Masochism

What is masochism?

Masochism is drawing pleasure or arousal from pain, discomfort or humiliation that you undergo yourself. The word refers to the inclination, not to one single act. Within BDSM masochism is the M in the abbreviation and the counterpart of sadism: one person gives the stimulus, the other wants precisely to receive it.

What masochism looks like in practice

Masochism is almost never “hitting hard”. It is a narrow band in which a stimulus lands just right, and that differs from person to person and from evening to evening.

A common case: someone asks for a caning, but not for fifty strokes. She wants twelve, slow, announced, with time in between. Raise the pace, and exactly the thing she came for disappears.

That masochism has more to do with pleasure than with suffering has been measured. The systematic review by De Neef and colleagues in Sexual Medicine sums up Defrin’s research: the higher participants rated the pain during their play, the more pleasure they reported. While they judged everyday pain just as negatively as anyone else.

Where the word masochism comes from

From a psychiatrist who took a writer as his example.

The psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) coined both sadism and masochism. The historian Harry Oosterhuis of Maastricht University calls them, in Medical History, “terms actually coined by Krafft-Ebing, the first inspired by the Marquis de Sade, and the second by the Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch”. Sacher-Masoch described in Venus im Pelz (1869) a man who voluntarily hands himself over to a woman; since then his surname has been a diagnosis. The Online Etymology Dictionary dates the German coinage Masochismus to 1883 and the first English citation to 1892.

What rarely gets added: Krafft-Ebing himself did not leave it at “sick”. Oosterhuis describes how masochism was for him a category of perversion and an extreme on a sliding scale that explained something about ordinary sexuality.

How masochism works

Not because masochists feel less, but because the context determines how pain is processed.

That is shown most sharply by Sandra Kamping and colleagues in Pain. They put sixteen masochists and sixteen control participants in an MRI scanner and gave painful laser stimuli, while masochistic or neutral images were on the screen. With the masochistic images, the masochists rated the stimulus as clearly less painful and less unpleasant. In every other condition they felt the pain just as hard as the control group.

The scans showed why: in masochists it was mostly the area that describes the stimulus that lit up, where it is, how sharp, and much less the area that attaches a judgment to it. The researchers point to the parietal operculum as the relay station that dampens the affective side of pain. So pain does not stop being pain; the meaning weighs in.

Why people love masochism

For what pain pushes away, not for the pain itself.

Anyone who talks about it names almost always the same effect: everything gets small. There is no more room for the day behind you, and that narrowing is the appeal.

• For the one receiving the stimulus, masochism is a way to get out of your head without alcohol and without a screen, and without anything having to be discussed.
• For the one giving it, it delivers a rare, sharp form of attention: you read a body and adjust to what you see.
• For two people together, something concrete comes up to talk about: “a bit harder” is easier to say than “I’m missing something”.

Masochism is not a treatment for stress, grief or a stuck relationship. Anyone who uses it for that comes away disappointed.

How people do it in practice

Almost always building up, from light to heavier, with a starting point lower than people expect.

There are three recognizable forms. The sensation version, which is about what the skin registers. Candle wax, ice cubes, clothespins. The striking version, or impact play, in which rhythm and build-up do the work. And the mental version, in which humiliation is the stimulus.

Between knowing and doing there is usually a lot of time. For Kamping’s participants the interest began at seventeen on average, and they only did something with it around twenty-nine.

Misconceptions about masochism

“Masochism is a mental disorder.” No. The DSM-5 distinguishes a paraphilia from a paraphilic disorder, and that difference is not in what you like. The StatPearls description of paraphilias states that a paraphilia only becomes a pathology when the behavior causes serious distress and dysfunction, or involves harm or risk to others. Kamping shows how that plays out: all sixteen of her masochists met the A criterion for sexual masochism disorder, none of them the B criterion of distress or dysfunction.

“Masochism means you’re submissive.” Two different axes. Masochism is about stimulus, D/s about who decides: there are masochists who run everything, and submissives who want nothing to do with pain.

“Masochists feel less.” Only in the right context. Outside their play, Kamping’s participants felt the laser stimuli just as well as anyone.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. What strikes me most often in conversations about masochism is how wrongly people judge their own preference. They ask for “hard”, and at the third tap it turns out they want the sharp edge, not the volume.

The second pattern: almost no one comes in here without guilt. The question under the question is not “can this be firmer”, but “am I all right”.

And I never push on as long as it’s working. Masochism has an upper limit that does not present as pain but as silence: someone stops responding. That is the moment to stop.

What you can do yourself

• Start lower than you think you need. Anyone who starts hard misses the point where the stimulus tips over, and that is what masochism is about.
• Test the safeword once before anything is riding on it. A safeword that has never been said out loud rarely works at the moment it has to.
• During play, ask for a number instead of “are you okay”. To “are you okay” almost everyone answers yes.
• See a doctor for a wound, a bruise that won’t fade or a numb feeling, and tell them what happened.
• Plan aftercare and keep an eye on the days after; masochism gives an after-swing more often than people expect.

More on masochism

Within this glossary, algolagnia explains the nineteenth-century umbrella word that masochism fell under, and impact play describes the form most people first run into it in. On the blog, the difference between hard and soft pain is about exactly that band.

Beyond that, Kamping and colleagues’ study is free to read and the best evidence that context determines how pain comes in. Harry Oosterhuis’s article gives the history of the word, more nuanced than the standard version.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to try out where your band lies without anything at home riding on it, that is possible within a session with me. Pain play I do from soft to firm, and we always start below what you think you can take. How that is discussed beforehand is on the BDSM date.

Sources

• Contextual modulation of pain in masochists: involvement of the parietal operculum and insula. Kamping, Andoh, Bomba, Diers, Diesch & Flor, Pain 157(2), 445–455, 2016 (DOI 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000390, open access via Europe PMC). The journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain, and the only study that compares pain experience in masochists inside and outside their own context. Gives the thirty-two participants (sixteen masochists, sixteen matched controls), the finding that masochists rated the pain in the masochistic context as clearly less intense and less unpleasant but had “unaltered pain perception” in the other conditions, the reduced functional connectivity of the parietal operculum with both insulae, the proposal that the parietal operculum dampens the affective-motivational side of pain, the average age of first interest (17.07 years) and first practice (29.40 years), and the fact that all participants met the A criterion of sexual masochism disorder and none of them the B criterion.
• Paraphilia. Kristy A. Fisher & Raman Marwaha, StatPearls, StatPearls Publishing, last revised 6 March 2023, via NCBI Bookshelf. Clinical reference based on the DSM-5 and so the right source for the paraphilia / paraphilic disorder distinction. Gives the description “Sexual masochism is the derivation of sexual arousal from being the recipient of physical or mental abuse and/or humiliation”, the DSM-5 criterion of at least six months of recurrent, intense arousal, and the line that a paraphilia only becomes a pathology “only when this behavior causes significant distress and impairment of functioning to the individual or if the paraphilia involves personal harm or risk of harm to others”.
• Sexual Modernity in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll. Harry Oosterhuis, Medical History 56(2), 133–155, 2012 (DOI 10.1017/mdh.2011.30, open access). Medical-historical research by the historian who worked through Krafft-Ebing’s archive, and so the source for the origin of the word. Gives that sadism and masochism are “terms actually coined by Krafft-Ebing”, the first inspired by the Marquis de Sade and the second by the Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the finding that for Krafft-Ebing sadism and masochism were categories of perversion and extremes on a sliding scale that explained aspects of ordinary sexuality.
• Bondage-Discipline, Dominance-Submission and Sadomasochism (BDSM) From an Integrative Biopsychosocial Perspective: A Systematic Review. De Neef, Coppens, Huys & Morrens, Sexual Medicine 7(2), 129–144, 2019 (DOI 10.1016/j.esxm.2019.02.002, open access). Systematic review of 87 articles and the only overview that gathers the research on pain experience in masochists. Gives the two studies in which masochists showed pain insensitivity, the finding by Defrin and colleagues that both the number of stimulated body areas and the pain intensity during BDSM play correlated strongly with the reported pleasure, and the finding that masochists and control participants judge pain just as negatively in daily life.
• masochism. Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper. Lexicographic reference on the dating of words. Gives the German coinage Masochismus in 1883 by Krafft-Ebing, the first English citation in 1892, the dates of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–1895) and the 1869 publication year of Venus im Pelz.

Related terms

Masochism is the M of BDSM, and the word says something about what someone is looking for. Not about who is in charge.

• Masochist. The person behind the concept, and what the word does and doesn’t say about someone.
• Algolagnia. The nineteenth-century umbrella word that masochism and sadism both fell under.
• Impact play. The striking form masochism is most often tried out in.
• M-jo. The Japanese word for a woman with this bent, and the reason the letter M is used much more loosely there.
• Bottom. The role of the one who undergoes something, which often but not always coincides with masochism.
• Aftercare. What is needed afterward, and where masochism goes wrong without it.
• Pain threshold. The two points that masochistic play takes place between, and why they move.
• Sadism. The other half of the pair, with the research into what happens on the giving side.
• Sadomasochism. The umbrella above both, and where the diagnosis ended up.
• Pain play. The act this bent expresses itself in, with the build-up and the safety side.