The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Sadistic Fantasy, Sadistic Behaviour and Offending
Abstract
Summary: This paper explores the genesis of sadistic behaviour in men and its relationship to crime. Sixteen male special hospital patients, each with a diagnosis of psychopathic disorder, formed the basis of this descriptive study. In only three cases were the crimes explicable in terms of external circumstances and personality traits. The offences of the remaining 13 cases became comprehensible only when the offender's internal circumstances were explored: investigation revealed repetitive sadistic masturbatory fantasies which had spilled over into overt behaviour because the patients had felt impelled to seek and create increasingly dangerous in vivo‘try-outs' of their fantasies. The paper discusses the crucial link between sadistic fantasy and behaviour.
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Citations
Cited by
Sexual Homicide: A Motivational Model
BURGESS, A. W., HARTMAN, C. R., RESSLER, R. K., DOUGLAS, J. E., & McCORMACK, A. (1986) · Journal of Interpersonal Violence · doi:10.1177/088626086001003001 · Cited by 276
The presumptive role of fantasy in serial sexual homicide
(1989) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.146.7.887 · Cited by 269
Sexual Homicide: A Synthesis of the Literature
Chan, H.-C. (., & Heide, K. M. (2009) · Trauma, Violence, & Abuse · doi:10.1177/1524838008326478 · Cited by 167
What Violent Offenders Remember of their Crime: Empirical Explorations ∗
Evans, C. (2006) · Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1080/j.1440-1614.2006.01833.x · Cited by 25
A framework for understanding sexual violence: Incentive-motivation and hierarchical control
Toates, F., Smid, W., & van den Berg, J. W. (2017) · Aggression and Violent Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.avb.2017.01.001 · Cited by 21
Metadata
- Authors
- MacCulloch, M. J., Snowden, P. R., Wood, P. J. W., & Mills, H. E.
- Venue
- British Journal of Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Published
- 1983-07
- Volume
- 143
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 20-29
- ISSN
- 0007-1250 (ISSN-L)
- 1472-1465
- OpenAlex
- W2136399315
- Cited by
- 300
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 5.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Sadistic Fantasy, Sadistic Behaviour and Offending. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1192/bjp.143.1.20
- The paper
- MacCulloch, M. J., Snowden, P. R., Wood, P. J. W., & Mills, H. E. (1983). Sadistic Fantasy, Sadistic Behaviour and Offending. British Journal of Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.143.1.20
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
