Masochistic personality: an empirical study

Abstract

The authors collected therapists' ratings of 10 masochistic personality traits in 59 patients who were in psychotherapy. The traits were found to be common and to have good internal consistency. These data were presented to the Advisory Committee on Personality Disorders of the Work Group to Revise DSM-III to facilitate discussion of the possible inclusion of masochistic personality in the revised version of DSM-III.