Author: Linda Turner

Sadistic personality disorder (SDP) is characterized by an individual’s pattern of cruel, harsh, aggressive, intimidating, humiliating, and demeaning behavior. The disorder has been the subject of several studies and originally appeared in the DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association 1987). The disorder was included because of an effort to distinguish it from antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or psychopathy since the constellation of traits descriptive of an individual with sadistic behavior patterns was not sufficiently explained by existing disorders (Chabrol et al. 2009). The belief that the different constellations would be useful in diagnosing individuals is what led the diagnosis to appear in the appendix of the DSM-III-R, under a section entitled, “Proposed Diagnostic Categories Requiring Further Study.” There was considerable support for including the diagnosis. A survey of forensic psychiatrists had revealed, for example, that 50% of them had, at some time, evaluated…

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The famous, though controversial, psychoanalyst, C. G. Jung, wrote [all quotes from C.G. Jung. Collected Works. G. Adler, M. Fordham and H. Read (Eds.). 21 volumes. Princeton University Press, 1960-1983]:

“Complexes are psychic fragments which have split off owing to traumatic influences or certain incompatible tendencies. As the association experiments prove, complexes interfere with the intentions of the will and disturb the conscious performance; they produce disturbances of memory and blockages in the flow of associations; they appear and disappear according to their own laws; they can temporarily obsess consciousness, or influence speech and action in an unconscious way. In a word, complexes behave like independent beings, a fact especially evident in abnormal states of mind. In the voices heard by the insane they even take on a personal ego-character like that of the spirits who manifest themselves through automatic writing and similar techniques.” (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Writings, Volume 8, p. 121)