In 1886, the sexologist Kraft-Ebbing treated the Marquis de Sade’s work as a compendium of sexual pathologies and gave the term ‘sadism’ its clinical definition.
The Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740 – 1814) was an 18th century French nobleman and author, who wrote several books when he was imprisoned for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography. His corpus contains graphic descriptions ranging from acts such as blasphemy, sexual intercourse, incest, sodomy, flagellation, coprophilia, necrophilia and the rape, torture and murder of adults and children, interspersed with discourses on religion, politics, sexuality, and philosophy. Alarmingly, he wrote from experience.
Beginning at the age of 23, when he abducted and flagellated a prostitute, the Marquis de Sade was often imprisoned for short stints for similar offences. Initially his victims were bought off by his mother-in-law Madame de Montreuil and appeals to the French King resulted in his pardon. However, in September 1772 he was sentenced to death in absentia, for sodomy and poisoning his victims, but he escaped to Italy. He revealed his location to his mother-in-law and this time she was not going to allow him to get away with it. She informed the authorities and he was arrested and imprisonment in the Fortress of Miolans, but he escaped again in April 1773 and returned to France.
Thereafter throughout his life De Sade played cat and mouse with authorities and was committed and released from prison and asylums, like a revolving door. He was even imprisoned in the Bastille, but moved to an asylum two days before the outbreak of the French Revolution with the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. On the day he was to face the guillotine, 27 July 1794, his nemesis Robespierre and his supporters fell from power, ending the Reign of Terror and paving the way for De Sade’s release once again, but not for long.
Neither prison nor asylum acted as a deterrent and very much like a serial killer, whenever De Sade was out of prison he did not stop acting out his sadistic sexual fantasies. What was referred to in court as ‘debauchery and immoderate libertinage’ in reality comprised abducting, flagellating and inflicting severe acts of sadism on his victims, even poisoning those who tried to turn on him.
Finally in 1801 he was again admitted to the asylum, however, he was allowed to write, attend balls, the theatre and parties and had his mistress living with him. De Sade wrote many of his works during his spates of long imprisonment such as 120 Days of Sodom. In April 1807, he completed Les journées de Florbelle, a ten-volume libertine novel. Only his death on 2 December 1814 due to “prostrating gangrenous fever”, released him from prison forever.
The Dark Tetrad: Sadism
Dr Delroy Paulhus, professor at the University of British Columbia, is considered monumental in his research and along with Kevin Williams is a co-founder of the Dark Triad, a psychological theory on personality, developed in 2002, encompassing Machiavellianism, Psychopathy and Narcissism. In a 2023 YouTube video, Dr Jordan Peterson interviews Dr Paulhus on sadism, and how he expanded the Dark Triad to the Dark Tetrad.
In this video Dr Paulhus explains how he observed sadism in regular people when they wallow in fights breaking out in contact sport, such as ice hockey, or become addicted to playing violent video games, or watching violent movies or tv-series. Globally violence among football fans and during South African rugby games is not uncommon. Spectators in the front rows of boxing matches are often delirious when blood splatter all over them.
Sadism versus Violence
In my opinion, we need to differentiate between violence and sadism. Violence is a sudden impulsive explosion of anger, a blood lust – an ancient warrior hacking the body of an enemy to pieces on a battlefield is violent – the action is out of control, fuelled by rage and executed usually in the heat of the moment. It could be provoked, such as in road rage, or unprovoked, just because tempers are running high. Violence is fire, it erupts, rages and consumes.
Sadism is controlled, calculated, precise and chillingly prolonged – the execution is cold-blooded and deliberate. Sadism is ice, it takes time. It can be physical, sexual and psychological.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association, refers to Sexual Sadism Disorder, a paraphilia, as the “recurrent and intense sexual arousal from the physical or psychological suffering of another person, as manifested by fantasies, urges, or behaviours. Serial killers Ian Brady and Ted Bundy admitted to reading and admiring De Sade.
BDSM or “bondage/discipline dominance/submission sadomasochism” is a colloquial term referring to the subculture of individuals who willingly engage in consenting forms of mild or simulated pain or humiliation. It is not a diagnosable condition in the DSM and it is not a crime, since it is consenting behaviour among adults.
In a 2015-article titled The Dark Tetrad Structural Properties and Location in the Personality, researchers Janko Mededovic and Boban Petrovic of the Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research, Belgrade, Serbia, cite a definition: “sadism represents a combination of different behavioural, cognitive and interpersonal characteristics related to pleasure in connection with inflicting physical or emotional pain on others”, “to control, punish and humiliate others.”
Sadism and Serial Killers
Although some serial killers might be extremely violent, by hacking victims to death, not all can be diagnosed with Sexual Sadism Disorder, which is defined as experiencing sexual arousal in response to inflicting and watching extreme pain, suffering or humiliation of non-consensual victims (as described by De Sade in his novels).
South African serial killer, Moses Sithole is a case study of when the Dark Tetrad becomes even darker, for not only did he inflict physical pain, he was also a master at inflicting psychological pain. In 1989 Moses Sithole was convicted for rape and sentenced to seven years in the Boksburg prison. He was a model prisoner and released in 1993. A month after his release the first body was discovered in Atteridgeville. From August 1994 until July1995 he left 10 bodies in Atteridgeville, from May 1995 he left five bodies in the Onderstepoort-Rosslyn-Bon Accord cluster and on 19 September 1995, we discovered a total of 11 bodies in the open veld in front of the Boksburg prison. They were in different stages of decomposition, clearly indicating he had left them there over a period of months.
What was so alarming on this crime scene, was that they were all lying within walking distance of each other. Only when observing the cluster of bodies on one day all together, did the penny drop, which I had missed on the previous crime scenes, where we discovered bodies one after the other over periods of time. The close proximity of these bodies on all three locations, revealed to me the magnitude of Moses’ ability at inflicting psychological torture on his victims.
Imagine a woman desperate for work, meeting a charming man, who raises her expectations at finding employment. Donning his psychopathic cloak – one of the Dark Triad personalities – and literally dressing up the part of a successful businessman, Moses had perfected his role as a charmer, adjusting his sales-talk to suit the particular needs of the woman. He raises her hopes and dopamine levels – she goes home telling her family of this wonderful job opportunity that came up and that she has another appointment the next day. When she meets him for the second time, she is dressed in her finery, so pumped up with dopamine and anticipation that it would override any intuitive alarms of not getting into a car with a stranger. Whether Moses took the women during the day or night to the crime scenes is unclear, but my guess would have been late afternoon.
The women clearly walked towards their deaths – most were still wearing their shoes and clothes. What pretence he had in convincing them to walk with him is unclear, but he must have parked the car close enough to the locations of previous victims. Suddenly the woman is confronted with one or several decomposing bodies, intestines bulging out of torn, rotten flesh, maggots, flies, stench, faces eaten by insects and animals – and the signs of bondage, ligatures around their hands, feet and necks. She screams, he smiles.
This is psychological sadism, equivalent to a torturer slowly unpacking his instruments of torture in full view of a bound victim.
Sadistic fantasies
In a YouTube video on the role of perverse fantasies, Dr Jordan Peterson and his guest Tim Ballard, discuss how thousands of micro-progressions follow as sex-offenders twist and tweak initial normal fantasies so they eventually cross the border into perverse fantasies, becoming micro-violations of their own conscience.
In my opinion, the fantasies of serial killers were never ‘normal’ – they were perverse and sadistic from the start, as young as two years old, as Melanie Klein had found. Also, serial killers do not have a conscience. (See my previous articles and videos on my Theory on the Origin of Serial Killers for explanations).
Dr Peterson is right in the sense that they tweak their fantasies, for as I explained, reality is never as perfect as fantasy and like a movie director calling for a second shot at a scene, they and change the details in their fantasies – but unlike a movie scene there is only one take on a crime scene, so the serial killer has to recast a new victim every time.
Moses Sithole’s sequence of crime scenes revealed he twisted and tweaked his fantasies – a pattern of micro-progression, as Dr Peterson would call it, clearly emerged.
He tied their hands in front, but then they would be in his way when he raped her, so he tied them at the back. He strangled her with a ligature, but she could suffocate too fast. If he inserted a stick, like a garotte, he could have her grasping for air, prolonging her death – extending his sadistic needs to watch her die. Eventually, as seen on one of the Boksburg crime scenes, Moses progressed to a stage where he turned the victim on her stomach and bent her feet up to her back and tied a ligature from her feet to her neck. As her legs grew painfully uncomfortable in this position, she would relax her legs, slowly strangling herself while he watched her prolonged death. He self-stimulated while watching her and probably talked to her. That is pure sadism. Much different from spectators getting excited at watching a violent fight on a sports field.
Moses Sithole was sentenced in 1997 to 2410 years in prison. I have heard that by now (2024) he had completed degrees in law and theology and that he had reformed and became religious. When Judge David Curlewis sentenced him, he expected Moses to spend the rest of his life confined to the C Maximum Facility of Pretoria’s Central Prison. Prisoners are kept in solitary cells and are allowed only an hour’s exercise each day in a small, paved courtyard, like De Sade was confined to a solitary cell with only limited access to exercise in the courtyard of the Bastille.
Clearly prison was not a deterrent for De Sade. On the contrary the incarceration provided the perfect breeding ground for him to expand and indulge in his sexual fantasies, as his literary legacy proves. This begs the question: When serial killers, whose murders are fuelled by their fantasies, are imprisoned for decades, does this not also provide them ample opportunity for developing and expanding their fantasies and since they do not have access to victims, what do authorities expect will happen when they are released and are at last afforded open season to act out those pent-up frustrations?
Top image: The Marquis de Sade by H. Biberstein Bibliothèque des Curieux, Paris, 1912 (Public Domain)
