phenomena that are fundamentally normal. The
love-bite may be said to give us the key to that perverse impulse which
has been commonly called sadism.

There is some difference of opinion as to how "sadism" may be best
defined. Perhaps the simplest and most usual definition is that of
Krafft-Ebing, as sexual emotion associated with the wish to inflict pain
and use violence, or, as he elsewhere expresses it, "the impulse to cruel
and violent treatment of the opposite sex, and the coloring of the idea of
such acts with lustful feeling."[83] A more complete definition is that of
Moll, who describes sadism as a condition in which "the sexual impulse
consists in the tendency to strike, ill-use, and humiliate the beloved
person."[84] This definition has the advantage of bringing in the element
of moral pain. A further extension is made in Fere's definition as "the
need of association of violence and cruelty with sexual enjoyment, such
violence or cruelty not being necessarily exerted by the person himself
who seeks sexual pleasure in this association."[85] Garnier's definition,
while comprising all these points, further allows for the fact that a
certain degree of sadism may be regarded as normal. "Pathological sadism,"
he states, "is an impulsive and obsessing sexual perversion characterized
by a close connection between suffering inflicted or mentally represented
and the sexual orgasm, without this necessary and sufficing condition
frigidity usually remaining absolute."[86] It must be added that these
definitions are very incomplete if by "sadism" we are to understand the
special sexual perversions which are displayed in De Sade's novels. Iwan
Bloch ("Eugen Duehren"), in the course of his book on De Sade, has
attempted a definition strictly on this basis, and, as will be seen, it is
necessary to make it very elaborate: "A connection, whether intentionally
sought or offered by chance, of sexual excitement and sexual enjoyment
with the real or only symbolic (ideal, illusionary) appearance of
frightful and shocking events, destructive occurrences and practices,
which threaten or destroy the life, health, and property of man and other
living creatures, and threaten and interrupt the continuity of inanimate
objects, whereby the person who from such occurrences obtains sexual
enjoyment may either himself be the direct cause, or cause them to take
place by means of other persons, or merely be the spectator, or, finally,
be, voluntar