Voluntary Servitude. Masochism and Morality

Judith Le Soldat (1947-2008) was a Swiss psychoanalyst, researcher, lecturer and author. She was born in Budapest and lived in Zurich, where she studied psychology and ran her own psychoanalytic practice from 1974. Her first monograph Voluntary Servitude. Masochism and Morality was published in 1989. In her second monograph (1994), she presented an exciting, completely new understanding of Oedipal conflicts (see the critical edition of the book published in 2020 under the title Raubmord und Verrat - Robbery murder and betrayal). She worked on a third monograph on male homosexuality, but left it unfinished. The book was published posthumously in 2018 under the title Land of No Return. The lectures Judith Le Soldat gave at the University of Zurich in 2006/07 were also published posthumously. They appeared as the first volume of Le Soldat’s Collected Works in 2015 under the title Grund zur Homosexualität (Grounds for Homosexuality). Grounds for Homosexuality contains an introduction to both her theory of the Oedipal Conflicts and her theory of homosexuality and is therefore well suited as an introduction to her entire oeuvre. - Further publications by Judith Le Soldat, in German, s. www.lesoldat.ch

Part 1: Pulsional Demand and Wish Fulfillment 1.Disentangling Aggression and Sexuality. 2 The Identification with the Aggressor is not Happening 3. Remarkable Alliances 4. A “Mishap” in Germany 5. Three Lessons from an Objective Triumph 6. On the Necessity of Lying 7. The Ability to Remain Silent and the Task of Theory 8. A Disarming Contradiction 9. From Sadism to the Death Drive Part 2: The Economy of Excitation 1. The Drummer’s Dream 2. A Female Rescue Phantasy 3. The Physicist’s Dog 4. Somebody’s Late 5. The Diagnostic Dilemma 6. Two Paths to Masochism 7. Voluntary Servitude 8. The Search for the “Subjective Factor” 9. A Little Parapraxis 10. On the Utilization of Pulsional Energy 11. Aggression, the Distinction between the Sexes, and Infantile Neurosis 12. The Principle of the Death Drive 13. Masturbation Technique and Anxiety Signal Part 3: Masochistic Pleasure 1. A Contribution to Decreasing Tension 2. Pleasure and Duration 3. The Object of Identification 4. A Forgotten Cultural Achievement 5. Splendor and Misery of the Superego 6. Who's Afraid of Castration 7. Unavoidable Pain