating, and cannot be
integrated into Sadomasochistic entity. Deleuze argues that Masochism is something
far more subtle and complex than the enjoyment of pain and that Masochism has
nothing to do with Sadism.

Contents
1 The Language of Sade and Masoch
2 The Three Women
3 Father and Mother
4 The Art of Masoch
5 Reception
6 References
7 Further reading
The Language of Sade and Masoch
Deleuze starts off by first moving from the clinical practice of associating proper
names to diseases (Parkinson's and Roger's disease for instance). However,
sometimes it is the patient's name that denotes the illness, as in the case of
Masochism and Sadism. History of medicine, says Deleuze, can be regarded as a
history of the illness (leprosy, plague) that dies and changes over time, and a
history of the symptomatology. However, it is difficult to attribute a disease to
Sade and Masoch, but a symptomatology and signs that they describe. It is no longer
a matter of pain and sexual pleasure only but of bondage and humiliation as well.
Therefore, the project is one that moves beyond the purely clinical realm.

However, the differences in Sade and Masoch are not of complementarity but of
constituting completely different worlds. Sade uses a language of descriptions that
aim at demonstration, whereas Masoch uses the description for a higher function,
one of persuasion and education.

The Three Women

The three women in Masoch are the 1) primitive, uterine or hetaeric mother, 2) the
punishing, Oedipal mother and 3) the nurturing oral mother. Masochism is the
constant revolution around this constellation of mother images. It is the quest for
the oral mother through the hetaeric and Oedipal mothers. This is achieved by
inducing the hetaeric mother to betray and provoking the Oedipal mother to punish.
Once in betrayal and under torture, the masochist seeks the oral mother.

Father and Mother

Deleuze also distinguishes between attitudes towards the paternal and maternal
images in the two systems. In sadism, the Father's face is trampled over in a kind
of rebellion that replaces the power figure with its own power, whereas the
masochist turns the face away from the Father towards the mother, in a kind of
rebellion that de-emphasises the power figure in favour of its opposite.

The Art of Masoch

In the Art of Masoch, Deleuze explains his notions of Irony and Humour, Contract
and Ritual, and the differences between the sadistic superego and masochistic ego.

Reception
Ronald Bogue writes that while Deleuze addresses traditional literary questions in
Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty his primary concern is to "delineate the system of
thought that informs the corpus" of Sacher-Masoch's works. According to Bogue,
"Deleuze tries to revive the reputation of Sacher-Masoch, a celebrated and prolific
novelist of the 1870s and 1880s now remembered only as the eponymous exemplar of
masochism, by demonstrating that Sacher-Masoch is an astute psychologist and a
profound thinker whose works...articulate a perverse idealism aimed at a subversion
of the Kantian conception of law." He comments that Deleuze's study of Sacher-
Masoch is "highly suggestive from both a psychoanalytic and a critical perspective"
but that it is most significant for demonstrating how "writers can reconfigure the
relationship between literature and philosophy."[1]

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan described it as "undoubtedly the best text
that has ever been written" on masochism.[2]

The critic Camille Paglia expressed a favorable view of Masochism, commenting that
she "liked Gilles Deleuze's book on masochism".[3]

Historian Alison M. Moore notes that Masoch was displeased to have a psychiatric
category named after him by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and that Deleuze conflates
this psychiatric labelling with Masoch's own view of his desire as 'super-
sensualism'.[4][5]

References
Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze and Guattari. Routledge, 1989, p. 35.
Sigler, David (2011). ""read Mr. Sacher-Masoch": The Literariness of Masochism in
the Philosophy of Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze". Criticism. 53 (2): 189–212.
doi:10.1353/crt.2011.0014. ISSN 0011-1589. JSTOR 23131567.
Paglia, Camille. Vamps and Tramps: New Essays. Penguin Books, 1995, p. 232.
Alison Moore, Recovering Difference in the Deleuzian Dichotomy of Masochism-
without-Sadism. Angelaki 14 (3), November 2009, 27-43.
Alison M. Moore, Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, Masochism and Historical
Teleology. Lanham: Lexington Books [Rowman & Littlefield], 2015. ISBN 978-0-7391-
3077-3
Further reading

Deleuze reads Sade and Sacher-Masoch

by Lode Lauwaert | Vol 30 (3) 2012

Many psychoanalysts argue that clinicians have a lot to learn from literature. They
share the deep-rooted conviction that artists are sensitive to clinical phenomena
and that they make visible what is often overlooked by clinicians. Freud, for
example, relies on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Half a century
later, the assumption of Freud’s literary clinic has been taken up by the French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze in his study Présentation de Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze
reads Sade’s and Sacher-Masoch’s literary novels from the same perspective as
Freud. Sade and Sacher-Masoch, Deleuze argues, are first of all great
symptomatologists. Their novels explore the sadistic and masochistic universe
thoroughly. In his essay, the author discusses Deleuze’s reading of Sade and
Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze argues that his study, whilst sharing Freud’s basic
assumptions, is a critique of his conception of sadism and masochism.