Sadistic personality disorder is a personality disorder diagnosis involving sadism which appeared only in an appendix of the revised third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R). The current version of the DSM (DSM-IV) does not include it, so it is no longer considered a valid diagnostic category. The diagnosis Personality disorder not otherwise specified may be used instead. However, the disorder is still studied for research purposes.
Sadism is a behavioral disorder characterized by a callous, vicious, manipulative, and degrading behavior expressed towards other people. To date, the exact cause of sadism is not known clearly. However, many theories have been given to explain the possible reasons underlying the development of a sadistic personality in an individual.
Read more about Sadistic Personality Disorder: Definition of Sadism, Comorbidity With Other Personality Disorders, Familial Patterns/Childhood Experiences and Sadistic Personality Disorder, DSM-III-R Criteria For Sadistic Personality Disorder, Removal From The DSM, Millon’s Subtypes, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words sadistic, personality and/or disorder:
“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)
“We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)