What is masochism?

The word arrives loaded. It was coined from a novelist's surname in the late nineteenth century by a psychiatrist cataloguing what he considered perversions, and it has never quite shaken that. What it describes is more ordinary and much more specific than the word implies.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing named it in the late nineteenth century, after the novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose book Venus in Furs is about a man who arranges his own domination in some detail. Sacher-Masoch, still alive at the time, was reportedly furious. He had written a novel and been turned into a diagnosis.

That origin matters, because the term was built to describe pathology and still carries the shape of that. When people say "I think I might be a masochist" there is usually an implied "and that is probably bad" hanging off the end of it.

What it actually means

Masochism is taking pleasure in pain, discomfort, or being put in a submissive or humiliating position. That is the whole definition. It says nothing about how much, in what circumstances, or with whom, and those turn out to be the parts that matter.

The word makes it sound like a general orientation towards suffering. It almost never is. Masochists stub their toes and swear like everybody else. They go to the dentist reluctantly. The interest is narrow and highly conditional: this sensation, from this person, in this situation, having asked for it. Change any of those variables and the same input stops working and starts simply hurting.

I find this is the single most useful thing to explain to someone new. You are not signing up to like pain. You are noticing that a specific kind of sensation, under specific conditions you control, does something for you.

The clinical distinction that nobody mentions

If you go looking, you will find sexual masochism disorder listed in the DSM-5 and you will probably feel worse than when you started. The important detail is the last word.

The manual separates the paraphilia from the disorder. Having the interest is the first thing. Having the interest and experiencing clinically significant distress about it, or finding it impairs your ability to function, is the second. Only the second is a diagnosis.

This was a deliberate revision, though not quite the one people describe. DSM-IV already required distress or impairment. What the DSM-5 added in 2013 was the distinction between a paraphilia and a paraphilic disorder, and the statement that a paraphilia on its own does not necessarily call for clinical intervention. The distress has to be clinically significant, and the manual's general definition of mental disorder says a conflict mainly between a person and society is not, by itself, a disorder.

Masochist, submissive, bottom: not the same word

These get used interchangeably and it causes real confusion when people try to negotiate.

Plenty of masochists are not remotely submissive. They know exactly what they want, will tell you how hard and for how long, and are running the encounter from underneath. Plenty of submissives have no interest in pain and want to be told what to do about the washing up. Assuming one implies the other is how people end up in scenes they did not want.

Degrees, and the thing about wanting to be made to

There is a distinction worth naming that most writing misses. Some people want sensation. Others want to be made to take sensation they do not want. Those are different desires wearing the same costume.

The first is straightforward to negotiate: harder, softer, more, stop. The second is harder, because the appeal depends on the experience of not being in control, which sits awkwardly with the fact that you very much are, and that the whole thing stops the moment you say so. Holding both of those at once is a skill, and it is mostly the top's job to make it feel real without it being real.

If the second is what you are after, say so during negotiation, because a top who does not know will keep checking in helpfully and dismantling the exact thing you came for.

Where it comes from

Nobody knows, and the confident explanations are all weaker than they sound. The trauma theory has never found reliable support. Wismeijer and van Assen's 2013 study of around 900 practitioners found the BDSM group scored equal or better than controls on most wellbeing and personality measures, which is not what a damage model predicts.

Baumeister's account is the one I keep returning to: masochism as a way of escaping self-awareness, of temporarily stopping being a person with a job and a reputation and becoming a body dealing with right now. It fits the observation that so many people drawn to this carry unusual amounts of responsibility, and it explains why relief is the word people reach for afterwards.

But that is a theory that fits, not a proven cause. It might just be wiring. Plenty of things about what people want are.