SADISM AND MASOCHISM-SEXUAL CRIMINALITY

SADISM AND MASOCHISM

 Sadists derive sexual pleasure from inflicting pain, usually on their sexual partners. They want to prove their strength or virility by being aggressive or, for example, by emulating domineering fathers who used to punish them. Sadism may be expressed in forms other than sexual deviation. Teasing may be one. Children may be sadistic in their drive to assert themselves, though some seemingly sadistic actions by children are due to curiosity and lack of understanding. Thus, a child who pulls the wings off insects may have no idea that he is being cruel, since he may be acting from the same impulses that make him examine rocks and other inanimate objects. Masochists derive sexual pleasure from being treated cruelly, from being hurt physically or emotionally, or from hurting themselves. They may unconsciously wish to be punished for some "sin." Sadism has been called neurotic aggressiveness; masochism, neurotic submissiveness. Both spring from similar maladjustments and both may exist in the same individual. Masochism actually appears as a character attitude more frequently than it does as a sexual deviation.

SEXUAL CRIMINALITY

 The term sex maniac is an unscientific one used to describe people who commit violent sex crimes such as rape. These are people with serious emotional disorders; however concealed they may have been before a crime was committed. The fact is that many of us have peculiar sex impulses; they are usually fleeting and we do not actually consider acting upon them any more than we do acting upon other transient notions that pop into mind, such as jumping from the top of a tall building. In some sex criminals, however, the control mechanisms that normal people possess are defective or break down. In others, deep-rooted feelings of guilt, inferiority, or insecurity may divert sexual instincts in abnormal directions that are socially dangerous.

Psychoses People who suffer from the neuroses and other emotional illnesses previously described usually have a grasp on reality. They live in the real world and usually are able to get along in it, even if in awkward, suffering fashion. Psychotics-those who suffer from any of the several illnesses called psychoses-are farthest removed from rational behavior. They can no longer cope with reality or can do so only intermittently. They make up the greatest portion of the more than half-million persons in state, federal, and private mental institutions. Their actions often are absurd or grotesque, occasionally dangerous.