# Masochism > Masochism is taking pleasure, arousal or relief from chosen pain. Clinically it is a preference, not a disorder, and much more specific than it sounds. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/masochism/ - Section: A–Z - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. The word arrives loaded, because it was coined by a psychiatrist cataloguing what he considered perversions. What it describes is more ordinary and much narrower than the word implies. --- ## In short - Pleasure, arousal or relief from pain that has been chosen. The choosing is the whole of it. - The DSM-5-TR separates the interest from sexual masochism *disorder*, which requires clinically significant distress or impairment. - Masochist, submissive and bottom are three different words and plenty of people are one without being the others. - Almost nobody wants pain in general. Stubbing a toe is not interesting to anyone. ## What it means Masochism is finding pain, discomfort or hardship rewarding rather than simply unpleasant, in a context you have chosen. The context is not decoration. The same sensation delivered by a person you trust, in a room you agreed to be in, with a way to stop it, is a fundamentally different experience from the same force applied by accident or by someone who does not care. This is why the common objection, that masochists must enjoy hitting their thumb with a hammer, misses the mechanism entirely. The specificity is the part that surprises people. Someone who wants a leather strap across the backside may have no interest at all in needles, clamps, cold or anything else, and may find those actively repellent. Masochism is a set of narrow preferences that happens to share a general label. ## In practice What most people are actually after, as far as I can tell from being on both ends of it, is not the pain by itself. It is the state that a certain amount of it produces: the narrowing of attention, the quiet that arrives when there is nothing left to think about, the specific relief of having no decisions to make. Baumeister argued in 1988 that masochism works as an escape from self-awareness, and that is a theory that fits a great deal of what people describe rather than a proven cause. There is also the wanting-to-be-made-to element, which is separate and which a lot of masochists have. What appeals there is that the sensation is not up to you. That is where masochism starts overlapping with [power exchange](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/power-exchange/), and where the two get confused. ## The usual mistake Assuming masochist means submissive. They are different axes. There are people who take a great deal of pain and take instruction from nobody, and people who want to be told what to do all evening and have no interest in being hurt at all. Bottom is a third word again, describing the receiving role regardless of what is being received. The other error, and the one that brings people to this site at two in the morning, is reading the interest as a symptom of damage. There is no reliable evidence for that. Wismeijer and van Assen found BDSM practitioners scoring no worse than a comparison group on general psychological wellbeing, and on some measures slightly better. A preference is a preference. ## Where it comes from The word was coined in the late nineteenth century by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, author of *Psychopathia Sexualis*, from the surname of the Austrian novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose *Venus in Furs* described precisely this. A diagnosis named after a living author, which tells you something about the spirit in which the category was created, and it has never fully shaken it off. ## Read next - [What is masochism?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/what-is-masochism/) - [Why do I like pain?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/why-do-i-like-pain/) - [Kink](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/glossary/kink/) - [If your result was masochist](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/kink-test-results/masochist/) ## Sources 1. American Psychiatric Association (2022). *DSM-5-TR*, sexual masochism disorder. [psychiatry.org](https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm) 2. Baumeister, R. (1988). "Masochism as Escape from Self." *Journal of Sex Research* 25(1). [doi:10.1080/00224498809551444](https://doi.org/10.1080/00224498809551444) 3. Wismeijer, A. & van Assen, M. (2013). "Psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners." *Journal of Sexual Medicine* 10(8), 1943–1952. [doi:10.1111/jsm.12192](https://doi.org/10.1111/jsm.12192) ## Common questions ### What does masochism actually mean? Masochism is deriving pleasure, arousal or relief from pain or discomfort that you have chosen. In practice it is far more specific than the word suggests: most masochists want a particular kind of pain, in a particular place, from a particular sort of person, and have no interest in pain generally. ### Is masochism classed as a disorder? No. The DSM-5-TR draws a line between a sexual interest and a disorder, and for sexual masochism disorder the threshold is clinically significant distress or impairment. A consensual interest between adults that is not damaging your life sits on the preference side of that line, and is explicitly not a diagnosis.