Masochism.. Nature or Nurture?

Masochism… Nature or Nurture ‘The enjoyment of an activity that appears to be painful or tedious’ - Oxford Dictionary I was sat here struggling what to write about for this blog, I was tempted to give up and start again tomorrow when a heavily tattooed and pierced young lady walked past and gave me this idea. As she walked past I thought to myself, to look in that way whether people like it or not is very committed, this in terms of the time spent designing, in terms of the money spent and most of all in terms of the pain that she must’ve gone through in order to have the colourful ink underneath her skin… surely she can’t enjoy the pain of the needle ripping through the skin? But there is more to it than that. The first thing I thought, ‘beauty is pain’ so this young girl mixes pain and pleasure together. This works by feeling satisfied in the end product, she is willing to sit through hours of the pain in which she is learning to enjoy as she knows that come the end of it she is going to be happy with the end product, the temporary pain is easy enough to put up with for her for the permanent ink that is left under her skin. So thus far into my blog I am realising that nurture is the key to masochism. Secondly, the pain isn’t actually what these people enjoy... they get made out to be these almost psychotic humans where in theory it’s the endorphins that are released that they are really enjoying. The thought that it may be the pain killing endorphins that people are enjoying really make it a confusing concept, but it’s very much like the feeling people get off doing different drugs. The small amount of pain that they receive in order to have this feeling of almost numbness which in itself makes the individual feels safe. It has the same effects as morphine, minus the mind numbing part which makes you look and end up feeling a little silly. So again I feel that even this must be nurture because you must learn to feel the pain before getting your reward, punishment and reward? So to conclude this, I’ve come to the conclusion that no one is born a masochist, you must go through the pain a number of times before you realise that you like the effect of the endorphins that come into play seconds after.