The development of sexuality begins in early childhood and is vital to a normative sexual development over the lifespan. Unfortunately, this developmental process can be disrupted by many traumatic events. Of these, childhood abuse may be the most damaging: it has been shown to disrupt the natural development of sexuality, one of the manifestations being increased tendencies towards sexual paraphilias, especially sexual masochism and sadism, which can be particularly harmful in their more extreme forms. The current study sought to investigate links between three types of childhood abuse: psychological, physical, and sexual–and the genesis of adult sadomasochistic sexual tendencies, and how the relationship between child abuse and sadomasochism differs by gender.

An online survey was conducted on a sample of 1219 participants who were queried regarding childhood psychological, sexual, and physical abuse. Based on the results of life history items, the participants were separated into the categories “abused” and “non-abused”. Both groups were then given a Masochism and Sadism survey with items adapted from Fisher et al. (2011). For analysis, sadistic and masochistic orientations were partitioned into severity levels of light and heavy masochism, and light, heavy, and passive sadism.

The results confirmed that childhood abuse, especially sexual, increases sadomasochistic tendencies. These increases varied by gender such that abused males exhibited more sadistic preferences and females more masochistic. Levels of sadism and masochism varied with history of abuse and gender. The analyses also resulted in triple interactions for both masochism and sadism, as well as in several simple effects. There were no gender differences for heavy masochism and passive sadism, however, light masochism was more prominent in females, and heavy and light sadism was found more commonly in males. Additionally, the presence of any form of abuse was connected with significantly higher heavy, light and passive masochism and sadism.

Differing types of childhood abuse, as well as gender, affect sadomasochistic preferences in adulthood, and the magnitude of these preferences.