Transcript 3730L9.html.ppt

Epidemiology
- difficult to estimate frequency in the general
population
- One study that reviewed available data on the
subject estimated that between 5-10% of the
population engaged in some masochistic sex
play (blindfolding, binding)
- Up to a third of the general population are
thought to enjoy masochistic fantasies
- fewer than 1% of people probably engage in
masochistic sexual behaviour on a regular basis
- More males than females engage in masochistic
sexual activities
- Positively correlated with socioeconomic
status
-membership in S & M clubs tends to involve
upper-middle class, well educated individuals
- Prostitutes who cater to upper class clients get
more requests for sexual domination than do
those that cater to the lower class
- Sexual masochism also seems to be more
popular among white people than black people
- Sexual Masochism is distributed quite
differentially historically and cross-culturally
- it appears to be absent prior to 1500, but
widespread by the 1700’s in Europe and the U.S.
- Overwhelmingly, Western phenonmenon
- Reasonable to expect that the frequency with
which the behaviour occurs will increase in
non-Western cultures with rise in socioeconomic
status
- Sexual Masochism appears to be far more
common than sexual sadism
- Several studies have found fantasies involving
sexual masochism outnumbered those involving
sexual sadism by a margin of 4:1
- The majority of individuals who enjoy the
sadistic role in such activity start out as
masochists themselves and then switch roles
after a period of time
-The two phenomenon are related, but not
directly comparable
What Masochists Want & Do
- Pain, loss of control, humiliation
- Some masochists do not employ pain in their
sexual activities, however, over half do
- The means by which pain is administered does
not vary greatly; spanking (hand vs. paddle/cane/
whip)
- Only a small minority employ other techniques
such as dripping hot wax onto bare skin, piercing
the skin with needles/knives, rubbing the skin with
ice or pinching the skin with clamps
Features of Masochistic Pain
(1) masochists appear to desire their pain to be
kept within well defined limits
(2) the pain does appear to be unpleasant, but
not unbearable
- Sexual arousal may make the pain more
bearable and may be associated with the nudity
and skin contact that characterizes these
activities
(3) Pain is divorced from its biological function
of warning of injury
(4) Desire for pain seems to be restricted to
sexual activity
- Loss of control is an even more pervasive
feature of sexual masochism then pain
- bondage
- submitting to the rules and commands of
another
-rules are often arbitrary (and sometimes
unattainable) and merely form a pretext for
punishing the individual that breaks them
- Important to note that the loss of control
that is acted out in sadomasochistic role playing
is illusory and performed at the request of the
masochist
-Masochists work out elaborate scripts pertaining
to what they want to happen and this,
paradoxically, reduces the sadistic partner to
a role player
- Dominant partners who do not stay within
the bounds of the script are not seen as
desirable partners
- Sexual masochists often use prearranged “safe
words” to indicate how much pain they should
receive
-The degree of control exerted by the masochist
is often a means to ensure that he will be able
to experience the precise degree of apparent
loss of control that is most arousing to him
- Some masochists seem to favour sex play in
which they are humiliated
- Some like to be symbolically converted into
an animal, an infant, a slave
- other acts of include verbal insults, kneeling
to kiss the partner’s feet, being put on display
while naked
- performing sex acts that were previously off
limits
- being urinated or defecated on
Theories of Masochism
- research shows that individuals do not engage
in sexually masochistic behaviour out of some
feelings of guilt
- Research shows that guilt does motivate a
variety of responses to alleviate guilt, but
punishment is not one of them
- Research has shown that sexual masochist
do not suffer from any great deal of inner
guilt than indivduals in the population at
large