Sadism and Masochism As Medical Terms - Early Descriptions

Early Descriptions

Sadistic and masochistic sexual behaviors were known before Dr. Krafft-Ebing named them in psychiatry. The Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) described a man who required flogging to achieve sexual arousal and thus be able to copulate. In 1639, the German physician Johann Heinrich Meibom introduced the first theory of masochism in A Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Medicine and Venery; per the 17th-century understanding of human anatomy, in fact the infliction of pain may simply have served to subdue very strong controls over active sexuality, flogging a man’s back warmed the semen in his kidneys, which sexually aroused him when it flowed into his testicles. Fifty years later, in 1698, Kristian Frantz Paullini modified the sexual theory of flogging, by substituting blood for semen as descending from the kidneys to the testicles in aiding sexual arousal. In 1788, François Amédée Doppet expanded the theory of masochistic sexual arousal to include women, by presuming that flogging exercised a like effect upon the woman’s genitalia and her consequent venery. Women can lose their degree of sexual arousal through some degrees of inflicted physical pain, while otherwise they may be tempted to use their sexual responses to physically reduce pain. Thus was the theoretic, causal relation between flogging and human sexual arousal, until Krafft-Ebing’s analysis and theorizing upon this aspect of human mental health.

As a sexual practice, literature recorded sadomasochism before the works of the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) provided its name. In Asia, the sexual practices manual Kama Sutra (c. 2nd century AD), describes consensual, erotic slapping. The British novel of sexual adventure Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 1748), by John Cleland, presents an episode occurred in a brothel, wherein the heroine whips a young man to sexually arouse him. In the autobiographic Confessions (1782), the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau described his unhappiness for having masochistic fantasies. Some sado-sexual practices may in fact stem from an instinctive wish to punish the object of sexual attraction for provoking sexual arousal as a perceived lack of respect, even female animals can have this reaction.