Hi, I'm Dr. Tracy Marks, a psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos
in the wake of the recent mass shootings here in the US,
I've gotten a lot of questions
about what goes on in the mind of sadistic killers.
These people have to be mentally ill
to do such a thing, right?
Not necessarily.
As deranged as it is to intentionally take someone's life,
there's not one single motive
that explains everyone's behavior.
That is, people do it for different reasons.
And the behavior itself doesn't equate to a mental illness.
But the question got me thinking about sadism
and what it really means,
because on the one end of the spectrum is the sadistic acts
of killing and torturing.
And on the other end is more subtle forms of it,
what some people call everyday sadism.
Let me explain.
Sadism is the desire to intentionally harm someone
and derive pleasure from it.
The harm can be physical or mental harm.
The key difference between being cruel or mean
and being sadistic is getting pleasure
from inflicting the harm.
So for example, let's say you get into an argument
with someone and the person lashes out
with mean, deeply personal comments.
You're wounded by the words, and you start crying.
The non-sadistic person may feel satisfied
that they won the argument and shut you down,
but they also feel bad that they called you those names.
And they may not have expected you to be that hurt by them.
They may even justify their behavior
as a reaction to being mad or just popping off
and not thinking,
or having a bad day or something.
But at some level, they feel remorse
about how they conducted themselves
and that maybe they went too far.
On the other hand, the person with sadistic tendencies
will experience great satisfaction from seeing your pain
and knowing that they successfully hit the mark.
It gives them a deposit into their emotional bank,
like winning health points
when you destroy someone in a video game.
Sadism was included as a personality disorder
in the appendix of the third edition
of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published in 1987.
But in the fourth edition,
it was removed over concern
that medicalizing it as a disorder
would be a way for people to misuse it in the court system
and allow people to not be held responsible
for criminal acts because of having a disorder.
So it's no longer considered
an official personality disorder,
but many researchers believe that it is a real entity
that is separate from mean spirited aggression
that you can see in other conditions, like psychopathy,
narcissistic and antisocial personalities.
Here's how it was defined as a personality.
It was a pattern of behavior that starts in adolescence
and includes four of eight criteria.
Number one, use of physical cruelty or violence
in relationships to establish dominance.
Number two, humiliates or demeans people
in the presence of others,
unusually harsh treatment or discipline
towards someone under your control,
amusement from witnessing the psychological
or physical pain of others, including animals.
And I would add especially animals.
This is a 1987 criteria,
but if we fast forward to today,
cruelty to animals is considered a sensitive indicator
of psychopathy and sadism.
A child who tortures animals and enjoys it
is waving a huge red flag that says help me
before this aggression takes hold of me
and I start doing this to people.
Early professional intervention with a therapist
can really change the course of their life.
But I digress.
Back to the criteria.
Number five has lied to harm or inflict pain on others,
operates through intimidation or terror
to get others to comply,
restricts the autonomy of people that they're close to.
And this is a very controlling behavior,
not like not letting your spouse
or children socialize with people
if you're not around.
Number eight and the last one,
fascination with violence and weapons
or torture or injury.
For the diagnosis, you needed to have four of them
that you do most of the time.
But even though this diagnosis doesn't exist anymore,
this criteria sheds light
on what sadistic behavior looks like and what drives it.
Some of the motives are exerting dominance,
power and control over people.
It can also be driven by the need to seek revenge.
We tend to think of sadistic acts as physical violence
but there's more subtle forms of sadism
that people can engage in to inflict emotional pain.
For example, let's say you get something
that I feel I deserve.
I don't lose anything by not getting it
but I just don't like that you got it.
So out of revenge, I find a way to take from you
to even the score.
That taking can be humiliating you
in front of important people
or talking badly about you behind your back
and sabotaging something that you're trying to do.
Then when your efforts fail, I feel satisfied.
And all of this can happen in the background
without you ever knowing what I'm thinking about you
or plotting to do.
You may be thinking this sounds like a psychopath.
What's the difference?
Well, think of sadism as a character trait
that can be present in other personality disorders
or present even in people
who may not have a personality disorder
but have this ugly side that comes out sometimes.
Psychopathy is not a personality disorder
but a psychological construct
whereby a person has extreme lack of empathy,
shallow, emotional reactivity
and a low capacity for remorse,
just to name a few of the characteristics.
Here's one of the key differences
between psychopathy and sadism.
With psychopathy, people are indifferent
to the feelings of others.
Indifference means that they don't think
about them negatively or positively.
So a person with high psychopathy traits
can be cruel to you if it's necessary
to get to their end goal.
But they don't harm you for the pleasure of harming.
The fact that you were harmed doesn't even matter to them.
It's like, yeah, and.
It's a similar comparison
with antisocial personality disorder.
People with APD also have little regard
for others' feelings.
They may trample over you if you're in their way,
or they want something that you have,
like stealing from you,
but they don't weaponize your feelings.
So if I extort money from you and you're hurt by it,
oh well, but Tracy,
the antisocial is more focused on the money
that I stole from you.
I'm excited for the money that I now have to take vacation.
But for Tracy, the sadist,
the 50 grand that I got from you was nice,
but the real thrill is in seeing your reaction
to losing all that money.
I may not even do anything special with the money
because the extortion was not about the money.
It was about the fun of harming you.
And then the person
with narcissistic personality may hurt you
with put downs and insults.
But these efforts are to boost their own self-esteem.
It's like an even exchange.
I take from you to fill a void, to make myself whole.
Whatever you lose in the exchange
is just collateral damage to be expected
but I'm not feeding off your pain.
I'm really feeding off your ego strength
because mine is weak.
What does that mean?
I have a video talking about the ego
and how you want to have a strong one.
I'll have it linked at the end of this video.
What I've been talking about so far
is what we call pervasive sadistic behavior.
And this is where most of the behavior
in your relationships is driven
by this need to inflict pain or humiliation in people
for your pleasure.
But sometimes it's not pervasive.
Sometimes it's behavior that pops up
in everyday sadistic acts.
And this would be things like bullying,
internet trolls who leave cruel comments,
the envy filled person who is only happy
when people fail or do poorly,
the instigator who likes to stir up trouble
and turn people against one another.
If you're a "Game of Thrones" fan,
this would be Little Finger who said,
- Chaos is a ladder.
- He always had this satisfied smirk on his face.
These behaviors may not seem subtle
because they're still hurtful and destructive,
but they are subtle when you compare them
to the sadism of the serial killer,
which brings me to a quick point
that I want to make about diagnosis.
There's a paraphilia called sexual sadism.
A paraphilia is an intense sexual interest
in things other than genital stimulation
or activity with a mature consenting person.
They used to be called sexual perversions,
which is where the derogatory word pervert came from.
There are eight paraphilia, one of which is sexual sadism.
And this is where you become sexually aroused
by seeing someone suffer or from harming someone.
And as it turns out,
there's a relationship between sexual sadism
and serial killers, particularly the ones
who carefully choose their victims
with similar characteristics and inflict similar injuries.
These people aren't whimsically killing,
they plan an experience that includes the sadistic rituals.
That said, not all people with sexually sadistic fantasies
act on their fantasies.
Another paraphilia, sexual masochism,
is the opposite of sadism,
where you are the one aroused
by being the one who's humiliated, bound or made to suffer.
And there's groups of people
who voluntarily engage in BDSM activities,
which stands for,
bondage, domination,
sadism, masochism.
That's down a little bit of a rabbit hole
from the general topic of sadism,
but I wanted you to be aware that sadism
is a part of a paraphilic disorder,
but not its own disorder.
You can still think of it as a character trait
that can be present all the time
with lots of hostility and aggression,
or something that pops up on the occasional incident
of taking pleasure and seeing someone fail.
Watch this video
if you want to know more about antisocial personality disorder
and this one on the ego.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.