A masochist is someone who derives pleasure, satisfaction, or relief from experiencing pain, discomfort, or humiliation. The term is most commonly associated with sexual arousal from physical pain or submission, but it’s also used more broadly to describe anyone who seems to seek out or tolerate suffering in everyday life. Understanding what masochism actually involves requires separating the clinical diagnosis from the much more common human experience of finding meaning or pleasure in discomfort.
Where the Word Comes From
The term was coined in 1886 by Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in his influential book on sexual behavior. He named it after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a 19th-century Austrian novelist whose 1869 novel “Venus in Furs” depicted themes of submission and erotic suffering. Krafft-Ebing justified the naming the same way “Daltonism” was named after Dalton, who first described color blindness. Sacher-Masoch himself was reportedly unhappy about having a psychiatric label attached to his name, but the term stuck and eventually entered everyday language far beyond its clinical origins.
Sexual Masochism as a Clinical Concept
In psychiatry, sexual masochism refers to a pattern of sexual arousal tied to being humiliated, bound, beaten, or made to suffer. The current diagnostic manual (DSM-5) draws an important line between the behavior and a diagnosable disorder. Sexual masochism becomes “Sexual Masochism Disorder” only when two conditions are met: the person feels genuine personal distress about the interest (not just embarrassment because society disapproves), or the behavior involves risk of serious harm. This distinction was deliberately built into the DSM-5 to avoid labeling people with a mental disorder simply for having unconventional sexual preferences.
This matters because masochistic fantasies and behaviors are far from rare. A systematic review of prevalence research found that BDSM-related fantasies are common in 40 to 70 percent of both men and women, and roughly 20 percent of people report having actually engaged in BDSM activities. Most of these individuals experience no distress and function perfectly well, which is precisely why the clinical threshold exists.
Beyond the Bedroom: Moral Masochism
Sigmund Freud identified a phenomenon he called “moral masochism,” where repressed guilt drives people to unconsciously seek out suffering or punishment. While Freud’s broader theories are debated, the core observation holds up in experimental psychology. In one study, people who recalled a time they had socially excluded someone voluntarily held their hands in painfully cold water longer than a control group. In another, participants who believed their lack of effort had financially harmed a partner imposed financial penalties on themselves. People who wrote about a past guilt-inducing event chose to give themselves stronger electric shocks than those who wrote about sadness or neutral topics.
This pattern, seeking discomfort to relieve guilt, shows up throughout history. Medieval flagellants traveled between towns publicly beating themselves to atone for perceived sins. In everyday life, the same impulse appears in subtler forms: overworking after a mistake, refusing comfort after a failure, or staying in unpleasant situations out of a vague sense of deserving it. When people casually say someone is “a masochist” for running ultramarathons or eating painfully spicy food, they’re tapping into this broader meaning.
Why Pain Can Feel Good
Psychologist Roy Baumeister proposed one of the more compelling theories: masochism functions as an escape from the self. His model suggests that the intense physical sensations of pain, or the psychological experience of submission and humiliation, narrow a person’s awareness down to the immediate moment. This strips away the burden of maintaining a complex identity, making decisions, and managing the constant mental chatter of self-awareness.
Baumeister noted that sexual masochism became more prevalent as Western culture grew more individualistic, placing greater psychological pressure on people to build and maintain a personal identity. In this framework, masochism isn’t about wanting to suffer for its own sake. It’s about using intense experience to temporarily shut off the exhausting parts of selfhood. The pain is the mechanism, not the goal.
How Consensual Masochism Works in Practice
Within the BDSM community, masochistic activities operate inside structured consent frameworks that distinguish them sharply from abuse or recklessness. The two most widely recognized models are SSC (Safe, Sane, and Consensual) and RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink).
SSC sets a baseline: activities should minimize harm, all participants should be in a clear state of mind (not under the influence of substances or in emotional crisis), and everything must be explicitly agreed upon. Consent in this model isn’t a single “yes” at the start. It involves negotiating specifics beforehand, maintaining communication throughout, and honoring safe words that can stop everything instantly.
RACK takes a slightly different approach by acknowledging that some activities carry inherent risk that can’t be fully eliminated. Instead of claiming anything is “safe,” RACK emphasizes that all participants must understand the specific risks involved and consent with that knowledge. This is informed consent: not just “I want to do this,” but “I want to do this and I understand what could go wrong.” Both frameworks place the power to stop an activity squarely in the hands of the person receiving pain or submission.
Masochism vs. Self-Harm
One common concern is whether masochism is just a dressed-up form of self-harm. Clinically, these are distinct behaviors with different motivations and structures. Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is defined as deliberately damaging your own body tissue without suicidal intent and for purposes that aren’t socially sanctioned. It typically functions as a way to regulate overwhelming emotions or resolve interpersonal distress.
Consensual masochism differs in several key ways. Sexual masochism disorder, as defined in the DSM-5, doesn’t even require physical injury or actual behavior to qualify. It can manifest purely through fantasies or urges, and when behavior does occur, it often involves forms of suffering like humiliation that don’t cause tissue damage at all. More importantly, consensual masochistic activity happens within a controlled context with negotiated boundaries and the ability to stop at any time. The intent is pleasure or connection, not emotional regulation through self-destruction.
That said, the line isn’t always perfectly clean. Someone could use BDSM contexts to seek injury for reasons that look more like self-harm than sexual expression. What distinguishes the two is the underlying motivation, the presence of genuine consent and control, and whether the person experiences the activity as positive or is using it to cope with distress they can’t manage otherwise.
Colloquial vs. Clinical Use
In everyday conversation, calling someone a masochist usually has nothing to do with sex or psychiatry. It’s shorthand for someone who voluntarily endures something unpleasant: the coworker who takes on impossible deadlines, the friend who keeps dating people who treat them poorly, the runner who signs up for another marathon in freezing rain. This casual usage captures something real about human behavior, the willingness to endure or even seek discomfort, but it flattens the complexity of why people do it.
The clinical term applies to a narrow slice of sexual behavior that only becomes a disorder under specific conditions. The psychological concept covers guilt-driven self-punishment. The colloquial meaning covers everything from genuine self-sabotage to the kind of voluntary suffering that builds resilience or identity. All three share a surface pattern of choosing pain, but the motivations, contexts, and consequences are different enough that lumping them together can be misleading.