The Joy of Torment

Salman Akhtar, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. His more than 450 publications include twenty-three solo authored books – Broken Structures (1992), Quest for Answers (1995), Inner Torment (1999), Immigration and Identity (1999), New Clinical Realms (2003), Objects of Our Desire (2005), Regarding Others (2007), Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy (2009), The Damaged Core (2009), Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009), Immigration and Acculturation (2011), Matters of Life and Death (2011), Psychoanalytic Listening (2013), Good Stuff (2013), Sources of Suffering (2014), No Holds Barred (2016), A Web of Sorrow (2017), Mind, Culture, and Global Unrest (2018), Silent Virtues (2019), Tales of Transformation (2022), In Leaps and Bounds (2022), and In Short (2024) – as well as sixty- nine edited or coedited volumes in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Dr. Akhtar has delivered many prestigious addresses and lectures including, most significantly, the inaugural address at the first IPA-Asia Congress in Beijing, China (2010). Dr. Akhtar is the recipient of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Best Paper of the Year Award (1995), the Margaret Mahler Literature Prize (1996), the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians’ Sigmund Freud Award (2000), the American College of Psychoanalysts’ Laughlin Award (2003), the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Edith Sabshin Award (2000), Columbia University’s Robert Liebert Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Psychoanalysis (2004), the American Psychiatric Association’s Kun Po Soo Award (2004), the Irma Bland Award for being the Outstanding Teacher of Psychiatric Residents in the country (2005), and the Nancy Roeske Award (2012). He received the Sigourney Award (2013), which is the most prestigious honor in the field of psychoanalysis. Dr. Akhtar is an internationally sought speaker and teacher, and his books have been translated in many languages, including German, Turkish, and Romanian. His interests are wide and he has served as the film review editor for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and is currently serving as the book review editor for the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. He has published eighteen collections of poetry and serves as a scholar-in-residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia. His Selected Papers (Vols I–X) were recently published and released at a festive event held at the Freud House & Museum in London. Lisa Crilley, LMFT, is a Los Angeles-based psychotherapist, clinical supervisor of young psychotherapists and associates, and senior candidate in psychoanalysis who is deeply invested in matters of psychic growth. Her particular clinical interests include personality development, complex trauma, compulsive ways of self-regulating, and primitive and psychotic states. Her rigorous training, which involved earning her master’s degree from Antioch University Los Angeles and continuing her studies at the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS), laid the groundwork for her to become a vibrant, assiduous leader at LAISPS and in the psychoanalytic community. Crilley proudly represents LAISPS on the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (CIPS) board and the International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization (IPSO). In addition to chairing LAISPS’s community relations program and cochairing the organization’s program committee and specialized training program, “Altered States of Body and Mind: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Substance Abuse and Eating Disorders,” Crilley also teaches and lectures at Los Angeles psychoanalytic institutes as well as in the community and is currently creating new programming for LAISPS focused on introducing psychoanalytic thinking to a general audience. Lisa is an avid reader; her book reviews have appeared in the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies and the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.

Acknowledgments

About the editor and contributors

Introduction



PART I: CONCEPTUAL ASPECTS

1. Freud’s changing views on sadomasochism

Tom DeRose

2. Freudian sadomasochism and its contemporary incarnations

Louis Rothschild

3. Masochism and the delusion of omnipotence from a developmental perspective

Jack Novick and Kerry Kelly Novick



PART II: CULTURAL ASPECTS

4. Misogyny, sadomasochism, and pornography

Asmita Sharma and Prachi Akhavi

5. The strategic confluence of altruism and sadomasochism in martyrdom

Arsalan Malik

6. Society, sadism, and a satirical take on the family

Victoria Curea



PART III: CLINICAL ASPECTS

7. Childhood grievance, defensive idealization, and sadomasochistic failure of mourning

Lisa Crilley

8. Sadomasochism in couples psychotherapy

Philip A. Ringstrom

9. Sadomasochism, sexual excitement, and perversions

Otto Kernberg

10. On cruelty

Salman Akhtar

11. Analytic struggles and sadistic maneuvers

Nilofer Kaul

12. E-sadomasochism and clinical psychoanalysis

Ruth Axelrod-Praes and Benny Weiss-Steider



References

Index