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Into pain
Published in Stephen Buetow, Rethinking Pain in Person-Centred Health Care, 2020
Associating pleasure with pain, benign masochism characterizes a choice for safe and voluntary movement into pain. In this movement, persons who seek health care for unwanted pain may discover value that is just as or more salient than the pain itself.38 The value may result from repeated exposure to pain (opponent–process theory)39 or be evident when persons push themselves to their limits of endurability (penumbral theory of masochistic pleasure).40 Teasing their tolerance of what is unbearable, they experience freedom in heroically stepping past fear. They use pain to liberate and motivate activity to cultivate virtues like courage,5 alleviate suffering, or enhance pain-moderating pleasure.
History of Asphyxia-related Deaths
Published in Burkhard Madea, Asphyxiation, Suffocation,and Neck Pressure Deaths, 2020
The individuals involved are usually men, originating from all age groups and professional backgrounds, but usually beyond adolescence and middle age. The phenomenon is almost unknown in women. Autoerotic deaths represent fatal accidents (‘operating accidents’) as a direct consequence of autoerotic activities of single individuals being used for sexual stimulation and masturbation without a sexual partner. In these circumstances, sexual stimulation is provoked and increased by central nervous system stimulation because of a depression of cortical controlling functions (e.g. lack of oxygen, narcotics) or peripheral stimuli, especially to the erogenous zones (e.g. mechanically or by electricity). The sexually stimulating effects of hypoxia in connection with strangulation and of the use of plastic bags for oro-nasal occlusion have been discussed thoroughly, but the actual mechanism has not yet been clarified. Sometimes, the individuals concerned also aim to achieve a situation of personal fear and pain (masochism). Essentially, erotic fantasies are deliberately induced by partial cerebral ischaemia, mostly achieved by some form of hypoxia or pressure on the neck.
Psychiatric Disorders
Published in Walter F. Stanaszek, Mary J. Stanaszek, Robert J. Holt, Steven Strauss, Understanding Medical Terms, 2020
Walter F. Stanaszek, Mary J. Stanaszek, Robert J. Holt, Steven Strauss
Sexual disorders include dysfunctions ana the general term paraphilias(para meaning "abnormal," philia meaning "attraction to/love"), which involves disorders such as pedophilia, fetishism, and masochism.
Sex Addictions Faced With the Paradigm of Perversions
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2023
In 1914, Freud highlighted the narcissistic dimension underlying perversion. The focus was on sadism, which Freud (1915) considered as preceding masochism. It can be carried out through the drive to control and dominate. In the end, masochism is none other than sadism turned around on oneself. A few years later, in the introduction to his new theory of the drives in A Child Is Being Beaten (1919), Freud would reformulate his ideas: Masochism now takes precedence over sadism. Using the beating fantasy, which is frequently found in psychoanalytic treatment, Freud hypothesizes that it is part of the psychic dynamics of all individuals and appears at the end of the infantile period. The sadomasochistic dialectic is the first line of thought for approaching the concept of perversion in Freud’s work.
A Systematic Scoping Review of the Prevalence, Etiological, Psychological, and Interpersonal Factors Associated with BDSM
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, 2020
Ashley Brown, Edward D. Barker, Qazi Rahman
Because BDSM was historically thought of as being caused by mental illness, pathology, or complications occurring in childhood, it has been associated with paraphilic disorders. This view still partially exists, with sexual sadism, sexual masochism, and fetishistic disorder being listed in both the DSM-5 and ICD-10 (but the ICD -11 has since removed sexual masochism). Many sex researchers contest the inclusion of some of these in diagnostic manuals because they stigmatize BDSM practitioners as well as medicalize what may be relatively benign and even common sexual interests (Moser, 2018, 2016; Seto, Kingston, & Bourget, 2014; Shindel & Moser, 2011; Wright, 2006). Having BDSM sexual interests alone no longer meet the criteria of a paraphilic disorder. In order to meet the diagnostic criteria for sexual masochism or sexual sadism disorder, an individual must have experienced clinically significant distress or impairment due to their sexual desires or must have acted on these sexual urges with a nonconsenting person (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). However, these criteria are vague, and the level or cause of distress has received little clarification.
Physical Pain as Pleasure: A Theoretical Perspective
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, 2020
Cara R. Dunkley, Craig D. Henshaw, Saira K. Henshaw, Lori A. Brotto
In recent years, BDSM—an overlapping acronym referring to the practices of Bondage and Discipline (BD), Dominance and Submission (DS), and Sadism and Masochism (SM)—has garnered an increasing amount of attention from researchers and laypeople alike. Bondage and discipline involves using psychological and/or physical restraints. Dominance and submission involves the exchange of power and control. Sadism and masochism, or sadomasochism, involves taking pleasure in one’s own or another’s pain or humiliation (Hébert & Weaver, 2014). Pain represents a characteristic commonly involved in a sadomasochistic scene (Moser & Kleinplatz, 2007). In a broad sense, sadism and masochism refer to the giving and receiving of physical or psychological pain or sensation for erotic pleasure. As BDSM may or may not involve power exchange, the current article generally uses the terms Top to denote the giver of noxious stimulation and Bottom (or masochist, depending on the research being discussed) as the receiver of stimulation. This article focuses on physical masochism, which can be defined as the consensual receiving and enjoyment of physical sensations that would characteristically be classified as painful. Pain represents an emotional sensory experience that is influenced by psychological, contextual, and social factors. The purpose of this article is to review the extant literature on the processing of pain versus pleasure in relation to BDSM from a basic scientific perspective in hopes of considering how a painful stimulus might be experienced as pleasure by someone practicing BDSM, but experienced as suffering by someone who does not engage in BDSM play. Figure 1 depicts the interplay of factors that contribute to the processing of pain as pleasure. Table 1 summarizes the findings and themes of the literature reviewed.