Voluntary Servitude. Masochism and Morality

Le Soldat’s Voluntary Servitude. Masochism and Morality presents an extraordinary analysis of masochism, the subject, death drive and sexual discourse inspired by Freudian drive theory, philosophy, gender theory, political science and mythology.

This book will certainly evoke the reader’s curiosity, but even more than that it will encourage readers critical reflection on the clandestine defensive formations between the psyche and reality that, in the author’s view, obscure pleasure principle by corrupting the death drive and the body. Le Soldat presents an unprecedented formulation in psychoanalytic literature to date, one of incomparable significance not only for our clinical work, but also for critical theoretical reflection on society and its vicissitudes. As a result of their defensive stances, we encounter ’masochistic subjects of servitude’ enclosed in a world of wars, economical rivalries, regressive brutality of consumerism, religious dependency and political mania.

Drawing on the work of Freud and Adorno, and balancing theoretical and clinical material, this is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and anyone who seeks to understand the concept of voluntary servitude.

Judith Le Soldat (1947-2008) was a Swiss psychoanalyst, researcher, lecturer and author. She was born in Budapest and lived in Zurich, where she studied psychology and ran her own psychoanalytic practice from 1974. Her first monograph Voluntary Servitude. Masochism and Morality was published in 1989. In her second monograph (1994), she presented an exciting, completely new understanding of Oedipal conflicts (see the critical edition of the book published in 2020 under the title Raubmord und Verrat - Robbery murder and betrayal). She worked on a third monograph on male homosexuality, but left it unfinished. The book was published posthumously in 2018 under the title Land of No Return. The lectures Judith Le Soldat gave at the University of Zurich in 2006/07 were also published posthumously. They appeared as the first volume of Le Soldat’s Collected Works in 2015 under the title Grund zur Homosexualität (Grounds for Homosexuality). Grounds for Homosexuality contains an introduction to both her theory of the Oedipal Conflicts and her theory of homosexuality and is therefore well suited as an introduction to her entire oeuvre. - Further publications by Judith Le Soldat, in German, s. www.lesoldat.ch