Self-abasement

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

Self-abasement might have a religious aspect for those seeking humility before God, perhaps in the context of 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 can be said to be based in Freudian psychoanalysis.^{[citation needed]}