I am a Master's student two years into my degree and am planning to defend in the next few months. My supervisor is generally condescending and discouraging which unfortunately seems to be quite common for student-supervisor relationship. Until now, I've taken things in stride and have kept my head down, but as I get closer to the date that I'm hoping to finish, it seems he is continually putting up more and more barriers to actually finishing. When I push back or gently suggest alternatives he gets more and more difficult to work with.
Without going into too much detail, I now have a complete draft of my thesis that I would like to have him read for feedback and edits but instead of going through the whole thesis, he wants to go through each section back and forth until it's "as good as possible" and then move on to the next.
As he tends to take a week or two to make edits and he refuses to look at other sections while I'm working on his edits, it seems as though he wants this to take as long as possible. He has recently lost funding and I am no longer receiving funding from him so I'm wondering if it's in his best interest to have me around as long as possible. I understand two weeks can actually be a good turn-over for edits, but in context with other issues we've had, this just another in a growing resistance to any progress being made.
How can I best address this situation to ensure I can defend in a timely matter? I'd rather not go to the department head because I think she'll be obligated to take action as he has had other formal complaints made against him recently.
I've spoken with a committee member who has suggested I reiterate my goals and timeline for defense but this is something I do regularly and I don't think it will help in this instance.
Edit to add information from comments:
We have made numerous calendars and schedules that seem to go by the wayside the minute they're made. I suspect that having me on as a student is an advantage for him at this point, as he has no funding to secure new students and no longer has to fund me. The longer he holds onto me, the longer he can avoid pressure from the department to take on new students, projects, etc.