The term “sadism” was originally coined by Kraft-Ebing (1886) after Marquis de Sade, who wrote novels in which he described scenes of torture and killing in a sexual context (Hucker, 1997). Krafft-Ebing (1886) defined sadism as follows: Sadism is the experience of sexually pleasurable sensations, including orgasm, produced by acts of cruelty…It may also consist of an innate desire to humiliate, hurt, wound or even destroy others in order thereby to create sexual pleasure in one’s self (Kraft-Ebing, 1886, p.109). Almost 130 years later, the current definition of sexual sadism as defined in the DSM-5 (2013), has not fundamentally changed from Krafft-Ebing’s original term ‘‘sadism’’. Sexual sadism disorder (SSD) is one of several paraphilic
