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For over fifty years we have studied destructive and self-destructive sadomasochistic behavior in individuals, from failure-to-thrive infants to uncontrolled violence in children, to murder and suicide in adolescents and adults. In ordinary clinical work, all the patients we see present with some degree of sadomasochistic functioning, no matter what the diagnosis. Repetitive, resistant, self-defeating functioning, stalling or impasse in the clinical relationship - these form the arena for most analytic endeavors. In our writings on these topics, we have particularly highlighted traumatic origins, helplessness, overwhelming rage, the impact of preoedipal, oedipal, and post-oedipal pathology, terror of affects and excitement, tyrannical superego, and the constant danger of self-destruction. In this book we hope to present in summary form the basic ideas that have emerged from this work. Rather than detail the arguments, rationales, and underpinnings here, we will direct the reader to tho...