Sadistic personality disorder

Sadistic personality disorder is an obsolete term for a proposed personality disorder defined by a pervasive pattern of sadistic and cruel behavior. People who fit the proposed diagnosis were thought to have a desire to control others, accomplished through physical or emotional violence. The diagnosis was proposed in the appendix of the DSM-III-R but was never adopted for clinical use, and later editions of the DSM, DSM-IV, DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5, removed it, in part because psychiatrists believed it could be used to legally excuse sadistic behavior.