Sadistic Personality Disorder: A Review of Data and Recommendations for DSM-IV

Abstract

Sadism is a term originally used by Krafft-Ebing (1898) to describe the desire to inflict pain upon the sexual object. He also coined the term masochism for the desire to have pain inflicted by the sexual object. Freud (1915; 1924; 1957) further elaborated the concept as an element of male aggressiveness, or a desire to subjugate contained in the biological un derpinnings of male sexuality. Freud described two aspects of sadism, one characterized by an active or violent attitude toward the sexual object and the other characterized by sexual satisfaction that is completely conditional on the humiliation and maltreatment of the sexual object (sexual sadism). Sadism has continued to be a concept prominent more in the psy choanalytic literature than within other theoretical frameworks. Numerous other psychoanalysts subsequently expanded and modified Freud's hypoth eses, but adhered basically to the original concepts of the interrelationship of sadism and masochism and the instinctual basis of both (Brenner, 1959; Eissler, 1958; Gero, 1962; Reik, 1941). As the object relations school of psychoanalysis developed, the concept of sadism shifted from a focus on its instinctual basis to a focus on environ