Self-abasement

Self-abasement is voluntary self-punishment in order to atone for some real or imagined wrongdoing.

Webster's Dictionarydefines "self-abasement" as:


 * 1. Degradation of one's self by one's own act.


 * 2. Humiliation or abasement proceeding from consciousness of inferiority, guilt, or shame.

Self-abasement might have a religious aspect for those seeking humility before God, perhaps in the context of a monastic or cenobitic lifestyle.

It also has a sexual and fetish aspect for those people who enjoy erotic humiliation and other related BDSM practices. Examples of self-abasement practices would include self-flagellation, bondage, torture, public humiliation including online humiliation.

In psychology, abasement is associated with shame (rather than guilt) and it is said to involve the reduction of the subject's self esteem. The notion of abasement was developed by H. Murray, following  Freudian psychoanalysis