Over five years, from 1919 to 1924, Freud dealt with
masochism in three texts written in close proximity: "A Child Is Being Beaten," Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and "The Economic Problem of
Masochism." Initially Freud explains
masochism as incestuous fixation on the father and regression to pregenital, sadistic ways of loving. Subsequently he considers it primarily as subservient to the death drive. This paper starts from an idea present in two of the three texts, but not developed by Freud, in which he refers to the role that the "qualitative"
element of rhythm could play in the occurrence of pleasure in
masochism. By means of this
element traumatic aspects of the primary relationship with the object could be stored as fantasies in the body. In any staged masochistic fantasies of being beaten or in masochistic perversion, the pleasure of
pain would lie in the attempt to "dream" the
trauma not only in the imagination but also, "aesthetically," in the body.