Hello I m Darren Magee and today s question asks if I would discuss sadistic behaviours and traits,
a sadistic personality. Now if you like this video. If you find it helpful or interesting
please consider subscribing to my channel. But just as a reminder, this video is not a substitute
for support from a mental health professional, nor is it a tool to be used to diagnose someone.
Now Sadistic Personality Disorder was introduced to the DSM back in 1987,
but it was later dropped from DSM 4 and it's no longer part of DSM 5. The difficulty can be
distinguishing sadistic personality disorder from other forms of personality disorders,
due to the high level of core morbidity with other disorders. However, there has been renewed
interest in sadism as a personality trait, again because of its association and its comorbidity
with other personality disorders. For instance, I've previously made a video on the Dark Triad,
a sub clinical combination of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. Recent research
suggests that sadism joins with sub clinical psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism
to form what's being referred to as the Dark Tetrad. What I mean is, for example,
with narcissism what we often see are vindictive behaviours, especially when the narcissistic
person is feeling emotionally wounded. That vindictiveness can manifest itself sadistically.
Also, with psychopathy we often see a lack of remorse over pain being inflicted on others.
But what does it mean by sadism? Well I could be characterised by someone who derives pleasure
when imposing pain, distress, discomfort on others. They enjoy their victims to stress
through acts of aggression. There could be active violence, aggression, intimidation, destruction
of personal property. There could be deliberate neglect, knowing that their victim will suffer.
There could be sabotaging or giving impossible tasks and expectations, setting their victims
up to fail so that they can be punished. Now all of us have hurt someone in one way or another,
even those closest to us, but in these cases it could maybe be out of ignorance, we didn t know
what we were doing was hurtful to that person. It could be what we do when we feel threatened, or we
ve been hurt somehow, we lash out aggressively. Or it could be in the heat of an argument. However,
the difference is we tend to feel regret, we apologise. We regulate our behaviour
not to do the same thing again. A Sadistic Personality is different in the following ways.
There is an intention to harm, enjoying inflicting pain and discomfort on others. There can be a lack
of regret, not taking any responsibility and it s continual. There are different kinds of
sadistic behaviours. There's verbal. Now that can include can be shouting, insulting, threatening,
dominating. There can physical sadism. That can be violence, physical acts of violence,
sexual acts that involve domination, things like bondage, choking, slapping and so on.
There can be vicarious sadism. Now that could be a pleasure that is derived through seeing others
being attacked, assaulted, humiliated, tortured, whatever. There can even be
fantasizing about hurting others. Or just maybe watching violent movies and enjoying the
violence that s being inflicted on the characters. The sadism, the bullying can take different forms,
but according to Theodore Millan there are four subtypes of sadistic personality, and I m going
to outline them right now. So the first one is Spineless Sadism. Now this, I believe anyway,
could be very closely associated with covert narcissism. As venomous as they are, the spineless
sadist gets their power usually through tormenting a scapegoat, someone they see as weaker than them,
someone that maybe won't stand or can't stand up for themselves. They could usually be part of a
larger group and rely on the power of that group to protect them. Now common behaviours could be
inflicting some kind of humiliation, some kind of pain on someone. If the victim stands up to them,
the victim is then threatened by the whole group, or they use that whole group to threaten their
victim. They could be more manipulative, they may just perhaps tell that biggest, most powerful,
most violent person in the group that someone has badmouthed them. Then they
enjoy watching that person, being threatened or physically assaulted. Now this type of sadistic
person would tend to have a lot of avoidant features. They would pretend, may pretend
to be brave but they tend to be quite insecure and cowardly. Secondly, there s the Tyrannical
Sadist. Now they force others to submit and cower through menace and through brutality. They tend
to be very negative and scathing towards pretty much everything. They scorn and insult everything.
Common behaviours could include being destructive, accusatory, surly, abusive and abrasive. They can
be both, they act in a way that is both inhumane and unmerciful. Thirdly there s Enforcing Sadism.
Now this is characterised by the hostility, the vitriol, the terror, all out stuff that
s being inflicted is perhaps in the public interest. In other words, it is justified. Now
this could be people in positions of responsibility such as a manager,
in law enforcement or in a caring profession. And a really good fictional example of, I think would
be Nurse Ratched from the movie, One Flew Over The Cuckoo s Nest . Uses the rules to dominate
and humiliate the patients under her care. Or these days I suppose a real life example could
be someone to demands the cancelling of someone they perhaps just don t agree with. Not just to de
platform them but actually destroy their lives, to destroy their income, their livelihood and
indeed anyone associated with them. And they can go back through years of social media posts,
interviews trying to find something they can be outraged by, or they can be outraged by on behalf
of someone else. Sometimes this type of sadist may claim to be a social justice warrior. Which
can be very difficult, even unhelpful to those who are genuinely trying to highlight an injustice or
debate something that they believe needs to change for the better. This kind of sadist just
wants to destroy. But the common behaviours and characteristics of this type could include being
pitiless, being course, actively seeking out rule breakers. They control and punish through being
merciless and believe that their position, their ideology gives them the right. Their targets are
beyond redemption. Lastly, there's Explosive Sadism. Now this could be characterised by
unpredictable explosions of uncontrollable fury and rage that can be both physical and
verbal attacks as pent up feelings of unfairness, humiliation, frustration are discharged. Now
Millan suggested that this type has features of Borderline Personality, and that they can
actually be quite contrite afterwards. So that is a brief outline of sadistic personality,
characteristics and traits, and indeed the four subtypes. As always, there's so much more
to cover. I could probably do a whole series on this if I would go more in depth. But as always,
if you have any comments or anything I may have missed, please feel free to use the comment box.
As always there are some interesting observations and conversations starting around these videos.
If you like this video, if you found it helpful or useful, please consider subscribing to my channel
for future updates on mental health related topics and until next time, thanks for watching.