In normal individuals the idea of love is inseparably associated with tenderness, caressing gestures, words or glances, readiness on the part of either mate to go to extremes in order to enhance the loved one's enjoyment of the amorous relationship, or to protect him against all dangers or suffering.
In normal individuals, love and suffering are antithetic terms, love meaning joy and pleasure, (sexual and egotistical), suffering being only conceivable when the craving for love is ungratified, when the lonely lovers are parted by life, when one of them has been robbed by death of his mate, etc.
Algolagnists. There are abnormal human beings, however, known technically as algolagnists (from algos, pain, and lagneia, enjoyment), who cannot imagine or enjoy love when it is entirely dissociated from some form of suffering.
The active algolagnists must inflict some pain, physical or mental, upon their mate in order to enjoy the pleasures of love to their full extent. The passive algolagnists only attain the highest degree of amorous satisfaction when they are submitted by their mate to painful or humiliating treatment.
Active algolagnists are known more commonly as "sadists," an expression created by Moreau de Tours. Krafft-Ebing, the most famous writer on sexual perversions coined for passive algolagnists the expression "masochists."
The word sadist is derived from the name of Marquis de Sade, a French pervert of the eighteenth century, whose life and writings well illustrate the form of love which is constantly associated with acts of cruelty.
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade was born in Paris, June 2 1740, the offspring of an aristocratic family of Provence. Among his ancestors was the Laura of Petrarca's sonnets.
At fourteen, he joined a cavalry regiment. He went thru the Seven Years War during which he witnessed the most ruthless atrocities. On his return, at the age of twenty-seven, he married, but soon after his marriage was arrested for some deed of cruelty committed in a house of prostitution.
His father's death left him heir to an important government position but his life of excesses gave him little time to attend to his duties.