Definition
The terms sadism and masochism were first used in 1886 by Richard von Krafft-Ebing in a scientific context in Psychopathia Sexualis. Here he refers to the works of the writers de Sade, whose novels mix pornographic content with fantasies of violence, and Sacher-Masoch, who in several works describes the gain in pleasure through pain and submission.
After Sigmund Freud in 1905 in his Three Essays on Sexual Theory presented sadism and masochism as illnesses arising from defective development in the child's psyche and thus fundamentally influenced further assessment of the subject for decades to come, the Viennese psychoanalyst Isidor Sadger finally shaped his article About the sado-masochistic complex for the first time the composite term "sado-masochism".
Colloquial usage
Sadomasochism - represented in all its variants by the letters SM - can also be found in the multi-layered acrtonym BDSM, which is made up of bondage & discipline, dominance & submission, sadism & masochism. In colloquial language, the term sadomasochism, or the abbreviation Sadomaso or SM, describes sexual practices from the field of BDSM without further specification. The term also often describes mixed forms of sadomasochism or BDSM with various fetishistic practices.
