compulsive or develop perverse fantasies as a way to feel better about themselves. Fetishism may occur. Sadomasochistic fantasies and enactments may become paramount. Exhibitionism may be developed and acted on. Exhibitionism can easily be a chosen perversion for the person who is shame-based. The person who is shamed, instead of hiding, calls attention to himself. He may expose himself in public, in an automobile or by standing in a window.
The ADD child may have suffered from a lack of recognition of his real and valid feelings, wants and needs by parents and teaches who expected him to be other than the way he was. The exhibitionist seeks to redress this lack of recognition. He also uses his perversion as a strategy for dealing with shame by displaying what he really wants to hide – himself. Sadomasochistic fantasies and enactments are common among shame-based people who have difficulty imagining that relationships can include mutual respect, dignity and pride. People who have grown up with shame, like many ADD people, often believe that fulfilling, exciting relationships must be shame-based.
Men pay hundreds of dollars to see dominatrixes who physically humiliate them and repeatedly tell them something is wrong with them. The submissive man, fearing abandonment, tries to please the “mistress” by becoming whoever she wants him to be, no matter how humiliating or de-humanizing her demands may be. The reasoning is such: “If anyone saw the real me, they would be revolted. I must please the mistress by being a person she would be proud of.” Pleasing the dominant parental figure is a way on undoing the pain of having a parent that couldn’t be pleased. The S&M enactment thus turns trauma into triumph because the