Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXance of the victim's pleasure.Even when the sadist goesso far as to kill his victim he is moved not by the desire tothe emotionalcause death, but to shed blood, so securingstimulus which isimparted almost universally by the spectacleof shed blood, and Leppmann has acutely observedthat in sadistic crimes it is usual to find the wound in thoseparts of the body, like the neck or the abdomen, whichwill lead to the maximum shedding of blood.Similarly the masochist has no wish to suffer cruelty.In that slight degree of passive algolagnia which Krafft-Ebing, Moll, and others regard as simply a heighteneddegree of a normal attitude and entitle "sexual subjection''(Horigheif),there need be no serious violence,either physical or psychic, but only a complacent accept'ance of the capricesand domination of the beloved person.There is no clear line of demarcation between sexualsubjection and masochism apart from the important factthat in sexual subjection the normal impulse to coitus remains,while in masochism it tends to be replaced by theperverse impulse and the masochist retains the samepleasure, and even in many cases ecstasy, as he experiencesthe manifold ill-treatment he desires. This ill-treatmentmay involve the reality, or the simulacrum, of a greatmany actions: binding and fettering, trampling, semistrangulation,the performance of menial duties and taskscommonly felt to be disgusting by the beloved person,verbal abuse, etc. For the masochist such acts have becomethe equivalent of coitus, and the idea of cruelty, and inmost cases even pain, never enters. If we bear this in mindthe elaborate hypotheses which some psychologists (evenFreud) have ingeniously constructed to explain masochismare seen to be completely unnecessary.The manifestations of masochism, from their nature, areof little social significance and involve comparatively little[206]