On Freud's "A Child Is Being Beaten"

Plot

"A Child Is Being Beaten" (1919) deals with the theoretical problem of how pleasure and suffering become linked. Freud explores the childhood beating fantasy (which is often accompanied by sexual arousal), its transformational stages, the changing cast of protagonists, and the differences between boys and girls in the sequences and meanings of the fantasy. He extends his discussion to encompass masochism and perversion. "A Child Is Being Beaten" is of particular relevance in the current debate over how to tell whether an apparent memory of childhood abuse is a recollection of a real event or a derivative of fantasy. And the essay takes on added interest in the light of evidence that one of the six patients Freud discusses was his daughter Anna, who wrote her own essay on the subject three years later.