BDSM involves a diverse range of practices usually involving playing games in which one person assumes a dominant role and another person assumes a submissive role. These activities often involve physical restraint, power plays, humiliation, and sometimes but not always, pain. The person playing the dominant role controls the action, while the person in the submissive role gives up control. Many people have a preferred role they play most of the time, although some people enjoy switching between roles.
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The practice of BDSM carries with it a certain amount of social stigma. Health professions have long had a tendency to view the practice as pathological and even perverted. Common assumptions about people who participate in BDSM are that they psychologically anxious and maladjusted; that they are acting out a past history of sexual abuse; and that they are attempting to compensate for sexual difficulties. However, the small amount of research evidence available suggests that these assumptions are probably not true. For example, a telephone survey found that people who had participated in BDSM in the previous year were not more distressed than others; were not more likely than others to have ever been sexually coerced; and did not report more sexual difficulties. However, to be fair to the mental health profession, it only considers sadism and masochism as mental disorders if they cause the person clinically significant distress or a non-consenting person has been involved. So BDSM practiced between consenting persons who are happy with what they are doing is not officially considered pathological.
