I think the best etiology the moderns (after 1920) can muster on this issue is: a lack of breast-feeding and caressing at the infantile stage between 6 months and a year. In that scenario the mother stopped breast-feeding before the infant was 'done,' or the infant's connexion with her is in some other way interrupted. This makes the child what they call 'orally aggressive,' which then evolves into the sadomasochistic faculty if you will.
If this is so, there is not much you can do to re-determine yourself (at least until you've gained maximal self-acceptance.)
Wilhelm Stekel stands upon the determinating force of VIEWING violent activity at a very young inpressionable age - the excitement thereby confused with/fused into the sexuality.
Stekel states that "...in sadomasochistic men, the faithlessness and/or promiscuity of the mother/mother figure is extremely determining; positing for his sexuality either punishing sadism towards women, or submissive placativeness towards women who do not love him."
In my essay on this subject I extend this to "In sadomasochistic women, again there would be a type of 'Don Juan' character in the father, rake-hellishness and cavalier attitudes which create in the woman a similar punishing archetype, or a fixation upon men indifferent to her. How does this occur in the psyche?"
[Quote Stekel] "The parent is despised for the promiscuity; the hatred splits off and carries over to the entire sex; then, the sense of guilt and overcompensation result in a deification of the original, dishonored incest object.'
Deification! So the beloved is a god we worship - or gleefully blaspheme. But never again are we free of that god."
http://www.sternangel.com/whobecomes.html
I am finishing up reading "American Psycho" before I get back to JT. The sadism of that character, Patrick Bateman, is totally unsubstantiated and therefore it's very irritating to read. We're convinced he performs disgusting mutilations only because he can't get a good table at the swankest restaurant in town? Ridiculous. It had better end well.