It's amazing that sadism doesn't count as a disease
Sexual sadism is associated with both partners receiving pleasure from pain. Sadistic personality disorder is far from captivating sex play.
A person with sadistic personality disorder takes pleasure in the suffering of others. The sadistic killer mocks and kills for his own pleasure.
Sadistic traits are inherent not only in sadistic criminals, but also in people who seem completely normal and ordinary to us.
The sadist derives pleasure not only from causing physical pain, but also from verbal aggression and infliction of mental suffering. He enjoys scolding and humiliating others, demonstrating his influence on a daily basis both in family matters and at work.
Sadistic tendencies can be, for example, in an American police officer using excessive force, or an administration official nagging a client. A sadist can take pleasure in publicly shaming and humiliating his subordinates. For self-satisfaction, a sadist can intimidate a child with hellfire and divine revenge, so that he finds himself in the power of fear.
It is troubling that sadists take advantage of more than just spontaneous opportunities to humiliate another or be violent. They are willing to work hard to create situations in which their sadistic needs can be satisfied. This is most pronounced in the behavior of sadistic serial killers, who can go to great lengths or spend a lot of money and time to hurt their victims.
The violence shown by the sadist is worse and worse than ordinary violence, since the sadist causes suffering only for the sake of pleasure, without any other purpose.
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A violent person may, for example, beat another person to steal money from him or get revenge for an insult. The sadist strikes only in order to look at the suffering of the other and at how he humiliates himself in front of him, a stronger person.
In addition, it is often impossible to predict when the sadist will finish bullying. In a normal robbery, the attack is stopped when the villain reaches his target and the victim's wallet or bottle of wine ends up in his pocket. The sadist, in turn, enjoys continuing his actions. He will only stop if he feels that he has had enough pleasure or that he is tired - or if the victim has died.
"Killing Machine" will reveal the character of a person
What attracts a sadist to murder? The process of killing people cannot be studied in a laboratory, so you need to be creative in the research process. In a sadism study conducted by Canadians Erin Buckels and Delroy Paulhus and American Daniel Jones, participants in one of the experiments killed insects. The study was published in Psychological Science in 2013.
The group of people who participated in the experiment was interesting in terms of identifying sadistic inclinations. There were 71 people in the group, and all of the study participants were psychology students who had to take part in scientific research during their studies.
Participants in the study were initially tested for sadism, which contained statements such as "I care about the idea of hurting other people." In addition, they took part in tests to determine the nature of the personality, the level of empathy and various feelings, as well as in a survey that reveals a predisposition to insectophobia.
Then the participants had to choose one of four unpleasant tasks. I had to choose between the roles of an insect killer, a research assistant who kills insects, cleaning dirty toilets, and working in the cold (you had to endure the pain caused by icy water).
It was planned that the most terrible task will be the killing of live beetles.
A "killing machine" was created specifically for the mission - a converted coffee grinder that made a crunch. To “humanize” the beetles were given touching names: Tutsi, Ike and Muffin.
More victims - more joy
Students chose different tasks. 13% preferred to endure pain from ice water, 34% - to wash toilets, 27% - to help the researcher, 27% agreed to kill beetles on their own. Women and men were equally represented in the tasks.
After the experiment began, those who preferred to commit murder had to decide who they would kill first - Muffin, Ike or Tootsie, then put the beetle in a cup, tip the cup into the "killing machine", close the lid and turn on the "killing machine."
Those who decided to become an assistant to a researcher who kills beetles only had to hold out a cup with a beetle to the person who portrayed a researcher who killed beetles.
A control group was formed from participants in the experiment who chose to wash toilets or work in ice water. They were sent to another location and told that the assignment had been canceled.
After the experiment, the feelings of the people during the experiment were recorded in order to reveal the pleasure of sadistic actions.
Prior to the experiment, the researchers assumed that sadists would choose the beetle-killing mission more readily than other participants. The assumption came true. People with the highest scores on sadism tests chose the insect-killing task more often.
After the experiment, sadists who killed insects on their own experienced more pleasure than those sadists who acted as helpers. People who are not sadists did not get the satisfaction of killing beetles.
The strongest evidence for sadistic personality disorder was the relationship between the number of killed insects and the feeling of pleasure experienced. The more insects died, the better the sadist felt.
People without a penchant for sadism were ready to work in icy water, just not to hurt a living being. They felt empathy, even though it was just an insect. Sadists had no empathy, nor did they sympathize with beetles.
This beetle-killing experiment seems unethical and could put researchers in a bad light. However, the "killing machine" was designed in such a way that the "grinder" did not actually reach the insects. Thus, not a single beetle was injured during the experiment.
The sadist is willing to make the effort
Often, a person with a personality disorder needs an impulse to become violent. Only sadists behave aggressively for no specific reason, and they are willing to sacrifice their time to commit violence. Bakels and colleagues tested this aspect of sadism in another part of the study.
This time the students played a computer game in which they had to press a button faster than the opponent sitting in the next room. After the game, the winner could decide how much to punish the loser with a special beep. The volume scale from zero, that is, silence, reached one hundred, that is, the volume of 90 decibels. The winner could also decide how long the sound would last - from zero to five seconds.
The research assistant played against the participants in the experiment, who always chose zero volume, that is, refused the beep as a punishment. The purpose of this action was to prevent the participant from wanting to punish his opponent out of revenge.
The subjects were divided into two groups, in one of which it was possible to punish the opponent immediately, and in the second - only after a long and unpleasant task. If the winner from the second group decided to punish the loser, he first had to count the letters in the text with meaningless words. If desired, the subject could also stop performing an unpleasant task and not punish the opponent. The unpleasant task did not stop the sadists.
The desire to punish another person without much effort was associated with various personality traits: a tendency to sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, and an inability to empathize. Thus, all these properties are encouraged to bring pain to the innocent, if the opportunity arises.
Sadists are the only ones willing to go through hardships in order to hurt an innocent victim. In addition, only sadists increased the punishment, that is, they increased the volume and duration of the beep, noticing that the opponent did not want to take revenge and did not punish in turn.
Based on this data, the researchers concluded that sadists are united by a passion for causing suffering and motivation to satisfy their passion.
The satisfaction gained from killing insects may not mean that a person will also like the feeling of hurting people. However, the study showed that those who were ready to kill the beetles in the next experiment punished the opponent with the longest and loudest beep. One might wonder if additional experimentation might reveal a desire to kill people.
Sadism is not a disease?
Sadistic personality disorder is not included in international classifications of diseases, because in the 1980s they wanted to ban its existence as a separate disease.
Isn't sadism a mental illness? Why wasn't it included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM)?
The doctor conducts an MRI scan in a laboratory in Switzerland.
In most cases, the disorder was reported to overlap with other psychiatric diagnoses. Sadism often manifests itself in people who have other mental disorders.
The overlap with other diagnoses was also reported by American psychiatrist Wade Myers and colleagues when he published the first study in 2006 on sadistic personality disorder in youth. 94% of young sadists had at least one other severe mental disorder. The number of mental disorders varied from one to ten, with less significant diagnoses being about the same.
The lack of sadism in the classification of diseases due to the difficulties in identifying and overlapping with other diseases seems strange, because the characteristics of many classified mental disorders often overlap. Sadism and psychopathy often go hand in hand.
When the issue of introducing sadism into the classification of diseases was discussed at the US Psychiatrist Convention in 1989, clinics and researchers said that they noticed signs of sadism in many of the criminals with whom they had to work. On this basis, they opposed sadistic personality disorder being classified as a disease. There were too many sadists to be diagnosed.
The problem has also been influenced by the small number of studies and treatment success stories. Sadists rarely seek treatment because the disorder is an obscene disease. In addition, the problem, according to the sadist, is not in himself, but in the victim.
As a bargaining chip, experts who deny sadism have put forward the same ace that they used to challenge the biological basis of psychopathy. They argued that if sadism was defined as a disease, then it could be used as a factor to mitigate the sentence of criminals.
An unusual statement. Myers and colleagues emphasize that having a personality disorder explains crimes, but in no way justifies them.
Ultimately, the reasons why sadistic personality disorder was not included in the classification of diseases is illogical. This decision had unfortunate consequences as it diminished the relevance of sadistic research as well as the study of healing methods.
They tried to include the disorder in the updated version of the classification, but even then they failed. However, in the latest version of the classification, sexual sadism is already present.
The fact that psychologists and psychiatrists decided to hide their heads in the sand did not rid the world of the most cruel forms of manifestation of evil and the need to study them. Later, the research was resumed. While exploring the darkest sides of personality, the study of sadism also experienced a renaissance.
The development of the disorder is still being studied
At the very core of sadism lies a distorted emotional life, as Erin Bakels noted. Most people feel bad about hurting innocent people, but sadists associate suffering with joy, pleasure, and excitement.
Why this happens and whether such a wrong connection is innate is still unknown.
Sadism can creep into the head in a very insidious way, as the theory of two-way suppression states. It was developed by psychologist Richard Solomon, one of those rare researchers who studied sadism in the 1980s.
According to the theory of bilateral pressure, in every situation where there is an opportunity to experience opposite emotions, the first feeling is followed by the opposite feeling. In the case of sadism, joy comes after experiencing a negative emotion.
A normal person experiences negative emotions when he hurts another person, the resulting stress manifests itself in the physical plane. Surprisingly, these emotions can later appear positive. The feeling of relief after experiencing an unpleasant situation is, of course, perceived as something good.
This experience may initially be minor, but gradually the feeling may grow stronger. Over time, dislike of violence is replaced by a positive attitude, and in the end it even becomes a welcome emotional reaction, as a person begins to wait for the euphoria that relief brings. According to Solomon's theory of bilateral pressure, the emotional response gradually rebuilds in a completely different direction.
Signs of sadism usually begin to manifest themselves as adults, but signs of sadistic personality disorder are sometimes recorded in young people. In families of people with sadism, factors were found that indicated a bad atmosphere during the upbringing period and developmental problems.
Relatives of sadists usually have mental problems. Sadists themselves are more likely to undergo psychiatric treatment than people without a tendency to sadism. To some extent, sadistic personality disorder either develops with or as a consequence of other mental problems.
Despite the resumption of research, there is still very little scientific evidence about the development of sadism. More is known about the influence of sadism.
American psychologist Michael Stone studies the manifestation of human evil. In the book The Anatomy of Evil, which Stone presented in 2009, the psychologist ranked the most violent acts on the "scale of evil."
There is a clear and deadly serious answer to the comic question of who is at the very top of evil. Stone considers the worst psychopathic killers, whose primary purpose is torture, inflicting hellish and long pain.
Secret Kuuskorpi (Taina Kuuskorpi) - Doctor of Psychology, author of scientific publications