Plummer (1995) argues that we are living in a time of 'new sexual stories'. This, combined with arguments that we are seeing the advent of the 'sexual citizen', who refuses to be marginalized on account of his or her sexuality, produces new sexual subjectivities that demand recognition and respect. In this article, we report on an investigation of a sexual story that is not new in itself but one that is yet to be fully explicated. This story is one involving dominance and submission. A hermeneutic phenomenological analysis (Ricoeur, 1981) of World Wide Web sites concerned with sadomasochism was conducted to examine the discursive resources drawn on in this paradoxical world. The findings are discussed in relation to the 'transformation of intimacy ' (Giddens, 1992) and rise of the 'sexual citizen' in late modernity.

Traditionally, psychologists have researched bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism (BDSM) and its participants from an external perspective, seeing it as pathology. However, there is now a growing body of research aiming to challenge this perspective. This article examines some of the ways BDSM has been reconceptualised by researchers who reject the pathological focus, distinguishing between transgressive and coercive sexualities. We focus on the lived experience of BDSM participation to further illuminate these sexual practices. A descriptive phenomenological analysis of four interview transcripts was employed, with the purpose of producing a general structural experience of BDSM participation, which aims to further understanding of this complex phenomenon. The essential structures of the BDSM experience are discussed in terms of authentic fantasy, rejection of social norms and non-sexual positive outcomes.

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The fundamental attribution error (Heider, 1958; Ross, 1977) has been extensively researched and explanations sought within a social cognitive framework. This work is reviewed, and it is noted that there is no unifying theory to account for the extensive catalogue of experimental work. Social cognitive explanations have proposed distinctions between perceptual, inferential and motivational functions within the person to account for the phenomenon. A phenomenological critique of this approach is then advanced. Drawing on the thought of Merleau-Ponty (1962) it is argued that our understanding of the phenomenon is enhanced by focusing not 'inside' people, but on interactions between them. In many ways, this brings us back to the project of Gestalt psychology, Heider's original framework for studying attribution.