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PRELIMINARY PHASES OF THE

MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY
BY EDMUND BERGLER (NEW YORK)

Freud in his work, A Child is Being Beaten, subdivided the

beating fantasy of girls into three phases; that of boys, into two:
Girls. Boys.
First phase: My father beats a (Preliminary sadistic
child whom I hate. phase is lacking.)
Second phase: I am beaten by my I am beaten by my
father. (Repressed.) father. (Repressed.)
Third phase: A teacher (father I am beaten by my
substitute) is beat- mother.
ing boys.

Freud says 1:
'The little girl's beating-phantasy goes through three phases, of
which the first and third are consciously remembered, the middle
one remaining unconscious. The two conscious phases appear to
be sadistic, whereas the middle and unconscious one is undoubtedly
of a masochistic nature; its content consists in being beaten by the
father, and it carries with it the libidinal cathexis and the sense of
guilt.> In the first and third phantasies the child who is being
beaten is always some one else; in the middle phase it is only the
child itself; in the third phase it is almost invariably only boys
who are being beaten. The person beating is from the first the
father, but is later on a substitute taken from the class of fathers.
1 Freud: 'A Child is Being Beaten', 1919. CoIl. Papers, Vol. II, pp. 191-197.
2 As Freud likewise points out in this paper, the' sense of guilt causes the
reversal of the statement, 'Father loves only me, for he beats the other child',
into, 'No, he does not love you, because he beats you'. The genital significance
of 'Father loves you' is altered through regression to the anal-sadistic level to
'Father strikes you'. 'This being beaten is a concatenation of guilt feeling and
eroticism. It is not only the punishment for the forbidden genital relationship,
but also the regressive substitute for it. From the latter source it draws the
libidinal excitement which from now on expresses itself in masturbatory acts.'
.5 14
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 515

The unconscious phantasy of the middle phase had primarily a

genital significance and developed by means of repression and
regression out of an incestuous wish to be loved by the father. . . .
'I have not been able to get so far in my knowledge of beating
phantasies among boys, perhaps because my material was unfavor-
able. I naturally expected to find a complete analogy between the
state of things in the case of boys and in that of girls, the mother
taking the father's place in the phantasy. This expectation seemed
to be fulfilled; for the content of the boy's phantasy which was
taken to be the corresponding one was actually his being beaten
by his mother (or later on a substitute for her). But this phantasy,
in which the boy's own self was retained as the object, differed from
the second phase in girls in that it was able to become conscious.
If on this account, however, an attempt was made to draw a parallel
between it and the third phase of the girl's phantasy, a new differ-
ence was found, for the boy's own person was not replaced by
many, unknown, and undetermined children, least of all by many
girls. Therefore the expectation of a complete parallelism was
mistaken. . . . .
'As regards these masochistic men, however, [that is, those who
were observed by Freud] a discovery is made at this point which
warns us not to pursue the analogy between their case and that of
women any further at present, but to judge the matter independ-
ently. For the fact emerges that in their masochistic phantasies,
as well as in the contrivances they adopt for their realization, they
invariably transfer themselves into the part of a woman; that is to
say, their masochistic attitude coincides with a feminine one. This
can easily be demonstrated from details of the phantasies; but
many patients are even aware of it themselves, and give expression
to it as a subjective conviction. It makes no difference if in a
fanciful embellishment of the masochistic scene they keep up the
fiction that a mischievous boy, or page, or apprentice is going to be
punished. On the other hand the persons who administer chastise-
ment 3 are always women, both in the phantasies and in the con-
trivances. This is confusing enough; . . . Analysis of the earliest
years of childhood [the male sex] once more allows us to make a
surprising discovery in this field. The phantasy which has as its
content being beaten by the mother, and which is conscious or can
become so, is not a primary one. It possesses a preceding stage
3 These italics and those which follow in this quotation are Dr. Bergler's.
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EDMUND BERGLER

which is invariably unconscious and has as its content: "I am being

beaten by my father". This preliminary stage, then, really cor-
responds to the second phase of the phantasy in the girl. The
familiar and conscious phantasy: "I am being beaten by my
mother", takes the place of the third phase in the girl, in which,
as has been mentioned already, unknown boys are the objects that
are being beaten. I was not able to demonstrate among boys a
preliminary stage of a sadistic nature that could be set beside the
first phase of the phantasy in girls, but I will not now express any
final disbelief in its existence, for I can readily see the possibility of
meeting with more complicated types.
'In the male phantasy-as I shall call it briefly, and, I hope,
without risk of being misunderstood-the being beaten also stands
for being loved (in a genital sense), though this has been debased
to a lower level owing to regression. So the original form of the
unconscious male phantasy was not the provisional one that we
have hitherto given: "I am being beaten by my father", but rather:
"I am loved by my father". The phantasy has been transformed by
the processes with which we are familiar into the conscious
phantasy: "I am being beaten by my mother". The boy's beating-
phantasy is therefore passive from the very beginning, and is
derived from a feminine attitude towards his father. It cor-
responds with the Oedipus-complex just as the feminine one (that
of the girl) does; only the parallel relation which we expected to
find between the two must be given up in favour of a common
character of another kind. In both cases the beating-phantasy has
its origin in an incestuous attachment to the father.
'It will help make matters clearer if at this point I enumerate
the other similarities and differences between the beating-phan-
tasies in the two sexes. In the case of the girl the unconscious
masochistic phantasy starts from the normal Oedipus attitude; in
that of the boy it starts from the inverted attitude, in which the
father is taken as the object of love. In the case of the girl there is
a first step towards the phantasy (the first phase), in which the
beating bears no special significance and is performed upon a
person who is viewed with jealous hatred. Both of these features
are absent in the case of the boy, but this is precisely a difference
which might be removed by more fortunate observation. In her
transition to the conscious phantasy which takes the place of the
unconscious one the girl retains the figure of her father, and in that
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 517

way keeps unchanged the sex of the person beating; but she
changes the figure and sex of the person being beaten, so that
eventually a man is beating male children. The boy, on the con-
trary, changes the figure and sex of the person beating, by putting
his mother in the place of his father; but he retains his own figure,
with the result that the person beating and the person beaten are
of opposite sexes. In the case of the girl the situation, which was
originally masochistic (passive), is transformed into a sadistic one
by means of repression, and its sexual quality is effaced. In the
case of the boy the situation remains masochistic, and shows a
greater resemblance to t.he original phantasy with its genital sig-
nificance, since there is a difference of sex between the person beat-
ing and the person being beaten. The boy evades his homosexuality
by repressing and remodelling his unconscious phantasy; and the
remarkable thing about his later conscious phantasy is that it has
for its content a feminine attitude without a homosexual object-
choice. By the same process, on the other hand, the girl escapes
from the demands of the erotic side of her life altogether. She
turns herself in phantasy into a man, without herself becoming
active in a masculine way, and is no longer anything but a spec-
tator of the event which takes the place of a sexual act. . . .
'I am aware that the differences that I have here described
between the two sexes in regard to the nature of the beating-
phantasy have not been cleared up sufficiently. . . .'
Thus Freud leaves open the question whether a preliminary
sadistic phase of the masculine beating fantasy exists, indicates
the possibility that a 'lucky observation' might fill this gap,
and in conclusion declares that the entire problem of the
beating fantasy is insufficiently clarified.
The second question, closely related to the preliminary
sadistic phase, boils down to the doubt that the masculine
beating fantasy has its origin in the inverted cedipus complex-
that is, that the mother, in the pre-oedipal phase has no part
in it.
It seems to me entirely appropriate, and in line with the
question propounded by Freud himself, to attempt a search
for the whereabouts of such a 'preliminary sadistic phase'.
We will proceed on the theory that the masculine beating
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EDMUND BERGLER

fantasy has a preliminary sadistic phase related to the breasts

of the phallic pre-oedipal mother. Because of a sense of guilt,
this aggression against the mother is turned secondarily back
upon the boy himself, equating his buttocks with the breasts
of the mother. When the boy becomes alienated from the
mother, the father is given power of execution. In the third
stage, as Freud describes it, the father is again replaced by
the mother, as a defense against unconscious homosexuality.
Accordingly the masculine beating fantasy would have the
following stages:
ISadistic aggression against the breasts of the mother in the
pre-oedipal period.
2 Turning, because of guilt, of the aggression against the
boy's own buttocks, which are identified with the breasts
of the mother; 'transcription' of executive power from
mother to father.
3 Renewed 'transcription' from father to mother, as a defense
against unconscious homosexuality.
The second and third phases agree in principle with the
beating fantasies in boys that Freud has described. The
sadistic preliminary phase, and the identification of breasts
with buttocks as transition to an aggression directed against
himself, are new.

In the following excerpts, I present the casuistic material in

the order in which its relation to the sadistic preliminary phase
occurred to me. The process took many years, and therefore,
as may readily be understood, the road is by no means a
straight one.
The first evidence was obtained from a twenty-eight year
old university graduate, markedly schizoid, who entered an
analysis some years ago because of impotence, and masturba-
tion with masochistic beating fantasies. He promptly informed
me that he was a 'sadist', since he used to whip himself. When
I objected that the patient was making use of a terminology
different from that customarily used in psychology, and that
we would designate self-flagellation by means of a strap as
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 519

masochistic, he argued that during the castigation he thought

of himself, from the navel down, as a woman. Nevertheless,
the patient was completely in contact with reality, carried on
his work successfully, and wanted only to get rid of his impo-
tence. Until shortly before the beginning of the analysis, he
had never had sexual intercourse. The first attempt at inter-
course with a prostitute was unsuccessful. The patient laid
the blame to masturbation and immediately gave it up.
Masturbation was generally accompanied by the fantasy that a
feminine page in masculine attire had 'done something', and
was being whipped for it on the buttocks by the patient. The
patient struck upon himself the blows intended for the page;
that is, he identified himself with the page. Other fantasies
were of sadistic tortures of women: their legs were spread apart
so far as to cause pain; their breasts were stabbed and pulled;
thick objects were forced into the anus, etc. The patient
also carried out upon himself the torments he invented for
women. He pushed the neck of a bottle into his anus with
particular pleasure, masturbating by means of movements of
his thighs, meanwhile pressing his penis which was usually
not erect, backwards towards the anus. In the toilet he lashed
himself on the buttocks with a strap.
After the failure with a prostitute the patient strictly avoided
masturbation. With the cessation of masturbation, a symptom
suddenly made its appearance. This' consisted of 'pains when
urinating' which lasted four hours after voiding and then
stopped. 'Unfortunately' he had to urinate again after four
hours, so that he had constant drawing, piercing 'nerve' pains.
Urological examination was negative. The patient disputed
the psychogenesis of these pains and severely criticized the
backwardness of urological medicine. After several weeks
of analysis, during which the patient had become free of a part
of his feelings of guilt, which had taken the form of fears of
damage to himself resulting from masturbation, he came to
the conclusion that it was relatively harmless. He resumed
the practise and the symptom disappeared. The patient
declared that this result had nothing to do with analysis, but
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52 0 EDMUND BERGLER

was due to an inspiration of his own. This inspiration con-

sisted of the following technique in urination: he would sit
on the toilet, push his penis in the direction of the anus, and
thus achieve a 'release of nervous tension' which far out-
weighed the disadvantage of soiling himself with urine (he
urinated towards his anus).
Despite the patient's denial that the disappearance of the
symptom (which did not recur) had anything to do with the
analysis, he remained under treatment for some time. This
led to the uncovering and working through of his passive
feminine homosexual strivings, which were essentially on the
anal level and connected with the buttocks. A partial libera-
tion resulted and a relative potency was attained. The unre-
solved portion of his masochism was projected upon his mar-
riage, through which the patient became entangled in almost
insoluble conflicts whose analytic solution he has continued to
avoid for years.
Since then years have elapsed. In retrospect, I must admit
that at the beginning of this analysis I was at a stage through
which every analyst must go, that is best characterized by
Striimpell: 'A doctor sees in general only what he has been
taught to see'. Thus I was satisfied in this case with the
analytic interpretation of the patient's passive, anal tendencies
as an identification with the castrated mother, and whose object
I took to be the patient's father. This assumption was made
easy for me by the too schematic application of that sentence
in the article, A Child is Being Beaten, which states that the
masculine beating fantasy 'is passive from the beginning, really
emerging from the feminine attitude toward the father'. How-
ever, several contradictions in this thesis struck me: for
example, the fact that during the childhood of this patient,
the weakly father had practically no significance in a home
regulated by a masculine aggressive mother with paranoid
traits (the father was in his early fifties when the patient was
born); further, that the patient in the 'self-cure' of his mic-
turition symptom, wished to pass a fluid into his own anus;
that it was specifically a bottle, that is, a container for fluid,
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 521

that he made use of when masturbating; that up to the death

of his mother (in his twenty-second year) the patient slept in
the same bed with her, head to foot 4-that is, was tied
unequivocally to the infantile situation. I had not recognized
at that time that he was unconsciously both the phallic mother
and suckling infant, as I did not then suspect the overwhelm-
ing importance of oral material. Bit by bit, as in the course
of years I had to take cognizance of the outstanding significance
in every case of the oral pre-cedipal components, I came to
doubt the completeness of my interpretations for this patient.
I reported these observations in several essays," supplementing
the more recent analytic works of many colleagues.
The experience that one learns only from one's own short-
comings is here confirmed. My next case with beating fantasies
was a twenty-seven year old erythrophobiac, who came to be
analyzed because of impotence. The patient had never had
intercourse and had not masturbated since puberty. His nar-
cissism suffered deeply because of his inability to establish
relationships with people. His mood was mostly depressed.
He had developed a complicated system of day dreams around
his beating fantasies. I shall present them in the patient's
own words:
'My first recollection of beating fantasies is connected with a
story told by a revenue officer, a friend of my aunt, relating how,
when he was a child, he once stayed away from home for the entire
day on his birthday. For this he was fearfully beaten by his father
with a dog whip. I then had a vision of the boy bent over a chair,
saw his backside, and fancied the tortures he suffered. The fol-
lowing fantasy is typical of later periods: A boy (sometimes myself)
gets up late, and is dreadfully spanked for it by his father. The
4 This contributed, along with castration fears and wishes, to the patient's
condensing two bodies into one, as in the fantasy of being a woman from the
navel down.
s Bergler, Edmund: Zur Problematik der Pseudodebilitiit, Int. Ztschr. f. Psa.,
XVIII, 1932. With L. Eidelberg: Der Mammakomplcx des Mannes, Ibid.,
XIX, 1933. Obscene Words. This QUARTERLY, V, 1936. Some Special Varieties
Of Ejaculatory Disturbances Not Hitherto Described. Int. J. Psa., XVI, 1935.
Further Observations on the Clinical Picture of 'Psychogenic Oral Aspermia',
Ibid., '937. See also the author's book Die Psychische Impotenz des Mannes.
Berne: Verlag Hans Huber, '937.
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52 2 EDMUND BERGl.ER

chastised boy does not feel in the least humiliated; on the contrary,
he regards himself as a hero and somehow bound up with his
father. The mother is somehow considered a disturbing element,
perhaps because she strikes the boy on the head instead of on the
buttocks. Actual self-castigation occurred at about the age of ten.
I used to imagine a saddle horse which would only run if it was
beaten. This always happened in the same place: on the way from
our house to the avenue where my parents had their business. I
do not remember any essential change from the fantasies I have
described for a long time after that. Perhaps later (at puberty) in
connection with the conscious fear of homosexuality, the picture
changes. It is now a girl who is chastised, originally by a phantom,
later by a kindly father, who whips seldom but thoroughly. I had
the greatest difficulty in finding a motive for the punishment,
because here I dealt with the contradiction between my real objec-
tions to corporal punishment and my unconscious wishes. Most
frequently for the purpose, an elder sister did something or other
to bring suspicion upon her younger brother, and was punished
for it. 6 Later, erotic motivations were added: a girl is supposed to
come home early by way of punishment, doesn't do so, and is
whipped, Still later, girls and boys were discovered masturbating
together.
'Reality coincided with my fantasies insofar as I often saw
women spanking their male children. This excited me sexually.
'The motives for whipping a child often presented a problem for
me. I frequently selected as a cause for punishment the fantasy
that boys and girls peeped under each other's clothing, or mastur-
bated mutually and were caught at it. The mother of the girl
would catch them both, lead the boy to his parents for punishment,
and take the girl home, where she was sometimes boxed on the ears
or cuffed as a preliminary, the real execution of punishment to be
carried out in the evening by the father. The latter notion is
especially important. When the girl has done something very bad,
she must wait for her father to whip her. This went so far that I
repeatedly pretended that the girl brought the carpet beater to her
mother, begging her to beat her, but not to tell her father of whom
she was terribly afraid. It sometimes developed that when the
6 Here also there is a reversal of sexes. The patient has only a younger
sister. The elder sister in the fantasy is the patient himself, the younger brother
representing the sister.
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 523

father saw her great fear, he abstained from whipping or contented

himself with pretended blows.'

According to his account, the patient went through two

phases in his beating fantasies. First phase: the father whips
the patient. Second phase: a phantom, later the father or the
mother, whips a girl (the patient). The change of sex is based
by the patient upon conscious fear of homosexuality. For
reasons which will be discussed later, a complete elimination
of the father, as postulated by Freud, did not take place. We
have, therefore, in this special case a modification of Freud's
third phase, 'my mother whips me' into, 'a girl is whipped by
my mother or my father'.
For a long time this patient's unconscious homosexuality
and feminine identifications dominated the transference. As
a result of working through affective experiences in the analy-
sis, the patient attained erective potency. When however he
came to have sexual relations with girls, he 'beat them to a
pulp', as he put it. The aggression, which (because of
castration fears arising from the cedipus complex) had been
repressed or directed solely against his own person, became
in the course of analysis, directed against his sexual partner.
He struck her on the face, arms, and buttocks. A further
peculiarity lay in the fact that although the patient had
erective potency, he did not ejaculate. A supposed organic
aspermia was disproved by the fact that frequently after coitus
without ejaculation, he would have nocturnal pollutions while
he was asleep beside his mistress.
Light was thrown on this disorder, which I have described
elsewhere 7, by the fact that during coitus, as a quasi-substitute
for the missing ejaculation, an abnormally plentiful secretion
of saliva took place. The analysis disclosed that this was an
oral replacement for ejaculation, and that the failure of ejacu-
lation was to be evaluated as revenge upon the woman
(mother). The hypersalivation was also a 'magic gesture',
1 Bergler, Edmund: Some Special Varieties of Ejaculatory Disturbances Not
Hitherto Described. Int. J. Psa .• XVI. 1935. Part I. p. 88.
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EDMUND BERGLER

which betrayed the patient's deepest wish: to be an infant at

his mother's breast. The striking of the woman during coitus
was presently replaced by biting and sucking at her shoulder.
But at the same time the hypersalivation signified the patient's
'autarchism', proving the superfluity of the mother's breast,
since he himself produced the saliva and swallowed it. It
became apparent that the patient had foundered on the 'breast
complex'. In a paper written in collaboration with L. Eidel-
berg," the authors have demonstrated with casuistic material
that the male child finds a substitute for the lost breast in his
own penis, and then attempts to overcome psychically the
trauma of weaning by means of the unconscious repetition
compulsion, which as in play, reproduces in activity that which
has been passively experienced. Instead of being the passive
recipient of milk, the child through psychic appropriation of
the penis becomes the active dispenser of urine (milk). With
those who founder on the 'breast complex', this transition from
passivity to activity, which is necessary in overcoming the
trauma of weaning, has failed. These patients exhibit hate for
the mother, oral character traits or reactions against them,
secondary narcissism, exaggerated tendency to identification.
The normal cedipus complex is weakly developed because rem-
nants of the breast complex hinder its full flowering. Signifi-
cantly the breast is fully eliminated from consciousness.
As I have described in an article 9, a possible outcome of
foundering on the breast complex is a psychic aspermia. The
unwritten law for this psychological type is to receive orally in
complete passivity. Active giving is disturbed. The penis
retains the significance of the breast (maternal phallus), the
vagina that of the mouth of the patient. In copulation, how-
ever, the normal man must himself have become the phallic
mother and overcome the trauma of weaning, achieving the
reversal from passivity to activity. The opposite is found in
8 Bergler, Edmund and Eidelberg, Ludwig: Der Mammakomplex des
Mannes. Int. Ztschr. f. Psa. XIX, 1933.
9 Bergler, Edmund: Further Observations on the Clinical Picture of 'Psycho-
genic Oral Aspermia', lac. cit.
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 525

the orally fixated or regressed individual. In ejaculation he

is expected to produce exactly what has been refused him by
the phallic 'castrating' mother-a fluid from the breast (penis)
into the mouth (vagina). There is a refusal to ejaculate from
unconscious motives of revenge.
A number of very convincing data later confirmed this
analytic reconstruction. The patient suddenly recalled his
mother's story, that when she had weaned him at four months,
he had created the greatest difficulties. He had rebelled
against the transition from breast to bottle with a veritable
hunger strike. Thus the most profound causes of the ejacu-
latory disorder could be traced back to the suckling stage. It
is interesting that a reality situation caused the oral disappoint-
ment: the baby had been weaned so early only because the
distance between home and shop was too far for the mother to
travel several times daily. Still, this experience does not
eliminate the assumption of a constitutional factor: excessive
orality.
In this patient, the aggression against his mother, or her
breasts, was completely repressed. The disturbance of ejacu-
lation, to be sure, was a rather obscure indication. Likewise a
group of peculiar day dreams that the patient called 'organiza-
tion fantasies' sprang from every psychic layer, but had oral
significance as well:

'I occupy myself intensively with the arrangements and organi-

zation of a big liner, with the various departments and their direc-
tors; for example, the captain, who merely supervises and who
shares in the profits. Besides him there is a second captain, and the
first officer, who has several officers under him, has charge of navi-
gation, and the cleaning and polishing of the engine rooms, etc.
The first engineer, assisted by two mechanical and an electrical
engineer, superintends the machinery. Care of the passengers is
the responsibility of the chief steward; then there is a special chief
steward for each class. General maintenance is the responsibility
of a quartermaster, assisted by chefs, etc. Handling of cash and
bookkeeping are the duties of the purser. There are further cate-
gories, such as house detectives, as well as occupations not belong-
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EDMUND BERGLER

ing to the crew: proprietors and employes of the various shops,

bell boys, detectives and so on. I especially like to busy myself
with the electrical arrangements. The bigger steamers actually
have power plants like cities. There is an incredible variety of
installations. There are dynamos. electric stoking machines, der-
ricks and cranes, pumps, elevators, illumination, searchlights,
telephone, telegraph, radio. The plant has to be supervised
by an electrical engineer, as an electrician would hardly be suffi-
ciently versatile. I am especially preoccupied with the electrical
staff. There are at least three workmen (one for each shift); for
the switchboard, two; three radio operators and repairmen. 1 have
given all these much thought. For telephone repair one to three
people; die same for high voltage current. Perhaps one electrician
might suffice at night, whereas by day an electrician for high and
low voltage current in each of two shifts. My fantasies are con-
cerned with many details: for instance, that passengers can speak
to officials only via the proper censorship of a telephone operator,
whereas ordinary telephone connections are automatic. Also, the
depot for replacement of parts in the home port would be a regular
warehouse for electrical apparatus.
'I am further concerned with the plumbing of the ship: drinking
water, hot and cold fresh water for cleaning and other purposes,
fresh and salt water for cooling the machines. 1 try to work out
the most practical distribution.
'Other fantasies deal with the details of food supply for all those
on board the ship. Quite as frequent are fantasies relating to
time-perhaps the schedule of a steward; how quickly or at what
intervals the passengers get their meals.'
The last mentioned maritime organization fantasies had
essentially the significance of food organization, or an exact
schedule for feeding, which obviously again went back to the
nursing intervals. It becomes clear that here is an aggressive
attitude showing the patient as an excellent organizer of pro-
visions and his mother as a very poor one. It has in addition
the significance of a 'magic gesture'.
The hatred of his mother, which dated from the pre-eedipal
period." alienated him from her and brought about an affec-
10 A transference dream of the patient ran as follows: The analyst calls the
patient into a room and shows him the picture of a woman in full evening
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 527

tive hypercathexis of his father. The phallic level had barely

been attained, when the patient regressed to a feminine identi-
fication after a psychological relinquishment of his penis as a
result of castration fears. Thus he repeated in a new form
the old situation of oral receptivity, the maternal penis (breast)
replaced by the paternal phallus, the mouth by his own anus,
the displacement manifested in an unconscious passive, femi-
nine, homosexual attitude.
Instructive as this case was, there was again only conjecture
and no proof of the origin of the beating fantasies. It could
be assumed that the original aggression against the mother's
breast was projected, because of guilt feelings, upon his own
buttocks. It was of particular interest to note that as the
analysis partially relieved the patient's castration fears, strong
aggression developed against his sexual partner, that is, against
woman; obviously a return of the repressed. Still we have
no clarification as to the level from which this aggression
originated. Theoretically it might quite as well be ascribed
to the positive oedipal phase, in which the patient was identi-
fied with his sadistically conceived father (sadistic concept of
coitus), as to the pre-oedipal attachment to his mother. Cer-
tainly both factors contributed; yet the complete lack of
interest, through repression, in the breasts of his sexual part-
ner, and still more, the ejaculatory disorder, suggest the pre-
cedipal source of aggression. A further difficulty arose from
the fact that the aggression against the breast appertained to so
early a period of the suckling stage that a direct memory could
not be recovered through the analysis.
The following consideration carries the investigation a bit
further. In an article, Transference and Love, the .author, in
collaboration with Dr. Ludwig Jekels, (Imago, XX, 1934),
pointed out that the child, in his 'autarchic fiction', has the
tendency to restore his lost narcissistic unity by means of his
own body. This takes place above all by means of the penis,
dress in the lobby of a theater. She is nursing her baby. An outraged gentle-
man stands near by. Beneath is a legend, 'A mother who really loves her
child'.
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EDMUND BERGLER

which the child, as Freud has stated, 'substitutes for the recently
lost nipple of his mother'. But Jekels and I considered that we
have to search, not for the mother as object, as Starcke, Fer-
enczi, Rank, and Deutsch assumed, but for the breast conceived
as part of the child's own body. Hence this drive toward object
attachment is essentially narcissistic. I therefore constructed
the hypothesis that the buttocks may be used in a similar
attempt at narcissistic restitution. For the child they are actual
proof that it possesses the breast, hence a denial of its loss and a
restoration of the lost unity. At the same time the nugatory
tendencies arising at a later period, attach themselves to the
highly valued breast-buttocks.
The problem remains to find proof of this transition from
the mother's breasts conceived as part of the child's body, to
his buttocks, and of the identification: breasteeown buttocks.
It is an analytic commonplace that this equation often occurs
in dreams. This would by no means suffice as proof, however.
It must be shown that this equation is a psychic necessity. In
this connection the following passage from Abraham's Develop-
ment of the Libido 11 is interesting:
'Another similarity between these two patients was that in each
case the mother also was represented by only one part of her body,
namely, her breasts. They had obviously been identified in the
child's mind with the supposed penis of the female. She was
alternatively represented by her buttocks, which in their turn
stood for her breasts. The relation of this image to oral erotism
(pleasure in biting) was more than evident, and could be supported
by many examples, one of which I shall give. X once dreamed as
follows: "I was eating away at a piece of meat, tearing it with my
teeth. At last I swallowed it. Suddenly I noticed that the piece of
meat was the back part of a fur coat belonging to Frau N."
'It is not difficult to understand the "back part" as a displace-
ment from before backwards. In the same way we can understand
the frequent symbolic use made of fur as an allusion to the female
genital. Frau N.'s surname was in fact the name of an animal, and
11 Abraham, Karl: A Short Study of the Libido. viewed in the Light of
Mental Disorders (1924). in: Selected Papers on Psvcho-Analysis, London:
The Hogarth Press, 1927, pp. 485-486.
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 529

of an animal which frequently symbolized her mother in this

patient's dreams.
'''Displacement backwards" was a process that constantly
occurred in the mental images of both patients. Both had a feeling
of disgust at their mother, and in their phantasies and certain
symptoms both likened her to the essence of all that is most dis-
gusting, namely, excrement. Thus the mother was represented in
imagination by a piece of the body that had left it, i.e., a penis,
and faxes. . . .'

The process of investing the anal zone with libido is accord-

ingly to be divided into the investment of the anus, as Freud
has irrefutably described it, and the libidinal investment of the
buttocks 12 in the narcissistic attempt to restore the lost breasts
of the mother, which according to Freud are originally taken
by the infant to be a part of itself.
Anal eroticism, or libidinal investment of the anus, is one
of the most carefully studied fields of psychoanalysis, to which
very little remains to be added. One of the most important
achievements of the creator of psychoanalysis is the unraveling
of the obsessional neurosis, which is the classic stage for the
acting out of these drives in a pathologically distorted form,
and at the same time the purely clinical proof of the existence
and dominance of these tendencies.
Gluteal eroticism, on the other hand, is an almost untouched
analytic field. As previously stated, I conceive the cathexis of
the buttocks as a narcissistic attempt of the infant to replace
the breast, but believe that in the course of further develop-
ment much of the degradation accompanying the psychic
development of anality is superadded.
By way of indirect illustration I submit a passage from the
satirical composition of an orally regressed patient, an unpro-
ductive author, whom I described in my paper on obscene
words.P This biting satire, entitled 'Strange Weakness'.

12 Sadger, J.. in his paper. Ober Gesiisserotik, Int. Ztschr, f. Psa. I. pp. 35t-
358. has suggested the name 'Anal- or Gluteal Eroticism' for the erogeneity of
the buttocks. Sadger's paper is purely descriptive.
13 Bergler, Edmund: Obscene Words. This QUARTERLY, V, 1936, pp. 226-248.
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EDMUND BERGLER
53°
describes an official who, being widowed after a marriage of
fifteen years, says he is through with women:

'Like every proper state official, he suffered from chronic

constipation-comprehensibly, for people to whom the state gives
little, themselves soon forget the art of giving. Obstipation lasting
two weeks at a stretch was not unusual with him, and apparently
caused him no particular discomfort. At worst he became irritable
and moody. This did not bother him, however; rather those with
whom he came in contact in the order of official business. Once,
nevertheless, when he had remained constipated for almost three
weeks, presumably following a renewed salary reduction, he became
really uncomfortable, and he decided to do something about it.
But no medicine would work. None! When his eyes began to
bulge like those of a man with Graves' disease, he decided, with
much inner reluctance, to take an enema. He was advised to
engage a midwife. This suggestion he repudiated with indigna-
tion, as he justly feared the midwife might attempt to convince
him, anent this deed, that she was indispensable to him, and that
it would be best if he were to marry her at once. Nothing
remained, therefore, but for him to take the enema by himself.
From a neighbor he bought a fountain syringe which she was able
to sell very cheaply because she had little use for it. At home, on
the gas-stove, he brewed warm water with soap, considering mean-
while how to attack and carry out his project. He was greatly
annoyed that all this had to happen on just that day, his birthday,
which God knew, he might have spent far more pleasantly. He
decided to take the enema lying on his bed. On the wall over the
bed hung the portrait of his deceased wife. This he removed and
in its place hung the syringe filled with soap and water. This was
not difficult. The difficulties arose in conducting the soapsuds to
its proper goal. For this he required a mirror, which he was able
to place satisfactorily only after longdrawn experiments. As he
was about to introduce the tube, he found that he could not see
well enough without his eyeglasses. He could not depend upon
sensation alone. He got up again from the bed and .looked on his
desk for the glasses. He had to hunt for quite a while before he
found them. At last he could begin. With the help of the mirror
and his own sensations he shoved the tube into the proper place.
He then realized that without vaseline, it would never go in. He
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 531

had taken good care not to think of the vaseline I He didn't even
have such a thing in the house. Again he rose from his couch.
He was beginning to be pretty angry. What should he use instead
of vaseline? He hunted about the apartment and finally found a
pan of polishing wax which would serve the purpose. Irritated,
he lay down again on the bed, set the whole paraphernalia to rights
again, shoved the tube into the proper place (that was better!),
and carefully turned the cock. When he felt the stream of water
in his body he shrieked. It had taken so long to overcome the
obstacles to his undertaking that the water had turned ice cold in
the meantime. By now he was close to tears. He began again
from the beginning. He warmed his soap and water in the kitchen,
swearing under his breath. When the water had reached the
proper temperature he resumed the already familiar preparations
with increased haste. The lukewarm stream was already flowing
when fate played another trick. The nail which was just strong
enough to hold the portrait of his deceased wife, gave way
before the unaccustomed weight of the fountain syringe. With
a horrible crash, the container plunged from the wall right on
his head. The entire soapsuds doused his face and on his
temple was a bump the size of a nut. With a single leap, he
sprang off the bed into the middle of the room and paced up and
down, rubbing the swelling. He was now in a devilish rage.
Relapsing into primitive syllables, he blasphemed all the saints
he could call to mind. It was some while before he noticed
that he was dragging the tube and container of the syringe back
and forth behind him. Furiously he tore the damned appendage
from his body. Then he sat down at his smoking table and lit his
pipe. Puffing angrily, he regarded the scene of his misfortunes.
The mess seemed pretty hopeless. The bed dripped soapy water.
He called himself a fool for not having the midwife and flirted
with the idea of calling her now. But after his anger had subsided
somewhat, he resolved to make a final attempt. And this attempt-
be it stated briefly-succeeded to his fullest satisfaction!'
The close of the satire describes a meeting of the official with
a husband-hunting lady, who has pursued him for years.
He runs into her in a corridor on his way to the toilet. In
sheer desperation, because of his haste to reach the toilet, he
permits her to kiss him in betrothal. This satire was written
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EDMUND BERGLER
53 2

by the patient at a stage of the analysis when the oral ties to

his mother were being resolved through interpretation of the
transference. They were bound up with strong nugatory ten-
dencies. The degradation of woman was the conscious motive
of the satire. Nevertheless oral wishes are unconsciously smug-
gled into the an ally transcribed material. It was not chance
that the syringe replaced the portrait of the wife (mother) or
that the importance of the fluid to be used is in any case so
greatly emphasized, expressing as it does the 'autarchic fiction'
of 'doing everything oneself'.
Applying the equation breast-ebuttocks to the masculine
beating fantasy, the contradiction pointed out by Freud dis-
appears: 'The boy evades his homosexuality by repressing and
remodelling his unconscious phantasy [i.e., of the third phase];
and the remarkable thing about his later conscious phantasy is
that it has fOT its content a feminine attitude without a homo-
sexual object-choice.' This is because it is concerned with the
phallic mother. The 'transcription' from the father of the sec-
ond phase to the mother of the third phase succeeds so readily,
because the mother of the third phase is the same individual
(but not psychologically the same) as the person I assume for
the first phase. At the same time this gives us a hint why the
elimination of the father in the third phase remained incom-
plete: the father was a palliative for the all too sadistically con-
ceived phallic mother.
My speculations and demonstrations had progressed to this
point, when I asked myself how this 'transcription' from the
maternal breasts to the buttocks of the boy was to be clinically
proved. I began indeed to doubt whether it was at all possible
to prove this connection which I felt to be correct. The orally
fixated or regressed patients were obviously not suitable
material for my purpose, for the very reason that the aggression
against the maternal breasts was so deeply repressed, and that
memories from the suckling period are scarcely to be counted
on. To be sure, the symptoms of these patients speak very
clearly 14, but to those who question the importance of the
14 Thus I had long since observed that the particular inhibition of some
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 533

oral level of libido development are scarcely convincing. I

constructed the following theory: it might be possible that a
masochistic patient, fixated at the negative cedipus complex,
with beating fantasies having the father as subject, would
naturally repress this entire set-up, and might well retain con-
scious aggression against the mother's breasts, for the very
purpose of concealing the wishes relating to the father. This
notion came to me in connection with my study of Stendhal.P
I explained the curious fact that Henri Beyle, in his memoirs,
The Life of Henri Brulard, could freely admit the positive
cedipus complex, because it protected him from the threaten-
ing negative cedipus complex which lay behind it. In other
words, Stendhal's unconscious ego sacrificed the repression of
the positive oedipus complex for the sake of maintaining the
homosexual attitude in the unconscious.
I found a complete confirmation of this assumption soon
afterwards, when a young student entered analysis because of
impotence and masochistic character traits. When he was
asked about his beating fantasies, he at first declared that he
had none. However, he thought that perhaps certain inci-
dents of his school days might be significant. As chairman of
the student organization, he had repeatedly found it necessary
to protest against the beating of boys by their schoolmates. At
the same time he had had the tragic experience of catching
himself repeatedly in similar active beating fantasies. It
became clear at the very beginning of the analysis that the
patient above all identified himself with the boys who were
beaten, without, however, being conscious of it. After some
time the patient reluctantly recounted the chronological
development of his masturbation fantasies. When he was
three to four years old sadistic fantasies concerned themselves
exclusively with his mother's breasts. He had thought out a
whole system of refined torture. Generally his mother was

patients to indulge in deeply desired coitus a tergo is determined not only

anally but also by the identification of buttocks with breasts.
15 Cf. Bergler, Edmund: Talleyrand-Napoleon-Standhal-Grabbe. Vienna: Int.
Psa. Verlag, 1935. Chapt. III.
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534 EDMUND BERGLER

fastened by the breasts with cords to a sort of pulley which

hung from the ceiling. The patient stood on the opposite side
and pulled at the cords, stretching the breasts until the mother
was dragged upwards in great pain, and the breasts were finally
torn off. Or his mother's breasts were fastened to her feet by
means of cords tied backward over the shoulders; her head was
also fastened to her feet with cords, but tied forward. That is,
the breasts were pulled backward, the head downward. Pull-
ing at both cords at once caused 'tearing in two'. Or else his
mother was chased naked in the street, her arms fastened back-
wards, so the breasts were expanded. The patient was
behind her, holding her by a cord. Or the mother was sus-
pended by her hair and breasts, until both were torn off. In
this combination of sadistic and scoptophilic fantasies, the
patient played the active role of tormentor in an ever diminish-
ing degree. Other women made their appearance; then men,
who become increasingly important, the penis soon taking the
place of the breast. He recognized the penis as his father's,
because his father was the only circumcized man he knew,
being a baptized Jew, whose children had not been ritually
circumcized. It was men instead of women who were now
tortured by the patient. These 'cord, tearing and hanging'
fantasies as he called them, were in turn replaced by 'crushing
fantasies'. Naked women, and sometimes also men, were
thoroughly scrambled in a box and then squeezed together.
Here for the first time we have the conversion into masochism.
The patient, hitherto the active agent, or at least the spectator
taking pleasure in these sadistic fantasies, himself climbs into
the box where he suffers all that he has perpetrated against the
others.
At puberty the previously mentioned beating fantasies of
schoolboys were in the forefront, but also typically masochistic
notions, such as that a woman would sit on the patient as he
lay supine, so that he had to breathe her evil odor. Several
times the fantasy of drinking urine occurred. He elaborated
the story of the robbers who, falling upon peasants, forced
them to drink manure drainage to make them tell where their
money was hidden.
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PHASES OF THE MASCULINE BEATING FANTASY 535

We see the patient making the most desperate efforts to

place his own sadism in the forefront. He obviously cannot
admit the masochistic wishes into consciousness. Again and
again cruelty toward woman breaks through, and particularly
toward the breast. At the beginning of the analysis the
patient's masturbation fantasies were as follows: a woman is
being tormented by means of a special apparatus. She is
placed in a specially constructed contraption which has iron
spikes on the inside. When the door is. shut, the spikes auto-
matically penetrate her breasts. Or, the woman's arms are
weighted, so that her breasts protrude, and then the breasts
are pierced, stabbed, etc. At times the patient is merely a
spectator; at times he torment!' the woman himself.
There is no doubt that these fantasies do not in the least
correspond to the original version. The entire positive
cedipus complex, rejection of the female genitals for which
the patient had no conscious sexual interest, castration fears
and identification with the mother, the choice of father as love
object, etc., are repressed. Precisely in order to keep under
repression this set of wishes which constantly threaten to break
through, he retains in consciousness the sadistic interest in the
breast. In so doing he ties up to the original pre-cedipal wish
and revenge fantasies which relate to the breast. The only
organ which excites the patient sexually is the breast, on con-
dition that he can indulge in sadistic practices against it. The
fact that these sadistic wishes concerning the mother's breast
remain conscious is not merely a displacement mechanism 16
guaranteeing the denial of the passive feminine unconscious
homosexual wishes; it is also indirectly a proof to the patient
of his own aggressiveness, his masculinity. Thus intrapsychi-

16 Another part of this displacement mechanism, the purpose of which was

to relieve guilt feelings, relates to the 'main question' of these fantasies, which
the patient was able to admit to consciousness. In this patient we find a
displacement to technical problems; in the previous patient, with ejaculatory
difficulties, a similar displacement to the punishment motive. It is of interest
that the patient later in his profession, sublimated the technical problem' of
the construction of a pulley for suspending the breast. He became a constructor
of machines. For further possibilities of sublimating these fantasies, see Anna
Freud's Schlagephantasie und Tagtraum, Imago, 1922.
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EDMUND BERGLER

cally less important things are sacrificed to protect him against

the more important unconscious homosexuality. No wonder
that the main resistance of the patient was at just this level,
and that strong oral factors were also involved.
Summary
The question left open by Freud-whether there is a prelimi-
nary sadistic phase of the masculine beating fantasy-is
answered in the affirmative. The aggression of the boy is
first of all directed against the breasts of the pre-eedipal mother,
and is only secondarily, under pressure of guilt feelings, turned
against himself. In so doing the buttocks of the boy are
equated with the breasts of the mother, which among other
things represents a narcissistic attempt at restitution, and the
executive is only subsequently, in the cedipal phase, 'tran-
scribed' from mother to father. I have tried by means of
casuistic material to prove this theory. The material exhibits
complete agreement with the second and third phases according
to Freud.
Translated by POLLY LEEDS WElL.
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