Abstract

Dr. Bergler has written eighteen books already on psychological/psychiatric themes. The present work, in which he refers back frequently to the earlier ones, is not very deep and a fairly easily read exposition of some of the author’s favourite themes. He is particularly attached to the notion that the human mind seeks to hurt itself, and takes pleasure in so doing. This is called ‘psychic masochism’, or the seeking of pleasure–in–displeasure. The difficulty with the terminology of analytic authors is that sometimes they extend a technical term so widely that it ceases to be helpful. Maybe something like this has happened in this work. There seems to be no doubt about our psychic masochistic tendencies, or the pleasure–in–displeasure phenomenon. But what are we to make of the author’s assertion that the “basic neurosis” is psychic masochism based on oral regression, or that “psychic masochism takes first place among all possible inner defences”? The present work is unlikely to achieve a permanent place in analytic literature, but it does shed a helpful ray of light here and there in the darkness of the unconscious mind.