Familial Patterns/Childhood Experiences and Sadistic Personality Disorder
Most of these theories commonly point out the fact that sadism is mainly dependent on the upbringing of an individual. Although biological and environmental aspects are also known to contribute to the development of this behavioral disorder, less evidence is available about hereditary patterns or genetic causes.
Sadistic Personality Disorder is found more often in males than in females. In addition, studies have suggested that there are familial patterns in the presence of sadistic personality types. Specifically, people with Sadistic Personality Disorder oftentimes have relatives who have some type of psychopathology as well.
Unfavorable experiences during childhood or in early stages of sexual development are believed to be one of the major contributing factors in the development of a sadistic personality in an individual. It has also been observed that sadism or a sadistic personality can also get developed in an individual through conditioning. For instance, continual connection of a particular stimulus with sexual enjoyment or of happiness with the anguish of others can cause sadism or sadomasochism.
Read more about this topic: Sadistic Personality Disorder
Famous quotes containing the words familial, patterns, childhood, experiences, sadistic and/or disorder:
“That, of course, was the thing about the fifties with all their patina of familial bliss: A lot of the memories were not happy, not mine, not my friends’. That’s probably why the myth so endures, because of the dissonance in our lives between what actually went on at home and what went on up there on those TV screens where we were allegedly seeing ourselves reflected back.”
—Anne Taylor Fleming (20th century)
“I’ve begun to appreciate the generational patterns that ripple out from our lives like stones dropped in water, pulsing outward even after we are gone. Although we have but one childhood, we relive it first through our children’s and then our grandchildren’s eyes.”
—Anne Cassidy (20th century)
“[Children] do not yet lie to themselves and therefore have not entered upon that important tacit agreement which marks admission into the adult world, to wit, that I will respect your lies if you will agree to let mine alone. That unwritten contract is one of the clear dividing lines between the world of childhood and the world of adulthood.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one’s own childhood problems in the context of one’s relation to one’s child.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former; neither can live without the other. The difference is only that the sadistic person commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates, and that the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated. This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; in a deeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as that which they both have in common: fusion without integrity.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“In a town-meeting, the great secret of political science was uncovered, and the problem solved, how to give every individual his fair weight in the government, without any disorder from numbers. In a town-meeting, the roots of society were reached. Here the rich gave counsel, but the poor also; and moreover, the just and the unjust.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)