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)
“The ninety percent of human experience that does not fit into established narrative patterns falls into oblivion.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“To regard the successful experiences which ensue from a belief as a criterion of its truth is one thing—and a thing that is sometimes bad and sometimes good—but to assume that truth itself consists in the process by which it is verified is a different thing and always bad.”
—William Pepperell Montague (1842–1910)
“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)
“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“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)