Perfect Victim
I’ve just about finished my second read of the book Perfect Victim. Master recently bought me a copy for my very own because I often refer to it as my “bible”.
I realize that there are two sides to every story, and that probably the book leaves a lot of the truth out. I once had some information about this story sent to me but my computer crashed before I could read it and I haven’t bothered trying to get it again. Because, in all honesty, it doesn’t change my basic attraction to the book. Not really.
It doesn’t matter if it was consensual or not, at least not to me. I’m sure it mattered a great deal to the man on trial! But however it actually happened between the parties, none of it changes the methods and details. And that’s where my interest lies.
One part of the book lists the steps, or techniques most often used to “break” or coerce a person into a desired behavior pattern and giving up any overt resistance. I have an extreme interest in this sort of brainwashing. Consensual slavery, or willfully giving up resistance, is NOT the same thing, in my opinion.
Within the dynamics of choosing not to resist, choosing to obey, choosing to submit, we have what I’ll call “slavery-lite”. When you delve into the process of coersion, or brainwashing, the choice to submit is erased. There is no choice because there is no other conceivable alternative but to submit.
In certain circles it’s referred to as Internal Enslavement. Which is possibly a nicer way of saying brainwashed.
Brainwashed is defined as “Intensive, forcible indoctrination, [...] aimed at destroying a person’s basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.” So it’s not, to me, a matter of choice. It’s not that I would choose to obey because I’m a consensual slave, but that I would choose to obey because it would cease occuring to me not to. Whether born out of fear, which seems to be one of the most oft-used methods of brainwashing and coersion, the outcome is pretty intense.
The techniques, or steps, to brainwashing are listed as follows, defined by the expert psychologist hired for the case:
1. Sudden, unexpected abduction, followed by isolation. Refuse to answer questions, place them in a cell-like environment, remove their clothes and begin the process of humiliation and degradation.
2. Physically and sexually abuse the person to expose the level of their vulnerability.
3. Remove normal daylight patterns. Keep them in an all-dark or all-light environment. Removing that normal sequence is very disorienting.
4. Destroy the person’s sense of privacy. Be present during urination, defecation, menstruation. Control the when and how.
5. Control and reduce food and water. Foster extreme dependence. Enforce a sense of gratitude from the person for the food and water by random bouts of extreme denial (let them believe they would die without your mercy).
6. Punish with no apparent rhyme or reason.
7. Require that the person ask for permission for anything or any behavior.
8. Establish a pattern of sexual and physical abuse. This cements to the person that this is they way things will be from now on.
9. Continued and extreme isolation. Reduce the person’s world to one source of any information. You become their only point of contact.
10. Present a model or goal of future behavior of how to please you.
11. Threaten the person’s loved ones with a similar fate should the person fail to comply.
12. Threaten to sell the person to someone even worse than yourself.
13. Continue to beat and torture at irregular intervals.
14. Irrelevent leniancy. Allow small privileges for no reason, creating confusion and making the person plaint.
15. Get it in writing. Create contracts and confessions that the person must sign.
16. Make yourself seem omnipresent. Incorportate new behavior goals with tiny steps of freedom, but appear “out of nowhere” to eliminate any lingering sense of not being watched, or of ever being alone. Make the person believe you are everywhere and nowhere and that no place is safe from you.
And that’s it in a nutshell. 16 easy steps to ownership. ;-)
Obviously, if attempting to apply those to myself, several of them are impossible. Along with wanting to experience the levels of internal enslavement, also comes a desire not to be in jail on Master’s part. So there will be no abductions, there will be no threats made to my loved ones. And until the kids are firmly established as independent adults, a lot of that list is impossible anyway. But having the basic steps allows for modification. And my extreme interest and cooperaton will, I think, make it even easier, rendering a lot of those steps as unnecessary anyway.
More and more often I come to the conclusion that I am not a submissive. I have never wanted to submit.
I am a masochist. I want to be conquered. As I find myself unable to relate to submissives in many ways, and unable to understand the submissive desires, I’m beginning to accept that I’m a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. I don’t know that I have a submissive bone in my body. I don’t “get” the spiritual posts that I read from other submissives. They baffle me, to be honest. Well, they bore me actually. Mean as that may sound, it’s the truth.
I’m not about spiritual submission I guess. I’m about being beaten. Mentally and physically.
Masochism: The condition in which sexual gratification depends on suffering, physical pain, and humiliation.
Gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one’s own actions or the actions of others, esp. the tendency to seek this form of gratification.
I’m not seeing any spirituality in that definition. Nor can I combine methods of pain used to reach spiritual pinnacles with that definition.
I dunno. I’m way, way out of time anyway and I’m not sure where I’m headed with the rest of this. Maybe I can pick it back up later.
~cunt
Tags: brainwashing, perfect victim, torture
Uncategorized | kaya | 
Tuesday November 6th, 2007 4:23pm
the part of that book i liked the most was when the psychiastrist (or howeveryouspellit) for the prosecution was asked by the prosecutor (McGuire, i think?) to point out the steps from your list in the kind of material the guy had in his home. he promptly reeled off for just about anything she handed him, the steps involved.. even the most innocuous of things!
Its a good book: thought provoking, but someone reading this book from the bdsm perspective *must* remember that it was written by a prosecutor who isn’t into it at all. Whatever the truth of what happened in that household, only the victim, the “bad guy” and his wife (names escape me) know what happened.
its a good book, a good read, and one i think every budding sub/masochist should read at some point.
keth
xx
It is a good book, one that I think was probably a major contributor to my journey into BDSM. It was definitely one of my first exposures to it. And, I think, one of the very few that didn’t focus entirely on the physical stuff but delved more into the mental, which is where a lot of my interest lies.
(janice was the wife’s name, btw. :D)
Kaya,
As a vanilla who writes about BDSM, I don’t get the spiritual submissiveness angle either. In John Warren’s book, his sub, Libby, writes a chapter about the subs viewpoint and I just didn’t get it. I can understand the emotional side, the pleasure one might feel from letting one’s dominant have his/her way. I can also understand the purely masochistic side that you talk of.
As for your personal goal, I don’t understand that desire, but I do wish you the best of luck in achieving it. I suspect that even with your active cooperation, it will be a hard road to follow. Based on the past that you’ve journaled, if anyone can stay on that path, it will be you. Don’t let my inability to understand the desire or the condemnation of others stop you. (like THAT is going to happen:) )
Dave
What book is that, by John Warren?
It will be a hard road to follow, I know. And we may never be able to get there, fully. But half of the fun is the journey, right? :D
I really loved this post, kaya. I have read Perfect Victim a few times and own a copy of it. Growing up with a Dad that was a correctional officer, we talked a lot about true crime and I love to read lots of true crime books and Perfect Victim was very intense and interesting. I love your line “I want to be conquered”. That speaks so loudly to me. I can really understand that. I can be very strong and not as submissive as Master Anakin likes and I really love when he is able to “conquer” me. It is one of the biggest turn ons for me.
Great post!
BIG HUGS
padme amidala
Thanks padme! Nice to see you here, btw. I’m so glad people are following the new link! :D
Kaya, I love the distinction that you make between masochism and submission! Your posts are always so instructive, I am glad that you have the thoughts that you do and that you choose to share them. Your posts always give me lots to think about.
Radha
Thanks Radha. I think there is huge distinction between masochism and submission. One doesn’t necessarily mean the other at all. Seems like a lot of people don’t get that. *shrug*
I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “spiritual” submission.
Can you expand on that?
I guess it’s in reference to people who seem to reach some pinnacle of spiritual joy based solely on acts of submission. Sort of like the same peace and joy and contentment that a person gets after prayer or meditation or any other religious moment.
I’m not knocking it, if that works for a person that’s wonderful. I just don’t experience that myself. Submitting, for submission’s sake, is not a journey of spiritual awakening. It’s not a method of finding peace within myself. That seems to be how some people experience it. I don’t.
Cool.
That’s kinda what I thought but I wasn’t sure so thanks for expanding on it :)