Pain And Passion: A Psychoanalyst Explores the World of S & M Hardcover – January 1, 1991

Robert J. StollerPain and Passion:A Psychoanalyst Explores the World of S & M(New York: Plenum, 1991) 306 pages An account of the life and work of"bondage and discipline" clubs in California,based on interviews with owners and workers.Interesting raw data for further thinking and researchinto sadomasochistic sex-scripts.Why do some people derive sexual pleasure from pain(or pretenses of pain) and humiliation?If you are interested in discovering other unusual sexual fantasies,search the Internet for the following bibliography:"SEXOLOGY---SEX-SCRIPTS---BEST BOOKS".James Leonard Park, author ofImprinted Sexual Fantasies:A New Key for Sexology.

I was hoping this book would be a little more about the Psychoanalytical theories involved in BDSM but instead this book is simple a series of interviews. Some of the interviews are interesting tibbits into small section of the BDSM world, mainly the working aspect of BDSM. I am not impressed by the selection of people who he choose to interview, and frankly don't think it reflects the life style. It does provide some insight into the life Domme who does it as a job, which manages to redeem it into having some value. Unless you are researching BDSM you really don't have a need to buy this book.

You don't have to go to New Guinea to find perceptive insights into exotic behavior that heretofore had only been described by Freudian armchair theorists who hadn't troubled to do the field research. Fascinating, dedicated research into a field that illuminates what many of us express in our sexual fantasies (when too reserved or too considerate to actually act on them) if only in an attenuated form.