Sadism
Sadism
1.The deriving of sexual gratification or the tendency to derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others.
2.The deriving of pleasure, or the tendency to derive pleasure, from cruelty.
3.Extreme cruelty.
All of us have at one time or another found ourselves victims of a sadistic person; often we are unaware of what is happening. Some of us seek sadistic people who will harm us on purpose for our mutual gratification (in the Dom/sub BDSM culture). People with masochistic tendencies are drawn to sadists.
In a recent study led by Jean Decety, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, researchers looked at a personality trait often confused with psychopathy: sexual sadism... Decety’s study suggests that sadists seem to be especially tuned in to what their victims are feeling — in fact, they experience it vicariously and are aroused by it. Psychopaths, on the other hand, tend to be indifferent to the emotions of others. “If you live with a psychopath and you cry because that person was unpleasant to you, that probably doesn’t matter to him. He is not moved and doesn’t care, because he doesn’t feel anything about what you feel,” says Decety. “The sadists do feel. They understand that the victim is in pain.”
Those who are high in sadism get a “kick” out of inflicting unnecessary pain on others. O'meara, Davies, and Hammond (2011) defined sadistic personality as “… a person who humiliates others, shows a longstanding pattern of cruel or demeaning behavior to others, or intentionally inflicts physical, sexual, or psychological pain or suffering on others in order to assert power and dominance or for pleasure and enjoyment”.
Algolagnic disorders are a class of paraphilic disorders wherein sexual arousal is dependent on pain and suffering. Sexual sadism disorder is a specific algolagnic disorder wherein sexual arousal occurs from the physical or psychological suffering of another individual (The American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Algolagnia
Sexual gratification derived from inflicting or experiencing pain.
A physical condition that causes a person to gain sexualpleasure by sufferingpain, particularly to erogenous zones.
sexual pleasure derived from inflicting or experiencing pain
Sexual sadism disorder is hallmarked by intense feelings of sexual excitement when fantasizing about or witnessing another individual undergoing physical or psychological pain. Acts of sexual sadism may occur with a consenting partner, or as assault on a nonconsenting individual (The American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Every day sadists and subclinical sadists
To asses your sadism or another here are the test questions:
10 questions from the SSIS. Each one is rated simply as “describes me/this person” or “does not describe me/this person”:
1 I enjoy seeing people hurt.
2 I would enjoy hurting someone physically, sexually, or emotionally.
3 Hurting people would be exciting.
4 I have hurt people for my own enjoyment.
5 People would enjoy hurting others if they gave it a go.
6 I have fantasies which involve hurting people.
7 I have hurt people because I could.
8 I wouldn’t intentionally hurt anyone. (Reversed-scored)
9 I have humiliated others to keep them in line.
10 Sometimes I get so angry I want to hurt people.
There is a disorder;
Sadistic personality disorder (SPD) can be defined as a type of personality disorder in which an affected individual inflicts sadistic, cruel, manipulative, aggressive and demeaning behavior on others. Violence and abusiveness are the hallmarks of the social relationships of a sadist. Such people lack empathy and concern for other individuals and derive pleasure by hurting or humiliating others.
Similarities have been observed between the SPD and the more aggressive variants of antisocial personality disorder. However, an antisocial individual does not normally hurt other people just for fun. There might also be a connection between SPD and sexual sadism, where an individual derives sexual satisfaction and arousal from sadistic acts such as beating and/or humiliating someone.
Every Sadist needs a masochist to play with:
