The highest that a man can attain is the consciousness of his own sentiments and thoughts; knowledge of himself, which teaches him to know intimately also the natures of others.
Sadism is a disorder of the environment, to be referred therefore to definite influences in childhood. Of course, a disposition toward this paraphilia exists; it is the same disposition which all parapathies have in common: a strong impulsive life. The parapathic is a phenomenon of reversion. On this basis, the sadism is more strongly accentuated; it persists beyond the infantile period which belongs to all people; it is frequently turned into masochism as a result of the consciousness of guilt; but it remains anchored in the unconscious. The psychogenesis of this paraphilia goes back to the earliest years of childhood and appears to one who does not know as a native disposition, since the precipitating causes have fallen under repression (Burgess, 1989).
As SADISM is a form of psychosexual infantilism, the impulse shows an obsessive character and manifests itself as repetition compulsion. In all cases of sadomasochism we shall find the entire instrumentarium of infantilism and with it a well-developed fetishism accompanied by its most important phenomenon, flight from the partner. Careful analysis shows that all these cases are obsessive parapathies. The obsessive parapathy seeks to overcome the inner resistances through a compulsion; it binds the impulse, as a result of the displacement of affect, through an obsessive symptom (Faller, 1988)
The displacement of affect can be released only through analysis. The affect which is associated with the specific scene permits a transformation of the pain to pleasure. It is strange that the anæsthesias of the parapathies, which we have hitherto designated as hysteria, have never been considered from the standpoint of displacement of affect, but have been conceived merely as conversion symptoms......
