“Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute”. Mobilità e immobilità nel masochismo

The pervert generally does not seek analysis, observed Freud in the article Fetishism (1927): he believes he knows what enjoyment is, and in any case, he has chosen it irreversibly. Therefore, the theory of the subject can enrich its knowledge through literary elaboration (for example, the texts of Sade and Sacher-Masoch), not only through clinical experience. The paper draws extensively on Lacan’s thought but aims to go further by interrogating fundamental concepts such as the drive. However, it is imperative to interpret the drive as a conflict between rigidity and flexibility, rather than reducing it to autistic enjoyment (as in Lacan and Lacanian orthodoxy). In perversion, the drive is paradoxically the Law—the only Law. The pervert approaches the Thing (das Ding) in various ways but is nonetheless dominated by a push toward de-subjectivation. Masochism illustrates this push in relation to a female figure, divided into three aspects: the pagan and sensual woman, the maternal woman, and the purely sadistic woman (according to a proposal by Deleuze). However, Deleuze reduces this triad to a dyad, forgetting sensuality and the coincidentia oppositorum between love and jouissance.