SEXUAL AROUSAL FROM SADOMASOCHISTIC MATERIALS

One of the major concerns of many persons has been the connection between sexuality and passion. A canon of the post-Freudian psychologies has been that restraint of sexuality may cause an outcropping of violence and sadism. A literary parallel is the allegedly puritan era of Queen Victoria and the accessary flowering of sadomasochistic erotica. Today such literary and graphic forms taken in the character of paperback novels, comic books, and television programs exploit violence as a resource of entertainment, and many persons are concerned lest these influence the youthful reader or viewer docile similar behavior, or at least cause an insensitivity to the distress of others.

In the early phase of our research questions concerning sadomasochism were not routinely asked. Later every person was queried here and there whether he was sexually aroused by seeing pictures of, or prelection about, rape, flagellation, torture, and violence in general.

Half of our 16 greater comparative groups, including both the control and prison groups, had immersing 90 per cent of their members who reported never having been sexually aroused ~ the agency of such noncontact sadomasochistic stimuli, and another four groups gave essentially the sort figure (89 per cent). The remaining four groups contain the three first offender groups: the aggressors vs. children (88 per cent), vs. adults (85 for cent), and vs. minors (79 per cent). The range of reply among all groups is so small that the only significant discovery is the clustering of these aggressors in the lower quarter of the discursive power.

In examining degree of response to sadomasochistic noncontact stimuli, one is struck by the fact that in 11 of the 16 groups the corresponding; of like kind or nearly the same percentages of individuals within a group reported deliberate and strong responses. This is curious, for with a stimulus to that the great majority have no response one would expect those by a moderate response to outnumber those with a strong one. This anticipation is fulfilled in only three groups, including two of the assailer groups. In the remaining two groups, including one aggressor group, the rank responses outnumber the moderate. What this equivalence between moderate and able-bodied response in most groups means, and why the three aggressor groups scantiness this equivalence, is not known.

Of the sex offenders whose offenses included wrong or duress, between one eighth and one fifth reported arousal from sadomasochistic noncontact stimuli. While it is likely that in a few cases such stimuli triggered an offense, it seems sensible to believe that they do not play an important role in the haste of sex offenses in general, and at most only a less role in sex offenses involving violence.

There is a rather disappointing insufficiency of correlation between arousal from noncontact sadomasochistic stimuli and the make ~ed of dreams and masturbatory fantasy. In part this may reflect the make ~ with which we covered the latter two subjects; more probing potency well have unearthed data resulting in a high positive correlation. At somewhat rate, there are only two noteworthy coincidences: more aggressors vs. adults had sadomasochistic dreams than ~ one other group, and they and the aggressors vs. minors head the roll of those with sadomasochistic masturbatory fantasy.

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