ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with one of the more extreme variations, that kind of pleasure which depends on pain. This is deeply disturbing to many outsiders to the genre and yet central to the selves and lives of its practitioners. In the higher primates and humans, the relation between social status and sex hormones is not so clear. It certainly seems to have little to do with such exotic erotica as the whips and chains of the leather bars of reality and imagination. An important clue to the sources of sadism is the widespread evidence that some people, some of the time, if not many, much of the time, are titillated and even deeply fascinated by the sufferings of others. One final point on the relationship between seizing pleasure and inflicting pain. In The Federalist James Madison made the cautionary announcement that if human beings were wholly benign, then it would be unnecessary to have any legal system whatever.
