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.
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Famous quotes containing the words familial, patterns, childhood, experiences, sadistic, personality 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)
“For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?”
—Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
“Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.”
—Alice Miller (20th century)
“The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“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)
“Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)