n.

The combination of sadism and masochism, in particular the deriving of pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting or submitting to physical or emotional abuse.

sadomasochist sa'do·mas'o·chist n.
sadomasochistic sa'do·mas'o·chis'tic adj.

Sadomasochism subsumes a whole array of practices whose practitioners may have very little in common. Sexologists have commonly included under this heading everything from love bites to lust-murder. What, if anything, conceptually unites the desire to receive mild pain, to give mild pain (and even these desires may take diverse forms), to be tied up or to bind one's partner, to participate in scenarios of humiliation or domination, or to receive severe pain or to inflict it? Perhaps the common factor in all these phenomena is some form of suffering, from the minor to the extreme, which has been given an erotic meaning by the actors involved. Whether, however, all forms of suffering have the same eroticized meaning is open to question.

The sadomasochistic practice with possibly the longest history of recognition as a sexual perversion, even before the development of the concept, must be flagellation. There have been numerous historical studies of corporal punishment, though it may be queried how far these illuminate one of the murkier areas of sexual diversity, or are merely a specialized form of pornography masquerading as ‘science’. Flagellation was long known to arouse sexual desire by stimulating nerves in regions adjacent to the genitals. It was employed, for example, in brothels, as a means of arousing the sluggish desires of the impotent or elderly. Sexual arousal tends to raise the threshold at which pain is experienced, and thus love bites, pinches, slaps, and other non-specifically arousing acts may feed back into the process of sexual arousal and enhance its intensity.

Theories

‘Sadism’ and ‘masochism’ as definitions emerged from the pre-existing writings of the French Marquis de Sade and the Austrian Leopold von Sacher-Masoch depicting sexualized forms of cruelty. The use of the word ‘sadism’ was already in vogue to describe the infliction of suffering when Richard von Krafft-Ebing commenced his massive study of Psychopathia Sexualis (first published in 1886), but ‘masochism’ was a coinage of his own. He claimed that the perversion described by Sacher-Masoch in novels such as Venus in Furs had previously been unknown to science, though he was able to cite a large number of cases. He classified the two phenomena as opposite perversions to some extent mirroring one another. He pointed out, however, that extremes of suffering, resulting in serious injury or death, were likely to be pursued by masochists only in fantasy, due to the instinct of self-preservation, whereas there were recorded cases of assault or murder committed by sadists for sexual motives. His conclusion may be contested in the light of cases where auto-erotic rituals have led, however inadvertently, to death.

Current thinking suggests that the division is not so clear-cut and that there may be something about ritualized scenarios of pain, bondage, domination, or humiliation which causes arousal quite separately from whether participation, real or fantasized, is as inflictor or sufferer. Individuals may switch roles, and indeed, there is some rather anecdotal evidence that within sadomasochistic subcultures preferences are predominantly masochistic, and good ‘tops’ or sadists are rare and much prized, so that ‘bottoms’ or masochists may perform the complementary role if required.

Practices

The aetiology of sadomasochism is, like that of much sexual behaviour, only partially understood. In the case of a desire for the infliction of certain kinds of pain, it may be that the individual has an innately high threshold of arousal and requires vigorous stimulation in order to become sexually aroused and potent. While sadomasochism may be seen as expressing innate human aggressiveness, any relationship is extremely complex. Aggression often interferes with satisfactory sexual interaction, as actual anger and hostility are likely to mute rather than enhance sexual responsiveness. While a certain degree of assertiveness may be necessary, aggression as such is likely to prove counter-productive. Submissive or sexually receptive behaviours are used by a variety of species, including other primates, to defuse offered aggression, but it is not clear whether this appeasement behaviour is sexually gratifying rather than strategic.

The influence of childhood experiences has been invoked to account for these preferences. Protests against the corporal punishment of children cited the dangers of premature sexual arousal (the most commonly quoted case was that of the Enlightenment philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who described such an outcome in his Autobiography), and the deleterious effects upon the observers of public and ritualized floggings. Punishments might additionally involve the exposure of parts of the body normally concealed so that several factors could elicit sexual response to an event involving pain and humiliation. Given the decline of corporal punishment, however, there must be many sadomasochists who have never directly experienced or witnessed this as children: it cannot be the entire explanation.

Sadomasochism seems to be more evenly distributed between the sexes than some other sexual preferences, at least on the level of fantasy. Women report fantasies of rape or being forced into sexual situations: however, there are major differences between such fantasies and ‘real life’. It has been suggested that fantasies of being dominated and the abrogation of personal responsibility give permission for a sexual response which guilt would otherwise deny.

Active sadomasochistic subcultures, both heterosexual and homosexual, exist. It has been suggested that heterosexual subcultures, largely male, function as a support group — any women involved being prostitutes servicing this specialized clientele — whereas the homosexual subculture is a source of partners. However, there is some evidence, in particular from more recent surveys, that non-prostitute women are increasingly participating. One side-effect of the ‘liberation’ of women may be their exploration in person of practices which they perhaps used only to fantasize about, although women tend to have been introduced to sadomasochistic practices by a male partner. There is also a lesbian sadomasochistic subculture, which has aroused much feminist debate as to whether it constitutes a means of exploring the limits of sexuality and of protesting against received ideas of female sexual apathy and passivity, or rather an internalized manifestation of the patriarchal sexual violence within society at large. Advocates for sadomasochism claim that it is a very safe form of sexual practice requiring participants to make their preferences clear from the outset. The ‘bottom’ is said to be the one actually in control, and a code of ‘safe words’ prevents situations going too far.

Sadism and masochism might be taken as extreme manifestations of the roles of the sexes as encoded by society and (in the view of many) by biology. Sexual dominance is associated with successful masculinity, while submissiveness and passivity are seen as appropriate feminine attributes. There has been a good deal of feminist debate around the contention that sadomasochism explicitly eroticizes this sexual dynamic. Such a view fails to account for the prevalence of male masochist preferences, which probably predominate over sadistic tendencies; however it could be argued that in a still male-dominated society, men have many opportunities outside the specifically sexual sphere to gratify impulses of sadism and the assertion of dominance. A sexual preference so contradictory to the expected social role was perceived as problematic from the earliest investigations of sexologists. Iwan Bloch, in The Sexual Life of our Time (first British edition 1909), drew attention to the remarkable prevalence of masochism among men holding power and influence within society, operating, he suggested, as ‘a kind of liberation from conventional pressure and the professional mask.’

Only a minority of individuals ever deliberately seek out sadomasochistic partners and activities, though this may be more widespread than often assumed. Minor manifestations in sexual games and horseplay are probably common. On the evidence of prostitutes' advertisements, it is a commonly sought speciality in commercial sex transactions. As a theme, it is widespread in many media; indeed, it is something of a truism that all sorts of acts of violence may be depicted, although there may be considerable restrictions on revealing the naked body and acts of normal coitus. But people who pursue sexual pleasure by this means are stigmatized, and in the recent notorious British case of ‘Operation Spanner’, a group of men practising consensual, though very extreme, sadomasochism received sentences which many regarded as disproportionately heavy, especially compared with the inconsistent penalties imposed for sexual assaults on women.

In a post-modernist age of sexual choices, where sadomasochism is presented as one more option among sexual activities, the once potent connection made between sexual repression and sadism or masochism has become somewhat occluded. This is a connection, however, which history tends to substantiate, because there have been perceptible associations in numerous societies between puritanical and repressive attitudes towards sexuality and a toleration, or even encouragement, of cruelty and violence, and vice-versa. It could be argued that those who are aware of their erotic response to pain and/or domination, and who orchestrate sadomasochistic scenarios for personal sexual gratification, are less socially dangerous than those who do not acknowledge the sexual component in their reactions to these phenomena and pursue them in less self-knowing and more oblique ways.

— Lesley A. Hall

See also fetishism; flagellation; rape; sexuality.

Sadism and masochism represent contrasting forms of pleasure derived from sexual excitation linked to cruelty and the infliction of pain. While both currents are present in any given individual, they also represent pregenital links in an intersubjective context in which one partner is the sadist and the other the masochist. Sadomasochism may have an oral component but takes on characteristic form during the anal sadistic stage.

In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d), Freud pointed out that sadism and masochism, terms that first gained currency in the work of Richard Krafft-Ebing, "are habitually found together in the same individual" and "occur together regularly as pairs of opposites" (pp. 159-60). Freud eventually generalized this dynamic to psychic structures as a whole, when he posited the relations governing the mental agencies in his second topography. Thus the superego's sadism toward the ego figures prominently in the idea of self-punishment and moral masochism. Sadomasochism may also characterize relationships between individuals, regardless of gender, and even if the context is a normal sexual relationship.

Sadomasochism may be viewed as a regression in the face of castration anxiety, provoked by the oedipal conflict and associated with the perception of the anatomical differences between the sexes. This interplay can be seen in cases of obsessional neurosis—for example, with the "Rat Man" in "Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis" (1909d). Freud also found sadomasochistic aspects to the oedipally tinged auto-erotic fantasies discussed in "A Child Is Being Beaten: A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions" (1919e). In general, Freud's original conception of sadomasochism developed from his early instinct theory, which included a drive to mastery without a sexual aim.

However, in terms of the genesis of the sadism and masochism, Freud eventually gave pride of place to the latter, which he discussed first in 1915 in "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" in terms of the presence of sexual excitation, and then formulated more generally in "The Economic Problem of Masochism" (1924c), written after the introduction of the death instinct.

In Freud's later theory, sadomasochism derives its importance and power, so to speak, from a singularly effective form of instinctual fusion that protects the individual from the death instinct by diverting it outward (sadism) or binding it either internally or to an object (masochism). This amounts to a profound explanation of the human capacity to hurt oneself and one another, with both sexual and survival benefits. This idea can elicit at least as much if not more resistance than infantile sexuality. In dealing with sadomasochism, the analyst may confront resistances that are especially rigid, together with fixations on pregenital object relations, moral masochism, and negative therapeutic reaction.

Freud's conception of sadomasochism can be clinically validated by role reversal found among sadomasochistic couples, in the establishment of reverse relationships with another partner, and in the special durability of such relationships. The masochist's victory lies in the fact that the master cannot free him- or herself from the ties that bind.

For analysts who remained faithful to Freud's first theory of instincts, sadomasochism expresses mental destructiveness, sometimes in the most extreme fashion. For those who preferred the death instinct, sadomasochism instead offers protection from instinctual destructiveness, both internally and through cathexis of a particularly solid object relationship, albeit a pregenital one. Both camps are in agreement in referring to sadomasochism clinically in the analysis of borderline or narcissistic situations in which triangulation gives way to dyadic relations, but they view it differently, as either negative or positive, with regard to destructiveness. This difference would tend to dissolve if it were specified whether internal destructiveness or external destructiveness was involved, because only the latter is taken into account in terms of aggression.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.

——. (1915c). Instincts and their vicissitudes. SE, 14: 109-140.

——. (1919e). A child is being beaten: A contribution to the study of the origin of sexual perversions. SE, 17: 175-204.

——. (1924c). The economic problem of masochism. SE, 19: 155-170.

—DENYS RIBAS

Dansk (Danish)
n. - sadomasochisme

Nederlands (Dutch)
sadomasochisme

Français (French)
n. - sadomasochisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Sadomasochismus

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - σαδομαζοχισμός

Italiano (Italian)
sadomasochismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - sadomasoquismo (m)

Русский (Russian)
садомазохизм

Español (Spanish)
n. - sadomasoquismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - sado-masochism

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
被虐待性变态

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 被虐待性變態

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 가학 피학성 성욕

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - サドマゾヒズム

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الماسوشيه الساديه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮צירוף של סדיזם ומזוכיזם אצל אדם אחד, סדו-מזוכיזם‬

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