Love and Pain

Love and Pain

Sadism and Control

From Studies in the Psychology of Sex - Volume 3

By Havelock Ellis

An Early 20th Century Study of Love and PainMan's Pleasure in Exerting Force and Woman's Pleasure in Experiencing itResemblance of Love to Pain even in Outward ExpressionThe Love-biteThe Definition of SadismThe Fascination of BloodThe Most Extreme Perversions are Linked on to Normal PhenomenaCauses of Connection between Sexual Emotion and WhippingThe Varied Emotional Associations of Whipping

Sadomasochism is the giving or receiving pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer respectively to one who enjoys giving or receiving pain, practitioners of sadomasochism may switch between activity and passivity.

The abbreviation S& M is often used for sadomasochism. Sadomasochism is not considered a clinical paraphilia unless such practices lead to clinically significant distress or impairment for a diagnosis. Similarly, sexual sadism within the context of mutual consent, generally known under the heading BDSM, is distinguished from non-consensual acts of sexual violence or aggression.

The relation of love to pain is one of the most difficult problems, and yet one of the most fundamental, in the whole range of sexual psychology. Why is it that love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? Why is it that love suffers pain, and even seeks to suffer it? In answering that question, it seems to me, we have to take an apparently circuitous route, sometimes going beyond the ostensible limits of sex altogether; but if we can succeed in answering it we shall have come very near one of the great mysteries of love. At the same time we shall have made clear the normal basis on which rest the extreme aberrations of love.