HOW BDSM became defined as an illness. 

Moser (1996) “SM behav­iors are seen through­out his­tory, dat­ing back at least to ancient Egypt and the Hindu cul­ture in India,” Roy Baumeis­ter (1997) said that there is some evi­dence of masochis­tic SM play in the 1500s, in Europe and beyond.

The prob­lem all started with psy­cho­an­a­lyst Richard Von Krafft-Ebing’s book, Psy­chopathia Sex­u­alis: A Medico-Forensic Study, first pub­lished in 1886. In this book he exam­ined over 200 cases of psy­cho­sex­ual activ­i­ties that included lust mur­der, necrophilia, ped­erasty, bes­tial­ity, trans­vestism, rape, and muti­la­tion. All were, in a sense, lumped together and defined as psy­cho­pathic per­ver­sions. The case his­to­ries he reported and drew his con­clu­sions on involved non­con­sen­sual sex­ual vio­lence and is not what we call con­sen­sual BDSM.

He made no major dis­tinc­tion between con­sen­sual and non­con­sen­sual S&M. There­fore, the con­sen­sual act of sado-masochism was lumped into the same book of per­ver­sions as those involv­ing the force­ful vio­la­tions com­mit­ted on another per­son. BDSM play is still con­sid­ered a sex­ual per­ver­sion because of Krafft-Ebing’s the­ory that is now over 100 years old.

Krafft-Ebing coined the terms sadism and masochism. The term “sadism” is from the writ­ings of Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade, more com­monly known Mar­quis de Sade born in 1740. The term “masochism” is used to describe the enjoy­ment of sex­ual servi­tude. He took the term from the writ­ings of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Aus­trian nov­el­ist, born in 1836. He wrote about his masochis­tic desires. Sacher-Masoch was not happy about hav­ing a per­ver­sion named after him.

Sadism accord­ing to Krafft-Ebing:

He, in Psy­chopathia Sex­u­alis defined sadism as follows:

Sadism is the expe­ri­ence of sex­ual plea­sur­able sen­sa­tions (includ­ing orgasm) pro­duced by acts of cru­elty, bod­ily pun­ish­ment afflicted on one’s own per­son or when wit­nessed in oth­ers, be they ani­mals or human beings. It may also con­sist of an innate desire to humil­i­ate, hurt, wound, or even destroy oth­ers in order thereby to cre­ate sex­ual plea­sure in one’s self.

What he called sadism is now called vio­lent sex­ual crimes and not con­sen­sual BDSM play. He stated that “Sadism is thus noth­ing else than an exces­sive and mon­strous patho­log­i­cal inten­si­fi­ca­tion of phe­nom­ena – pos­si­ble, too, in nor­mal con­di­tions in rudi­men­tal forms – which accom­pany the psy­chi­cal sex­ual life, par­tic­u­larly in males.”

Masochism accord­ing to Krafft-Ebing:

His def­i­n­i­tion of masochism in Psy­chopathia Sex­u­alis as:

By masochism I under­stand a pecu­liar per­ver­sion of the psy­chi­cal sex­ual life in which the indi­vid­ual affected, in sex­ual feel­ing and thought, is con­trolled by the idea of being com­pletely and uncon­di­tion­ally sub­ject to the will of a per­son of the oppo­site sex: of being treated by this per­son as by a mas­ter, humil­i­ated and abused. This idea is col­ored by lust­ful feel­ing; the masochist lives in fan­tasies, in which he cre­ates sit­u­a­tions of this kind and often attempts to real­ize them.

He could not under­stand masochis­tic desires in men because, in his opin­ion, sadism was more nat­ural for men. He said that men had a “nat­ural aggres­sive ten­den­cies,” but that men shouldn’t, or don’t have “nat­ural pas­sive ten­den­cies.” Based upon the­ses beliefs he said that masochism was asso­ci­ated with psy­cho­log­i­cal impotence.

Under­stand­ing and explain­ing masochism became a real prob­lem for him. He states it made men impo­tent, but acknowl­edged that it occurred in peo­ple that were not impo­tent. He also states with­out estab­lish­ing proof that all sex­ual per­ver­sions are alike, and caused by heredity.

It has been said that Krafft-Ebing was too ready to call some­thing that he did not under­stand a per­ver­sion, with­out tak­ing the time to do the research to prove it. It is impor­tant for the reader to under­stand this because, in my opin­ion, his work is still highly regarded by the psy­cho­an­a­lysts that fol­low the teach­ing of Freud.

It is also my belief, that Krafft-Ebing ignored the more play­ful forms of S&M play and focused on vio­lent behav­iors of sex­ual preda­tors. It think this is obvi­ous from his writings.

Before the pub­li­ca­tion of Krafft-Ebing’s book, the acts of con­sen­sual BDSM were given very lit­tle atten­tion by the world and very often accepted. From the begin­ning and more so now, his book is con­tro­ver­sial. How­ever, alone this book would have prob­a­bly had lit­tle impact on the world but Sig­mund Freud, a con­tem­po­rary, agreed with him that S&M was pathological.

Sig­mund Freud, is con­sid­ered the father of the psy­cho­an­a­lytic the­ory of psy­chol­ogy. In 1938, he termed “sado­masochism” which put the two terms (sadism and masochism) together for the first time. It is often said that Freud stud­ies of S&M were not always clear and often con­tra­dic­tory. How­ever, Freud, as a per­son, had a huge impact on mod­ern psy­chol­ogy and when he stated that S&M was patho­log­i­cal; it car­ried a huge weight and was accepted almost with­out ques­tion for many years. Freud stud­ied indi­vid­u­als with actual sex­ual dis­or­ders and pro­jected his find­ings to the pop­u­la­tion as a whole. Freud believed that sadism and masochism was the most sig­nif­i­cant of all the per­ver­sions. Freud like Krafft-Ebing made no real dis­tinc­tion between con­sen­sual S&M acts and non­con­sen­sual sex­ual aggres­sive acts.

Because of the fame of Krafft-Ebing and Freud, other psy­cho­an­a­lysts such as, Nay­lor (1986), and Roth­stein (1989) still con­sider sadism and masochism in much the same terms. Krafft-Ebing and Freud did not view sadism and masochism as acts done in love. They viewed Sadism as acts of cru­elty. Both viewed Sadism as an aber­ra­tion stem­ming from the nor­mal drive in men to dom­i­nate and this drive became out of con­trol in men who prac­ticed sadism.

Masochism was dif­fi­cult for both Krafft-Ebing and Freud to under­stand because they felt that there are no masochis­tic ten­den­cies in a nor­mal men. Freud dif­fered from Krafft-Ebing in that he (Freud) thought that sadism and masochism were two forms of the same thing, rather than sep­a­rate enti­ties. Freud felt that masochism was merely a ‘trans­for­ma­tion from sadism. It should be noted that lit­tle ref­er­ence was made to women is the study of sadism or masochism.

Psy­chol­o­gist Albert von Schrenk-Notzing coined the term “algo­lagnia” which means sado­masochism. The term active algo­lagnia was the term for sadism and pas­sive algo­lagnia was the term for masochism. Anthro­pol­o­gist, Iwan Bloch (1933/1994), in Anthro­po­log­i­cal Stud­ies in the Strange Sex­ual Prac­tices of All Races in All Ages, defined “algo­lagnia” as ‘painful lasciviousness.

In the mid-twentieth cen­tury other the­o­ries of psy­chol­ogy begin to be widely accepted. Many of these the­o­ries are based on social, behav­ioral and cog­ni­tive con­cepts. As the prac­ti­tion­ers of psy­chol­ogy moved away from Freud’s con­cepts many changes in the field of psy­chol­ogy were made, views on S&M being only one of these. Today, the Freudian con­cepts of psy­chol­ogy is not the dom­i­nant the­ory prac­ticed, but still has a major influence.

Some cur­rent opin­ions of S&M that are opposed to Krafft-Ebing’s and Freud’s views about bdsm:

Today, BDSM is con­sid­ered a lifestyle choice and is founded, in part, by the fol­low­ing individuals:

Have­lock Ellis, Stud­ies in the Psy­chol­ogy of Sex (1942), agreed with Freud that sadism and masochism were com­pli­men­tary emo­tional states. Ellis was the first psy­cho­an­a­lyst to pub­lish an opin­ion that the pain in SM play was born out of love, instead of cru­elty. He was also the first to real­ize that “true sadists,” those who prac­tice SM play, limit their pain giv­ing only to sex­ual sit­u­a­tions. This con­tra­dicted Freud’s psy­cho­an­a­lytic the­ory that SM play is a part of a person’s per­son­al­ity and was done because of a love of inflict­ing cru­elty and pain on oth­ers. Ellis pur­pose­fully omit the term “per­ver­sion” in his writ­ings that described SM play. Accord­ing to Ellis, SM play is lim­ited, in men­tally healthy indi­vid­u­als, to a pur­suit of plea­sure in pain by sex­ual part­ners dur­ing sex­ual encounters.

In 1969, anthro­pol­o­gist Paul Gebhard’s arti­cle, (detailed above) on fetishism and SM play, defined SM play as a social/cultural phenomenon.

John K. Noyes, Ph.D. in The mas­tery of sub­mis­sion: Inven­tions of masochism (1997) stated that masochism came about in the nine­teenth cen­tury because peo­ple were obsessed with con­trol. He said that masochism as a “con­tin­u­a­tion of social vio­lence” (p.14) which may in-part act to defuse violence:

Noyes also said that this vio­lence in masochism was play only, not real. Noyes’ views of masochism adds and entirely dif­fer­ent view than did Freud. He added a soci­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal dimen­sion. He believed that masochism was a reac­tion to an over con­trolled polit­i­cal and reli­gious author­ity in the nine­teenth cen­tury. He cer­tainly added a new idea to the mix that is try­ing do define S&M play with his belief that it was a reac­tion to social vio­lence in the 1800’s. The impor­tant point, in my opin­ion, is that he saw it as play with no harm.

Bill Thomp­son, Ph.D. a crim­i­nol­o­gist, in his book. Sado­masochism: Painful per­ver­sion or plea­sur­able play?. (1994) New York, states that:

1) con­sen­sual SM play is not done to cause harm or injury to any­one involved, rather “such acts are expe­ri­enced men­tally and phys­i­cally as a form of plea­sur­able arousal-enhancement”

2) he dis­agreed with Krafft-Ebing that sado­masochist is a per­ver­sion and Krafft-Ebing’s opin­ion is based on “a Vic­to­rian stereo­type about male and female sex­ual responses” (p.20).

3) he said that Ellis’ the­ory was closer actual SM play.

4) he felt that Freud’s opin­ions on sadism and masochism were based on “his own pre­oc­cu­pa­tions rather that any­thing said by his clients on the couch or by an SM devo­tee” (p.41).

Thomp­son was very crit­i­cal of the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cal the­ory and cur­rent efforts by Freudian fol­low­ers to hold on to the idea that S&M is a perversion.

**Park Elliot Dietz (1990)

P.E. Dietz is a foren­sic psy­chol­o­gist who con­sis­tently tries to point out the absur­dity of the link between s/m devo­tees and psy­chotic criminals.

Accord­ing to Dietz, the five main dif­fer­ences between psy­chotic sadis­tic ser­ial mur­der­ers and SM devotees:

1. Psy­chotics search for unwill­ing part­ners. S/M devo­tees use a “safe­word” that the sub­mis­sive can say at any time to end the scene, thus the sub­mis­sive retains real con­trol through­out the encounter.

2. Psy­chotics force their acts on the vic­tim rather than aim­ing at pleas­ing the sub­mis­sive (as in s/m). The psy­chotic sadis­tic acts are quite dif­fer­ent from s/m prac­tices, and usu­ally include: forced anal pen­e­tra­tion, forced fel­la­tio, or vio­lent vagina-penetration with var­i­ous for­eign objects –rather than the penis.

3. The sadis­tic offend­ers’ demeanor is dia­met­ri­cally opposed to s/m devo­tees: usu­ally the psy­chotic is detached and unemo­tional through­out the tor­ture, while the s/m dom­i­nant appears to achieve a “high” or plea­sure equiv­a­lent dur­ing the scene.

4. Psy­chotic crim­i­nals tor­ture their vic­tims, inflict­ing seri­ous and per­ma­nent injury, try­ing to arouse ter­ror in their vic­tims. S/M devo­tees skill­fully enhance the sex­ual arousal of their part­ner, fol­low­ing the rules and guide­lines that were estab­lished before the scene, thus cre­at­ing only the illu­sion that the sub­mis­sive is not in control.

5. Psy­chotics usu­ally have a past his­tory of sex­ual crimes such as rape or incest. S/M devo­tees are aver­age peo­ple who typ­i­cally don’t have crim­i­nal pasts

**William A. Henkin, PhD.; Novem­ber 1992 let­ter to the com­mit­tee that advo­cated changes to the entries on sex­ual sadism and masochism in the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Association’s Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual of Men­tal Disorders.

“In con­clu­sion: con­sen­sual sado­masochism offers its adher­ents an oppor­tu­nity to explore para­philic urges and fan­tasies, not in a dan­ger­ous or debil­i­tat­ing fash­ion, but in a safe and sup­port­ive man­ner, where those urges and fan­tasies can be plea­sur­ably sat­is­fied, and where their val­ues in a person’s psy­chic life can be revealed.

“Within the past decade promi­nent clin­i­cians and schol­ars in the fields of psy­cho­analy­sis, clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy, and clin­i­cal sex­ol­ogy, eschew­ing the received wis­dom of past mas­ters who south to fit clin­i­cal obser­va­tions to their the­o­ries, rather than the other way around, have instead made seri­ous attempts to under­stand the activ­i­ties of con­sen­sual sado­masochism as well as the dynamic processes that under­lie them, and to devise the­o­ries that fit the evi­dence they found in the lab, in the con­sult­ing room, and in the field. They have pro­posed that con­sen­sual erotic power play is not a psy­chi­atric dis­or­der: that instead, it can sim­ply be a form of sex­ual plea­sure, and that as a path of psy­cho­log­i­cal and spir­i­tual devel­op­ment it can even be the evi­dence and expe­ri­ence of tri­umph over child­hood adversity.

“Absent dis­tress, harm, or func­tional impair­ment, to define such activ­ity as a men­tal dis­or­der is to place chains on the human spirit, and to pro­duce a chill­ing effect on the very processes we as psy­chother­a­pists are trained and charged to abet: the heal­ing and lib­er­a­tion of dam­aged and impris­oned per­son­al­i­ties, and their inte­gra­tion in the full cre­ative expres­sion of human beings.”

Wein­berg (1987/1995) said that S&M play is a sub­cul­ture and is framed in terms of fan­tasy. He also does not believe that it is a perversion.

Gos­selin and Wil­son (1980/1994), said that those involved in S&M play were men­tally healthy and happy with their sex­ual pref­er­ences and lifestyle.

** Copied from the web­site Sex­ual Free­dom Now — http://members.aol.com/NOWSM/Psychiatrists.html

Con­clu­sion: (The answer to the ques­tion — Is BDSM wrong and can I feel good about myself if I love it?)

This world is chang­ing for us. Based upon Henkin’s and Dietz’s analy­sis of BDSM, along with many oth­ers in the field, you have no rea­son not to feel good about your­self and your BDSM desires. Many of the fields of study in Psy­chol­ogy have come to the con­clu­sion that mem­bers of the BDSM Lifestyle have long known, BDSM is not abuse.

Below is a very good start in under­stand BDSM and your­self. In a arti­cle by Baumeister’s of which excerpts are shown below, the words BDSM can be sub­sti­tuted for masochism.

DR. ROY F. BAUMEISTER, psy­chol­o­gist from Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­sity, stated in an arti­cle “Masochism: An Alter­na­tive Inti­macy” The Spec­ta­tor (Vol. 22, No. 14 June 30-July 6, 1989).

Is masochism a form of love or of hate? There has been a lot of debate on this, but both sides are wrong. Masochism has noth­ing to do with hate. And it is not quite a form of love, although it offers an alter­na­tive form of intimacy.

Masochism doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily involve love. It is pos­si­ble to engage in S&M with some­one you’re not in love with. Nor does masochism make love redun­dant: Peo­ple seem to pre­fer to do it with peo­ple they love.

What’s clear, though, is that masochism pro­duces an intense bond of inti­macy between two peo­ple, even if it’s only tem­po­rary. The masochist sub­merges his or her will, per­son­al­ity, even iden­tity, in the dom­i­nant part­ner. The impor­tance of inti­macy can be seen in sex­ual fan­tasies to involve long-term rela­tion­ships, sta­ble part­ners and inti­mates or lovers. (This con­clu­sion is based on sta­tis­ti­cal com­par­i­son of masochis­tic ver­sus other sex­ual fan­tasies.) Masochists are heav­ily relationship-oriented.

Masochism is thus not the same as love, but it offers an emo­tional and pas­sion­ate feel­ing of close­ness that is sim­i­lar. I think the best way to view masochism is as an alter­na­tive inti­macy. Masochism can be enjoyed with­out love, because inti­macy is usu­ally reward­ing. Or it can be employed within a love rela­tion­ship, to add a new dimen­sion of relat­ing to your loved one.

Although the experts are just begin­ning to form this new way of under­stand­ing masochism, don’t expect soci­ety to change quickly.

If you are a masochist, or if some­one close to you is, the main thing is not to worry that there’s some­thing wrong with you. There are prob­a­bly a cou­ple mil­lion other Amer­i­cans with the same desires, and the vast major­ity of them are healthy and well adjusted. But don’t expect soci­ety at large to make it easy for you. It will take a small mir­a­cle for soci­ety to revise its prej­u­dices, and mir­a­cles take time.

Ref­er­ences:

Gos­selin, C., & Wil­son, G. (1994). Sex­ual vari­a­tions: Fetishism, trans­vestism and sado-masochism [excerpt of a study in their book]. In B. Thomp­son, Ph.D. (Ed.), Sado­masochism: Painful per­ver­sion or plea­sur­able play? (pp. 100–103). New York: Cas­sell. (Orig­i­nal work pub­lished 1980)

Moser, C., Ph.D., M.D., & Levitt, E. E., Ph.D. (1995). An exploratory-descriptive study of a saso­masochis­ti­cally ori­ented sam­ple. In T. S. Wein­berg, Ph.D. (Ed.), S & m: Stud­ies in dom­i­nance and sub­mis­sion (pp. 93–112). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (Orig­i­nal work pub­lished 1987)

Moser, C., Ph.D., M.D., & Made­son, J. (1996/1999). Bound to be free: The sm expe­ri­ence. (rev. ed.) New York: Con­tin­uum Publishing.

Nay­lor, B. A. (1986). Sado­masochism in chil­dren and ado­les­cents: A con­tem­po­rary treat­ment approach. Psy­chother­apy, 23(4), 586–592.

Noyes, J. K., Ph.D. (1997). The mas­tery of sub­mis­sion: Inven­tions of masochism. Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press.

Roth­stein, A., M.D. (1991). Sado­masochism in the neu­roses con­ceived of as a patho­log­i­cal com­pro­mise for­ma­tion. Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­an­a­lytic Asso­ci­a­tion, 39(2), 363–375.

Thomp­son, B., Ph.D. (1994). Sado­masochism: Painful per­ver­sion or plea­sur­able play?. New York: Cassell.

von Krafft-Ebing, R. (1995). Psy­chopathia Sex­u­alis. In T. S. Wein­berg, Ph.D. (Ed.), S & m: Stud­ies in dom­i­nance and sub­mis­sion (pp. 25–31). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (Orig­i­nal work pub­lished 1886)

von Sacher-Masoch, L. (1989). Venus in Furs (U. Moeller & L. Lind­gren Trans.). New York: Blast Books. (Orig­i­nal work pub­lished 1870)

Wein­berg, M. S., Ph.D., Williams, C. J., Ph.D., & Moser, C., Ph.D., M.D. (1996/1999). The social con­stituents of sado­masochism [sum­mary of study]. In C. Moser, Ph.D., M.D. & J. Made­son (Eds.), Bound to be free: The sm expe­ri­ence (pp. 30–32). New York: Con­tin­uum Pub­lish­ing. (Orig­i­nal work pub­lished 1984)

Wein­berg, T. S., Ph.D. (1995). Sadism and masochism: Soci­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives. In T. S. Wein­berg, Ph.D. (Ed.), S & m: Stud­ies in dom­i­nance and sub­mis­sion (pp. 119–137). Amherst, NY: Prometheus. (Orig­i­nal work pub­lished 1978)

Wein­berg, T. S., Ph.D. (1995). Soci­o­log­i­cal and social psy­cho­log­i­cal issues in the study of sado­masochism. In T. S. Wein­berg, Ph.D. (Ed.), S & m: Stud­ies in dom­i­nance and sub­mis­sion (pp. 289–303). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (Orig­i­nal work pub­lished 1994)

Wein­berg, T. S., Ph.D. (Ed.) (1995). S & m stud­ies in dom­i­nance and sub­mis­sion. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Wein­berg, T. S., Ph.D., & Mag­ill, M. S., Ph.D. (1995). Sado­masochis­tic themes in main­stream cul­ture. In T. S. Wein­berg, Ph.D. (Ed.), S & m: Stud­ies in dominance

[/wpspoiler]

Pages: 1 2