
Source: K. Ramsland
When I worked with Elmer Wayne Henley Jr, an accomplice to serial killer Dean Corll, I devoted a section in The Serial Killer’s Apprentice to the nature of sadism and the horrific torture that Corll inflicted on his victims. His aggressive rapes and murders became addictive to him until he seemed out of control. Whenever Corll got the itch to satisfy his lust for boys, he’d get agitated. He’d drive around and chain-smoke. He’d get out the handcuffs. He’d position his homemade restraint board. He’d resist attempts by his accomplices to deter him. The need to painfully violate someone was on him.
Similarly, my work with Dennis Rader, the “BTK” serial killer in Wichita, Kansas showed a link between his sadistic torture fantasies and his compulsive sex drive. The image of females, both adults and children, bound and helpless, aroused him. He made hundreds of drawings of tortured females to entertain himself: his own private pornography. He also drew his actual victims in various poses and took photos and trophies so he could relive his erotic domination. Nothing else fully satisfied him. He was a sexual sadist.
Sexual sadism is a neurodevelopmental dysfunction involving the desire to dominate others, usually to inflict pain. Although opinions differ on its origin, the condition appears to form from certain associations about pleasure and pain during the early psychosexual stages of adolescence. Even so, more than one-third of sexual sadists report discovering their perverted desires well past their teen years; they enjoy the feeling of power and authority that arises from controlling and harming a submissive human being.
Researchers Shaffer and Penn (2006) found that many sadists begin as masochists who enjoy pain or humiliation. Some who try out a dominant role find it preferable. The types of activities sadists enjoy include whipping, binding, piercing, electrocuting, hanging, raping, cutting, stomping, beating, or choking. They might use substances to induce altered states or keep their victims captive. They usually include some form of psychological torture.
Former prison psychologist Al Carlisle, who evaluated Ted Bundy, said that sexual sadists evolve through fantasy and compartmentalization. A fusion of anger and lust gives their fantasy life a sense of purpose and direction. Mentally, they rehearse the scenario that excites them so often it becomes easy to act when an opportunity occurs. “Because they might have uncomfortable memories from childhood abuse, disappointment, frustration, humiliation, or being bullied or disempowered, they use fantasies to escape, to feel powerful.”
Trapnell, Poulter, and Paulhus (2024) found that narcissism and sadism were the strongest predictors of porn use and a high-level sex drive in males. Their subjects were Canadian university students; 779 completed online questionnaires. An age range of 17 to 29 pruned the list to 701. Females were included in the mix. The subjects responded to the Short Dark Tetrad Inventory (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism) along with questions about their sex drive and pornography use. “We hypothesized that narcissism and sadism would be independently associated with a composite of the two sexuality items. Multiple regression analyses confirmed this prediction. Males scored higher on all tetrad variables as well as the sexuality variables.”
Previously, psychopathy was believed to be a significant predictor of sex drive, yet earlier research had already found that narcissism and sadism, not psychopathy or Machiavellianism, were most clearly implicated. The current study confirmed these findings with more precise measurements; it also included questions about pornography use as an indicator of sexual motivation.
An obvious limitation to this study is the population. Results from college students in a “psychology subject pool” might not generalize to the greater population, especially an antisocial or criminal population. Still, it backs up other research.
It’s not necessarily groundbreaking to find that narcissism, sadism, and sex drive correlate, but the study may weaken cultural notions that link psychopathy to an aggressive, sadistic sex drive. In addition, the researchers refined a focus for future study.