The undergraduate thesis seeks to shed light on Freud's and Deleuze's conceptions of sadism and masochism and the differences between them, especially through Deleuze's rejection of the unity of sadomasochism. We pay attention to Freud's conception of sadomasochism, especially through his work The Economic Problem of Masochism. We also compare Freud's understanding of sadomasochism with Deleuze's, Deleuze's argument for breaking it, and finally the differences in the political thought of de Sade and Sacher-Masoch in relation to the revolutions of their time.
Freud treats sadism and masochism as two faces of a single perversion, whose active and passive forms are found in variable relationships in the same individual. Deleuze, however, tried to show how sadism and masochism really are two separate categories that come together simply because we treat symptoms as causes.
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