Coming to Vienna - The Birth of Masochism

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was one of the most celebrated european writer of 1870s and 1880s. Today, thanks to Richard von Krafft-Ebing, he is known mainly as eponymous exemplar of masochism and only one his work, short novella 'Venus in Furs', is a part of contemporary culture.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) was professor of psychiatry at the university of Vienna in 1889-1902. He was one of the most prominent psychiatrist and leading forensic expert in Central Europe and founding father of medical sexology. His principal work 'Psychopathia Sexualis' was first published in Stuttgart in 1886. Written as a practical guide for lawyers and doctors considering sexual crimes in court, it quickly became a bestseller (though all piquant passages were in latin), followed by no less then 11 revised and more elaborated editions in sixteen subsequent years and translated into several languages. And it is still popular and regularly published today.

University of Vienna

But the term 'masochism' has been first used by Krafft-Ebing in 1890 in his study 'New research in the area of Psychopathia Sexualis' and consequently the term was used in the 6th edition of the 'Psychopathia Sexualis' in 1891. Krafft-Ebing claimed that he is following medical convention in the creation of pathology name using the discoverer's own name. He justified himself by citing the example of Dalton and color-blindness (then called 'daltonism'), since Dalton was color-blind himself and also scientifically explained its causes.

So, the Krafft-Ebing's new term implied that Sacher-Masoch himself was the inventor who had discovered his own pathology. In the same paragraph Krafft-Ebing defined the sickness from which he claimed the writer suffered and added that this was the downfall of the Masoch’s literary potential. Quite ironic, is it not?

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Krafft-Ebing knew about Sacher-Masoch from Graz. He arrived to the city in 1872 when tales about Sacher-Masoch's liaison with Anna von Kottowitz still circulated through the university (Sacher-Masoch taught history there till 1870). Sacher-Masoch, his open philosemitism and panslavism, offered a valuable target for Krafft-Ebing. Sacher-Masoch's idea, described clearly in 'Venus in Furs', that violence is not natural to men any more than it is to Women, had to be be something provocative and pathological for the famous psychiatrist.

No wonder Sacher-Masoch, his family and friends vehemently protested about the new term. But in 1905 Freud had made it into one of the basic component instincts of polymorphous infantile sexuality and masochism became official term for pleasurable investment in physical pain and psychic humiliation. Sacher-Masoch became immortal.