Document Type
Main Theme / Tema Central
Abstract
According to Freud, the combination of children being sexual, and perhaps the repeated act of spanking, whipping, or beating, is believed to lead to a life of sadomasochism. If Freud’s theory is correct, children who have experienced spankings or whippings will tend to be, or would tend to want to be a sadomasochist. Through Freud’s psychosexual stages of development theory, a better understanding of the sexual deviation, “sadomasochism” will ideally be reached. The six psychosexual stages of development are oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital. Through each of these different stages, Freud believed that sexual outcomes originate. Perhaps Freud’s conclusions are true, but other social factors such as repression and knowledge of the social norm, allow sadomasochism to become better understood. Although supposedly uncommon, a better understanding of both the origins and the practice of sadomasochism, can allow it to become more socially acceptable and not such a taboo, allowing for more equality and less sexual preference profiling. Through a greater understanding and knowledge of both the history and the participants of Sadomasochism we as a society could come to a universal acceptance of this mysterious alternative lifestyle.
Recommended Citation
Ehrmann, Elizabeth
(2005)
"Sadomasochism According to Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development Theory,"
Culture, Society, and Praxis: Vol. 4:
No.
1, Article 8.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/csp/vol4/iss1/8