Fearful Symmetry: The Development and Treatment of Sadomasochism (Critical Issues in Psychoanalysis)

Rating:
Summary: Don't pull out your credit card !
Review: Despite the subtitle, this book is not about what the average person thinks of as sado-masochism. Is this another attempt by marketers to misleadingly cash in on popular trends (i.e. the chic-ness of fetish)? This book will only be appreciated by the most hard-core psychoanalysts. The authors were trained in the old school by Anna Freud. They use the most obscure psychoanalytic jargon strung together in dense sentences designed to put normal people to sleep. This is NOT a book that would be useful to anyone interested in masochistic sexual play UNLESS it was used as a form of torture by making the masochist read the unintelligible sentences over and over again. Robert Stoller would be an example of a psychoanalyst who is much more user friendly and relevant to the general reader interested in a psychological explanation of the fetish scene. Fearful Symmetry is a collection of papers rather than a unified work and is based on case studies of highly disturbed clinical patients. It deals with masochism as a general phenomenon rather than specifically sexual masochism, and defines masochism as always pathological. In typical old-fashioned psychoanalytic style, mothers are blamed for all their children's problems. Take note of the cover: something that looks like an African mask, half of the mask white, half black. Why would this be chosen as the cover for a book on sadomasochism? Does this reflect someone's anchronistic equation of sadomasochism=primitive=savage=African? Mr. and Mrs. psychoanalyst, try analyzing the cover illustrator's unconscious. Five stars for the bore factor, zero for on the interestingness scale. I suggest the publisher re-market this as a parody of psychoanalytic writing.

Rating:
Summary: Don't pull out your credit card !
Review: Despite the subtitle, this book is not about what the average person thinks of as sado-masochism. Is this another attempt by marketers to misleadingly cash in on popular trends (i.e. the chic-ness of fetish)? This book will only be appreciated by the most hard-core psychoanalysts. The authors were trained in the old school by Anna Freud. They use the most obscure psychoanalytic jargon strung together in dense sentences designed to put normal people to sleep. This is NOT a book that would be useful to anyone interested in masochistic sexual play UNLESS it was used as a form of torture by making the masochist read the unintelligible sentences over and over again. Robert Stoller would be an example of a psychoanalyst who is much more user friendly and relevant to the general reader interested in a psychological explanation of the fetish scene. Fearful Symmetry is a collection of papers rather than a unified work and is based on case studies of highly disturbed clinical patients. It deals with masochism as a general phenomenon rather than specifically sexual masochism, and defines masochism as always pathological. In typical old-fashioned psychoanalytic style, mothers are blamed for all their children's problems. Take note of the cover: something that looks like an African mask, half of the mask white, half black. Why would this be chosen as the cover for a book on sadomasochism? Does this reflect someone's anchronistic equation of sadomasochism=primitive=savage=African? Mr. and Mrs. psychoanalyst, try analyzing the cover illustrator's unconscious. Five stars for the bore factor, zero for on the interestingness scale. I suggest the publisher re-market this as a parody of psychoanalytic writing.