masochistic-sadistic

Updated: June 21, 2025

If we might assume that the same erogenous action also reaches the intensive painful feelings, especially if the pain be toned down or held at a distance by a subsidiary determination, this relation would then contain the main roots of the masochistic-sadistic impulse, into the manifold composition of which we are gaining a gradual insight.

Sigmund Freud - Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex