Sadistic personality disorder: symptoms and characteristics

Some people are always seeking pleasure in the humiliation and suffering of others.

Personality is a construct that refers to the pattern of thoughts, beliefs, ways of seeing the world and behaviors largely acquired throughout the life cycle that are maintained through situations and time.

Some of these patterns are dysfunctional and do not allow a correct adaptation to the environment by the subject, causing him/her to suffer severe difficulties or causing harm to third parties. The latter is what happens with disorders such as antisocial disorder or the one we are going to talk about in this article: sadistic personality disorderThe latter is a phenomenon that produces a lot of interest, to the point that there are countless movies that talk about this type of person.

Sadistic personality disorder

Sadistic personality disorder is considered to be a pathological pattern of cruel, vexatious, and aggressive behavior that manifests itself continuously throughout life in a consistent manner across situations. As is the case with sexual sadism, the subject derives enjoyment and satisfaction from observing the suffering and humiliation of others. of others. To do so, he or she may use anything from physical violence to humiliation, lies and rumors to cause harm, with no specific goal other than the pleasure of doing so.

Violence and humiliation are frequently used with the aim of dominating others for mere pleasure, without the cruelty employed being a means to achieve other objectives. It is also common for them to impose their will through fear and coercion. They tend to be controlling people and tend to limit the freedom of those around them, especially with those closest to them, as well as showing a fascination with death and violence in general.

It should be borne in mind that this disorder is not limited to a specific person or situation, nor does it refer to the mere use of the pain of others as an object of sexual satisfaction (i.e.: people who manifest sexual sadism do not necessarily have a sadistic personality), but rather we are talking about a generalized pattern of sexual sadism. we are talking about a generalized pattern of behavior.

Link to criminality

It can be easy to attribute criminality to mental and personality disorders, but as a general rule most of the subjects who commit crimes (including Blood crimes) are people without any type of psychopathological alteration. It is necessary to bear in mind that although we are talking about people who enjoy the humiliation and pain of others, this does not imply that they will commit any type of crime, does not imply that they are going to commit any type of crime..

However, there is a higher prevalence of this disorder and psychopathy in certain types of crimes: this is what happens with most serial killers. In other cases the prevalence is much lower, but sometimes in some studies carried out with prison populations it can be found that some of the subjects who commit sexual abuse/assault or mistreatment have typical traits of this disorder.

Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that having this disorder does not necessarily lead to criminality, and in fact most criminals are individuals without a mental or personality pathology, contrary to popular belief.

Causes

Although the possible causes of this disorder are still unknown, as a personality disorder the origin of sadistic personality disorder lies in the interaction of biological temperament with experience and environment.

In this sense it is proposed that in many cases may arise in part from biochemical and brain elements (brain areas may be involved). (brain areas such as the limbic system and the brain reward system may be involved) and learning, as for example in situations of domestic violence or sexual or physical abuse continued throughout the life of the subject that he has learned by modeling and associated with power and / or pleasure.

Lack of information and current situation

However, there are doubts about its existence as a personality disorder: although it is evident that there are people with sadistic attitudes as occurs with some psychopaths, there is not enough evidence to fully characterize this type of disorder and even to determine whether we are really dealing with a personality disorder distinct and separable from other existing ones.

Diagnostic classifications focus especially on behavioral aspects without delving into emotional and cognitive aspects. More research is needed to obtain more data. in order to obtain more data. Although listed by DSM-III and Millon as a personality disorder, sadistic personality disorder is currently listed as a diagnostic category proposed for research and included in the appendices of the major American diagnostic manual for the classification of mental disorders, the DSM.

Link to psychopathy and antisocial disorder.

Although at first glance it can be seen that psychopathy, antisocial disorder and sadistic personality disorder are closely related (in fact, in many cases they concur in the same subject), they are not synonymous classifications. (in fact, in many cases they concur in the same subject), they are classifications that are not synonymous.

In all three cases, they share a dominant attitude and often commit deception and violation of rights to obtain their goals, often with an absence of or difficulty with empathy and remorse.

However, obtaining pleasure and gratification through suffering and domination, which are at the core of this disorder, are not absolutely defining of either the psychopath (not all psychopaths are sadistic) or the subject with antisocial disorder. Similarly, a subject can be sadistic without flouting or violating social norms or laws, which is rare in antisocial personality disorder.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association (2002). DSM-IV-TR. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Spanish edition. Barcelona: Masson. (Original in English 2000).
• American Psychiatric Association (1987). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 3rd revised edition (DSM-III-R). Washington, D.C..
• Caballo, V. (2001). An introduction to personality disorders in the 21st century. Behavioral Psychology, 9(3);455-469.