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A previous study found a variety of unusual sexual interests to cluster in a five-factor structure, namely submission/masochism, forbidden sexual activities, dominance/sadism, mysophilia, and fetishism (Schippers et al., 2021). The current study was an empirical replication to examine whether these findings generalized to a representative population sample. An online, anonymous sample (N = 256) representative of the Dutch adult male population rated 32 unusual sexual interests on a scale from 1 (very unappealing) to 7 (very appealing). An exploratory factor analysis assessed whether similar factors would emerge as in the original study. A subsequent confirmatory factor analysis served to confirm the factor structure. Four slightly different factors of sexual interest were found: extreme, illegal and mysophilic sexual activities; light BDSM without real pain or suffering; heavy BDSM that may include pain or suffering; and illegal but lower-sentenced and fetishistic sexual activities. The model fit was acceptable. The representative replication sample was more sexually conservative and showed less sexual engagement than the original convenience sample. On a fundamental level, sexual interest in light BDSM activities and extreme, forbidden, and mysophilic activities seem to be relatively separate constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the use of some psychoactive substances continues to be a global health risk, it is important to understand why people use them. We compared the predictive power of psychopathy and masochism with regard to lifetime recreational drug use and tested the underlying motives in a sample of 415 US-based adults. Psychopathy predicted use of illicit drugs, cannabis, and nicotine, while masochism predicted cannabis, alcohol, and caffeine use. Both traits were related to most motives, but the motives differentially predicted substance use. Expansion motivation was the sole motive for illicit drug use, whereas cannabis was predicted mainly by expansion and enhancement. Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine were used to escape daily worries, and alcohol was further used for social reasons. Benign masochism is a newly identified predictor of popular drug use. Future research could investigate masochism and expansion motivation as predictors of potentially harmful substance use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on queer psychoanalysis to explore links between homoerotic masculinity and heterosexual women under patriarchal manhood. I argue specifically that the genderqueer effects of male masochism—as conceptualized by Carol J. Clover—helps us to understand Sherwood Anderson's exploration of a male protagonist who identifies with women's pain so profoundly that he himself transforms into a woman who then experiences what it means to be subjected to male violence and sexual predation from that position. Anderson feels ambivalent about the extent to which this form of genderqueer masculinity is sustainable. It is a position that must be purged for the protagonist to survive, but it is also an experience that stays with him. The analysis then broadens to address the larger implications of the close reading, specifically what it means for a cisgender, heterosexual male author to depict men who see themselves in/as women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paradoxical at first sight, some tourists engage in activities involving negative emotions and even physical pain. Tourism scholars have begun investigating this phenomenon and have called for more of such research. Against this background, the authors introduce to tourism the notion of benign masochism, defining it as a trait describing a person's tendency to embrace and seek pleasure through safely playing with a stimulating level of physical pain and negative emotions. In doing so, the authors root benign masochism in the notion of play from evolutionary psychology and develop a benign masochism scale that is able to predict various tourism outcomes, including willingness to visit a haunted house, to go on a challenging adventure holiday, and to visit a nuclear disaster site. The authors conclude by discussing theoretical and managerial implications as well as limitations and future opportunities for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been a "research boom" on the topic of BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism). Studies have covered a wide range of countries including the UK, USA, Brazil and Western Germany. Nevertheless, ethnographical research of the BDSM subculture in a postcommunist state has been extremely rare. In fact, there have not been many studies on postcommunist subcultures in general. This study explores how the BDSM subculture has been evolving in the Czech Republic after the fall of the communism. The focus is on the intergenerational conflict that has arisen between the first and second generations of the Czech BDSM scene. The history of Czech BDSM subculture has never been studied. Except for a few tables showing data and events, BDSM practitioners themselves in the Czech Republic have no written documents about how they created the subculture, how it was established and what pitfalls they needed to overcome. In contrast to studies of the BDSM scene in such countries as the UK which had long-standing democracies, the Czech scene could only emerge after the overthrow of the communist-ruled dictatorship in 1989. Consequently, the scene is newer and it developed in a situation in which the first generation was culturally much more tied to the communist-past than the second generation. We show how the scene might have developed differently when taking place in the post-communist context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an age of striking inequality in wealth, a related phenomenon, wealth shame, has developed. A multidisciplinary exploration of such shame examines its intrapsychic, intersubjective, transgenerational, and sociopolitical roots in the U.S., as well as its multiple functions: as an ethical response to economic disparity (moral responsibility), as a manifestation of a pervasive shame pattern (moral masochism), and as a defense against pleasure, feelings of superiority, and the fear of being envied. Several clinical vignettes illustrate these themes and are followed by reflections on their clinical implications. The psychoanalytic community's conflicted relationship to social class, money, and wealth is also examined. This conflictedness may inform the analyst's countertransference to wealth shame and his or her ability to appreciate the psychic landscapes of class as they present in the consulting room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Gilles Deleuze's and Giorgio Agamben's thoughts on the immanent creativity emergent from formal, impersonal life as a pathway for resistance to biopolitics. In Coldness and Cruelty, Deleuze explores masochism as the inversion of the sadistic, biopolitical use of the body which can bring forth genuinely new expressions. Agamben dismisses masochistic creativity because it leaves the dialectical ontology of biopower intact to conceptualize his form-of-life as a space of indiscernibility between ontological essence and legal-political actualization. For Agamben, the form-of-life escapes biopolitical capture because it is absolutely detached from its relations. This article argues that the radicalness of this detachment calls into question the political capacity offered by the form-of-life to actively change the relations of biopower. Against this background, Deleuze's masochistic eroticization of power offers an alternative conceptualization of relationality as external to its terms and productive of expressions which are both thoroughly immanent and genuinely creative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing especially focuses upon pain. A great build-up of physically but mainly verbally caused pain dissolves in the play's final episodes. This essay explores this paradox by analysing the pain Beatrice and Benedick, Don John, Claudio and Hero, Leonato and Anthony feel and mutually inflict. Variously charged by local dramatic contexts, such suffering invites the application of past and contemporary theories of pain for its fullest interpretation in this comedy. The possibility of empathy depends in the case of Much Ado upon this application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a psychiatry resident working in New York City, I first saw the signs of Covid-19 in an outpatient setting. While it is true that the pressure from hospital administrators to sacrifice is palpable, the current willingness of residents to set aside self-preservation seems driven by something more. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, I am concerned exclusively with the kind of comparative disadvantage an individual suffers in having less valuable opportunities than another individual and that may entitle her to corrective action, such that we ought to regulate the risk of this disadvantage and/or consider compensating her if she suffers disadvantage. The dominant approach in both political philosophy and public policy proceeds by identifying a metric by which to determine whether an individual’s opportunities are less valuable than another’s. Let’s call this the Metric Test. However, there is another way in which to proceed. Rather than appealing to a metric by which to determine disadvantage, we could instead allow an individual to determine for herself whether or not she is disadvantaged. On the version of this view that I shall defend, we should treat an individual as disadvantaged if and only if that individual envies another’s opportunities. Let’s call this the Envy Test. My overall aim in this article is to illuminate the appeal of the Envy Test and, in particular, to explain its superiority over the Metric Test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over five years, from 1919 to 1924, Freud dealt with masochism in three texts written in close proximity: “A Child Is Being Beaten,” Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and “The Economic Problem of Masochism.” Initially Freud explains masochism as incestuous fixation on the father and regression to pregenital, sadistic ways of loving. Subsequently he considers it primarily as subservient to the death drive. This paper starts from an idea present in two of the three texts, but not developed by Freud, in which he refers to the role that the “qualitative” element of rhythm could play in the occurrence of pleasure in masochism. By means of this element traumatic aspects of the primary relationship with the object could be stored as fantasies in the body. In any staged masochistic fantasies of being beaten or in masochistic perversion, the pleasure of pain would lie in the attempt to “dream” the trauma not only in the imagination but also, “aesthetically,” in the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates a psychoanalytically inflected strain of anti-social queer theory that in privileging refusal and negation, views as paradigmatic of 'queerness' the destructive, annihilative aspects in (queer) sex. In this view, sexuality is a product of the unconscious, thus irreducible to gender, such that gender is irrelevant to (and indeed hinders) understandings of desire. Informed by feminism, which views gender as crucial to any theory on sexuality, I expose that which 'sexual negation' masks through this very disavowal -- that of gender and the body itself. I argue that subtending the figurai representation of queer/ness is a deep-seated, albeit disguised, masculinism that, through negation, works to re-centre and re-virilise (gay) men's sexual economies. I take up Butler's lesbian phallus to de-idealise and thus challenge this privileging of the penis operating within this strain of queer -- as only phallic sexual economies can, it seems, deliver the very annihilation we (all) seek. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a gendered reading of the screenwriter as creative worker in the context of the unequal socio-economy of screenwriting work. A number of ideal subject positions for the screenwriter are evoked in screenwriting manuals, pedagogies and representations of writers themselves, in particular, the 'egotist', the 'masochist' and the 'supplicant'. These subjects are masculine in orientation although rarely acknowledged in gendered terms. The article draws on findings froma three-year study of British screenwriters but for the purposes of this volume, focuses on on-screen portrayals of screenwriting work. In particular, the analysis looks at the film Adaptation (2002) and the ways in which the film and its characters embody these subject positions. Not only are these ideal types circulated and recirculated in discourse about screenwriting as creative work but they are constitutive of screenwriting as a profession and a representative sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-standing debates about the ethical significance of sadomasochism have been raised by two recent legal cases, Pay v. United Kingdom and Mosley v. News Group Newspapers Limited. The judgements in these cases rely on the unexplained assumption that a person’s participation in sadomasochistic activities can call into question their suitability for certain social or public roles. The article evaluates this assumption by referring to developments within feminist and general academic thinking about the normative nature of sadomasochism, focusing in particular on key issues such as whether sadomasochism is sexist or racist and whether participating in sadomasochistic activities reflects negatively on a person’s character. After working through the various theoretical models of sadomasochism as replication, simulation, game playing and context dependent, the article contends that this assumption lacks both a compelling theoretical basis and a practical rationale. Instead, this article argues that law should more fully recognize the critical distinctions that exist between the ethical significance of sadomasochistic activities and the ethical significance of the frameworks of power inequality and narratives of oppression that sadomasochistic activities explicitly invoke or implicitly negotiate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After an accident, the author and researcher of this article had a period of serious contemplation and decided to take positive transformative action over the long year of her rehabilitation. Her broken arm highlighted her vulnerability as a researcher, but opened new doorways to navigating different methods of research, documentation and presentation of lived experiences. This injury was not only the means to draw attention and participation in research, but also an invitation to share our vulnerabilities in ordinarily daily lives and to see charm in wounds, whether they are visible or invisible. We all have memories of suffering that have gone unrecognized and unreconciled. Autobiography through documentary films is one way of validating suffering and aestheticizing pain directly or vicariously through the sharing of experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of self flagellation and suspension from fleshooks, two pain inducing activities that are associated with religious practices and sexual practices seen in several countries including the Phillippines, the U.S. and Sri Lanka. The factors that lead individuals to become involved with pain inducing practices are discussed. A discussion of the physiological and psychological aspects of pain is presented. The religious aspects of pain inducing activities are examined.

Two experiments examine whether exposure to generic violence can display infrahumanization towards out-groups. In Study 1, participants had to solve a lexical decision task after viewing animal or human violent scenes. In Study 2, participants were exposed to either human violent or human suffering pictures before doing a lexical decision task. In both studies, the infrahumanization bias appeared after viewing the human violent pictures but not in the other experimental conditions. These two experiments support the idea of contextual dependency of infrahumanization, and suggest that violence can prime an infrahuman perception of the out-group. Theoretical implications for infrahumanization and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the case study of an elderly woman shows how bodily pain and suffering meld in her narrative, not as the subjective and objective sides of the same event, but as distinct experiences in which both constructs emerge separately or come together based on the meaning she imputes to the event. The case study shows the clear methodological fit of qualitative narrative research with the lived experiences of pain and suffering. The narrator recalled the "tremendous" pain she experienced almost 60 years previously as both suffering and not-suffering, depending on the outcome of the circumstances that surrounded her pain. This case shows how a significant aspect of the aging experience—suffering—is medicalized, yet remains resistant to both categorization and medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses masochistic sexuality in the David Cronenberg film, "Crash," which focused on the sensuality of lived experience and corporeality. The author analyzes the movie's cultural affect resulting from the eroticization of pain and images of injury. Research into western sexual tradition and sadomasochism is cited, including Chancer (1992), Reik (1941), and Stoller, 1991. The idea is presented that "Crash" was deemed a threat to society because viewers might participate in the represented "perversion" that brought together the affects of pleasure and pain.

Paraphilias, or sexually deviant behaviors, are especially difficult to address when an individual displaysmore than one sexual deviation at one time. Acase of an incarcerated forensic client who displayed symptoms of sadism, masochism, and hebephilia is described. Fixed-role therapy (FRT), a dramaturgical approach to treatmentwhere a client enacts a new character or role based on how he or she would like to act, was employed with at least short-termsuccess in one case. Some of the advantages and limitations of FRT are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many of the patients referred to NHS groups are involved in abusive relationships. This article seeks to examine the nature of such relationships through the literature of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and to put forward the proposal that heterogeneous groups provide a good opportunity to look at making changes in such relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the different behaviors of sexual sadists. It is noted that sadists inflict the pain to their sexual partners physically or psychologically. The differences between sadism, masochism and sadomasochism are explained. In addition, the article introduces a report on sexual sadism in the context of rape and sexual homicide.

The article focuses on the neurotic traits useful to the pediatrician. A touch of masochism is valuable. It leads the pediatrician to take pleasure in any opportunity to do something extra for parents and patients, to go himself to the clinic or ward and not leave it to whoever is on duty. When parents feel uncertain about what was said at the last interview, he fits in an early extra appointment for them before the day's appointments start or during his midday time off.