Obrana masochismu – Phillipsová Anita (2016)

In this provocative book, Anita Phillips intelligently rescues masochism from the clinical discourse that labels it a pathological disease and returns it to the context of a different human experience and artistic expression. The result is a fresh and fascinating modern perspective on desire, curiosity, and eroticism. Since Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing coined the term 'masochism' in the nineteenth century, it has been mistakenly perceived as the weaker counterpart to sadism; however, Anita Phillips, editor of the British academic journal Interstice, debunks this myth and argues that masochism is 'deeply autonomous.' The art of embodying masochistic fantasies, she writes, is 'to be hurt in the right way and at the right time, according to a sophisticated, human-made script.' Phillips goes back to Freud, Jung, Foucault, and Leo Bersani to create a new definition of masochism, examining popular culture to demonstrate both its necessity and the powerful influence it has had on Western culture—from David Lynch's Blue Velvet to Jean Genet's The Miracle of the Rose, as well as the images of the tortured Christ in the New Testament. She shows that masochism is a healthy part of the human psyche that enjoys...