The desire to hurt others usually occurs in individuals who themselves have once experienced humiliation and resentment. By causing suffering, they compensate for their feelings of inadequacy and receive moral satisfaction from it.
For many of us, the image of a sadist is a vicious person with a face twisted with rage. However, in practice this is often not the case. Many quite successful and seemingly prosperous people turned out to be sadists. How to determine such inclinations in a person if he does not manifest them openly? The main methods include:
1. Emotional coldness, lack of empathy. The sadist believes that the world around him is hostile, and everyone wants to humiliate him and hurt him. However, this is nothing more than his emotional subconscious projection. He believes that all individuals around him think in the same categories as he does, therefore he believes that he needs to be strong, decisive and domineering. Sadists consider emotions to be a manifestation of weakness. This is probably why, so often among middle and top managers you can find people with similar inclinations.
2. Touchiness and desire for revenge. Such people are confident that they are always right. Also, such individuals believe that they have the right to punish others, since they once did this to them. People with sadistic inclinations believe that "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," the concept of forgiveness is unacceptable to them.
3. Power, desire to manipulate. Often sadists choose a “victim” for themselves and begin to “educate” it for themselves. After a while, such a person falls into complete emotional and physical dependence on his master. This helps the sadist to realize his pernicious desires for owning another personality in every sense.
This is one of the common signs, if you find something similar in yourself, this does not mean that you have sadistic inclinations. Only an experienced psychiatrist can determine this, and even then not always.
