The Psychology of BDSM: Why Are People Drawn to It?

Most of the available evidence shows that the majority of BDSM enthusiasts are mentally healthy and typical in every respect except that they find traditional (“vanilla”) intimacy unfulfilling and want something more intense.

“People always ask if it’s normal to be interested in BDSM,” says Michal Daveed, a spokeswoman for The Eulenspiegal Society, a nonprofit organization in New York City that describes itself as the “oldest and largest BDSM support and education group” in the country.

“Normal is a funny word to describe a really widespread and diverse humanity. If your definition of normal is how many people are doing this, it’s way more people than you may think,” says Daveed. “And if your definition of normal is ordinary, the BDSM world is full of ordinary people whose sexuality happens to be hardwired a particular way.”

One landmark study published in 2008 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine backs Daveed up. (9) It found that people who engaged in BDSM were more likely to have experienced oral sex or anal sex, to have had more than one partner in the previous year, to have had sex with someone other than their regular partner, and to have taken part in phone sex, visited an internet sex site, viewed an X-rated film or video, used a sex toy, had group sex, or taken part in manual stimulation of the anus, fisting, or rimming.

However, they were no more likely to have been coerced into sexual activity and were not significantly more likely to be unhappy or anxious. Indeed, men who had engaged in BDSM scored significantly lower on a scale of psychological distress than other men.

 

“Our findings support the idea that BDSM is simply a sexual interest or subculture attractive to a minority, and for most participants not a pathological symptom of past abuse or difficulty with ‘normal’ sex,” the researchers concluded.

“BDSM is a healthy expression of sexuality,” says Filippo M. Nimbi, PhD, a researcher at the Institute of Clinical Sexology and in the department of dynamic and clinical psychology at Sapienza University, both in Rome.

Dr. Nimbi is also the coauthor of a study published in the March 2019 issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine that compared 266 consensual BDSM practitioners to 200 control subjects who described their sex lives as traditional. (10) Echoing the earlier study, the researchers found that the BDSM group tended to report fewer sexual problems than the general population.

“People engaging in BDSM are usually people who have thought a lot about their sexuality,” Nimbi explained in an email. “They have explored and faced their sexual boundaries. Basically, they know what they like, and they do it. This has a positive outcome on their sexual experiences and on the overall quality of their lives.”

Many people think it’s a pathology or a perversion to, say, want to be spanked hard and to be happy about that, he added. “We each develop our erotic fantasies from our different tastes, experiences, and curiosities, beginning in childhood and lasting until the end of our lives. Everyone is different. We can develop the same fantasy from different stories, and we can develop different fantasies from the same stories. Some people find in BDSM a way to be free, to get wild, to let go, and to play a different role from their everyday lives. And if they get satisfaction and respect the ‘rules,’ why should it be abnormal?”

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