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Sexual Masochism: Torture and Transcendence Tied Together?
The enduring puzzle of sexual masochism.
Posted October 17, 2016 Reviewed by Devon Frye
Why would anyone experience pain and humiliation as sexually arousing? The puzzle of sexual masochism has bedeviled psychology for some time now. That a person would derive sexual pleasure from the pain, humiliation, and loss of control associated with the practice is a mystery, as these run counter to the most fundamental functions of the self—namely, to avoid pain, maintain self-esteem, and seek control.
Unlike other non-mainstream sexual practices (such as anal sex, prostitution, bestiality, group sex, etc.) masochism is largely absent from historical texts, depictions, and testimonials of sexuality prior to the 18th century. What’s more, the practice appears to be a Western cultural artifact, emerging—along with modern conceptions of the self—around the time of the enlightenment.
Even today, sexual masochism appears to be unevenly distributed around the world. By available evidence, it is most common in the affluent West. Like other unconventional sexual interests, masochism is more prevalent in men, although masochistic fantasies appear to be more prevalent in women.
The term “masochism” was coined in the late 1800s by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the father of modern sexology, to describe a specific type of sexual pathology (Krafft-Ebing considered any non-reproductive sex to be pathological) in which erotic pleasure is obtained from being hurt, restrained, or humiliated. The term was a reference to the writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose book Venus in Furs had a protagonist bent on being enslaved and tortured by an attractive woman.
By the turn of the 20th century, the ascendant Freudian approach sought to explain masochism as a sexual perversion related to the Oedipal drama. These explanations were, in their own way, rather tortured. For example, the late psychoanalyst Rudolph Loewenstein wrote: "The essential mechanism underlying the masochistic perversion is that, by inducing the sexual partner to enact a scene of castration threat or punishment, the masochist forces the prohibiting, threatening parent to…undo…the castration threat through its simulated repetition while actually participating in the veiled incestuous gratification."
Later, as his thinking evolved, Freud proposed the concept of “moral masochism,” in which the practice was recast as the unconscious desire for punishment borne of guilt. Thus viewed, masochism was no longer tethered to sexuality. As the psychoanalyst Bernhard Berliner wrote, “Moral, rather than sexual, masochism…represents a definite frequent character structure... It is a disturbance of interpersonal relationships in which the masochist loves a person who gives hate and ill-treatment. It is not a liking for pain but a loving of the object giving pain, and it is devoid of sexuality.”
In the latter part of the 20th century, the broad definition of masochism has found a strong foothold in popular culture and in psychology. The label has been applied to various nonsexual behaviors that result in personal degradation or ruin. For example, gamblers and other addicts were now said to be masochists, returning to receive their punishments again and again.
This broad conceptualization, however, is problematic. As the psychologist Roy Baumeister had noted, the nonsexual behaviors often characterized as "masochistic" differ qualitatively from sexual masochism in that they tend to be self destructive and self defeating.
Sexual masochism, on the other hand, is neither destructive nor self defeating. Sexual masochists neither seek nor regularly experience injury. Sexual masochists take great care to protect themselves from actual harm while engaging in carefully negotiated rituals of humiliation and the infliction of pain. Sexual masochism is highly contextualized. Masochists are no more likely than you to enjoy a stubbed toe. Research suggests that sexual masochists do not differ from others in their perception of pain, except in the sexual context.
Masochism is rarely enacted with strangers. Most often, masochists engage in a well-communicated, trusting, and safe ritual. In other words, sexual masochism is not about destruction, but about construction; it is not about hating, but about relating.
Data suggest that sexual masochists as a group are generally normative in all other aspects of their lives and psychologically healthy. At the same time, we know that the sex lives of ordinary folks are threaded with masochistic themes. In a recent survey of over 1,500 Canadian adults, more than one-third of women and more than one-quarter of men reported having fantasized about being spanked or whipped.
The most recent edition of the DSM, psychology’s diagnostic bible, has responded to these new data by removing masochism from its list of mental disorders. The DSM-V distinguishes between paraphilias and paraphilic disorders. Paraphilias are defined as atypical sexual practices. Paraphilic disorders are behavior patterns that include distress, impairment in functioning, or involve risk of harm to one’s self or others.
Specifically according to the DSM-V, Sexual Masochism Disorder pertains only to individuals who “report psychosocial difficulties because of their sexual attractions or preferences for being humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer... In contrast, if they declare no distress, exemplified by anxiety, obsessions, guilt, or shame about these paraphilic impulses and are not hampered by them in pursuing other personal goals, they could be ascertained as having masochistic sexual interest but not be diagnosed with sexual masochism disorder."
Even as our culture has moved away from fearing and stigmatizing sexual masochism, scientific curiosity regarding its causes has not abated. Over time, the traditional Freudian formulations focusing on the internal dynamics of guilt have been augmented by various other theories.
For example, learning theorists have argued that masochism may be a learned behavior. First, pain is often followed by relief. Relief is reinforcing, and hence likely to increase the behavior it followed (i.e. pain infliction). Second, much of our behavior is acquired through association. Whatever is present at the time of arousal may become associated with arousal and hence a later cue for it. If a child happens to have an erection while being spanked by a parent, then perhaps an association is created between pain, humiliation, and sexual excitement.
Third, any behavior that runs counter to our day-to-day habits will be novel, and, as such, arousing. If you spend your days being powerful and in control, the feeling of powerlessness and the loss of control will be novel, and hence likely to produce arousal, which can be channeled toward sexual pleasure.
The social psychologist Roy Baumeister of Florida State University has proposed that masochism’s defining and perplexing characteristics—that it goes against the fundamental inclinations of the self—in fact reveal its ultimate purpose: to achieve a release from self awareness.
According to Baumeister, modern life is hard, and many people fail to meet their own self expectations. To be self-aware is to be in the knowledge of our shortcomings. To be self-aware is also stressful, as we are supposed to maintain self control, self poise, self purpose, self care, self presentation, self esteem and self efficacy. It’s exhausting. Just as we need periodic breaks from the stress of work in the form of exotic vacations, so too we need periodic breaks from the burden of the self. Masochism, in its rituals of self oblivion, offers a period of relief from these burdens, stresses, and weighty responsibilities.
In addition, Baumeister contends that masochism is a response to the need for meaning, in that it offers “an ideal of fulfillment and a means to achieving it.” According to Baumeister, as people in the 18th century began turning away from Christianity, they lost the justifications (word of God) and path to fulfillment (afterlife) that anchored their life schemes.
Masochism, in this environment, offered a new justification and a new means of fulfillment. In masochism, the relation to the dominant partner (who, like a God, has total control) supplies justification, while providing the fulfillment of emotional closeness to the partner. Moreover, the goal of retaining self dignity and power is replaced by its opposite, and success in self oblivion (becoming a good slave) leads, paradoxically, to fulfillment and a sense of worth.
Clearly, pushing oneself to the edge of endurance is a common theme in the human quest for meaning and fulfillment. Mountain climbers, explorers, religious ascetics, ultra marathoners, etc. all find meaning and satisfaction in testing the boundaries of their ability to endure suffering. Perhaps masochism, at least in some of its forms, amounts to another version of this human attempt to overcome fears by facing them. Endeavoring to own fear, pain and humiliation—to fully immerse oneself in these experiences—may serve to neutralize their ability to harm.
Paul Rozin of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues have recently proposed the term “benign masochism” to account for the diverse manifestations of negativity-turned-positive. Benign masochism, in Rozin’s view, “exemplifies a type of hedonic reversal, the conversion of a (usually) innate negative experience into a positive experience… Benign masochism refers to enjoying initially negative experiences that the body (brain) falsely interprets as threatening. This realization that the body has been fooled, and that there is no real danger, leads to pleasure derived from “mind over body.”
People who enjoy horror movies may exemplify this type of benign masochism.
Indeed recent research has suggested that masochism may be sought because it can produce the experience of "flow"—an altered state of consciousness associated with a heightened sense of well-being.
Flow states emerge when one’s abilities are challenged at a level that is neither too easy (as to be boring) nor too difficult (as to be overwhelming). Under those conditions of ‘just right’ challenge, people often enter a state of fully concentrated here-and-now presence that is deeply satisfying. Being fully immersed in the experience of pain without fear or panic could create this kind of flow experience.
In sum, the phenomenon of sexual masochism is not yet fully understood. Still, its seemingly paradoxical nature reveals something about the dynamics of the psyche, while its transformation, in the span of 100 years, from pathological sexual perversion to something more akin to a spiritual quest says something fascinating about the dynamics of culture.
