Scary stuff.
(Compiled from a few different articles about torture with slight manipulations for the words Master and slave.)
There is one place in which one’s privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one’s body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The Master invades this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and, often, sadistically and sexually, with undisguised pleasure. Hence the all-pervasive, long-lasting, and, frequently, irreversible effects and outcomes of torture.
In a way, the tortured slave’s own body is rendered her worse enemy. It is corporeal agony that compels the slave to mutate, her identity to fragment, her ideals and principles to crumble. The body becomes an accomplice of the Master, an uninterruptible channel of communication, a treasonous, poisoned territory.
It fosters a humiliating dependency of the slave on the Master. Bodily needs denied – sleep, toilet, food, water – are wrongly perceived by the slave as the direct causes of her degradation and dehumanization. As she sees it, she is rendered bestial not by the sadistic bullies around her but by her own flesh.
The concept of “body” can easily be extended to “home”. This intends to disrupt the continuity of “surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others. A sense of cohesive self-identity depends crucially on the familiar and the continuous. By attacking both one’s biological body and one’s “social body”, the slave’s psyche is strained to the point of dissociation.
“As the gap between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ deepens, dissociation and alienation increase. The slave that, under torture, was forced into the position of pure object has lost his or her sense of interiority, intimacy, and privacy. Time is experienced now, in the present only, and perspective – that which allows for a sense of relativity – is foreclosed. Thoughts and dreams attack the mind and invade the body as if the protective skin that normally contains our thoughts, gives us space to breathe in between the thought and the thing being thought about, and separates between inside and outside, past and present, me and you, was lost.”
Torture robs the slave of the most basic modes of relating to reality and, thus, is the equivalent of cognitive death. Space and time are warped by sleep deprivation. The self (“I”) is shattered. The tortured have nothing familiar to hold on to: family, home, personal belongings, loved ones, language, name. Gradually, they lose their mental resilience and sense of freedom. They feel alien – unable to communicate, relate, attach, or empathize with others.
Torture splinters early childhood grandiose narcissistic fantasies of uniqueness, omnipotence, invulnerability, and impenetrability. But it enhances the fantasy of merger with an idealized and omnipotent (though not benign) other – the inflicter of agony. The twin processes of individuation and separation are reversed.
Torture is the ultimate act of perverted intimacy. The Master invades the slave’s body, pervades her psyche, and possesses her mind. Deprived of contact with others and starved for human interactions, the slave bonds with the Master. “Traumatic bonding”, akin to the Stockholm syndrome, is about hope and the search for meaning in the brutal and indifferent and nightmarish universe of the torture cell.
The Master becomes the black hole at the center of the slave’s surrealistic galaxy, sucking in the slave’s universal need for solace. The slave tries to “control” her Master by becoming one with him (introjecting him) and by appealing to the master’s presumably dormant humanity and empathy. This bonding is especially strong when the Master and the slave form a dyad and “collaborate” in the rituals and acts of torture (for instance, when the slave is coerced into selecting the torture implements and the types of torment to be inflicted, or to choose between two evils).
Obsessed by endless ruminations, demented by pain and a continuum of sleeplessness – the slave regresses, shedding all but the most primitive defense mechanisms: splitting, narcissism, dissociation, projective identification, introjection, and cognitive dissonance. The slave constructs an alternative world, often suffering from depersonalization and derealization.
Sometimes the slave comes to crave pain – very much as self-mutilators do – because it is a proof and a reminder of her individuated existence otherwise blurred by the incessant torture. Pain shields the slave from disintegration and capitulation. It preserves the veracity of her unthinkable and unspeakable experiences.
This dual process of the slave’s alienation and addiction to anguish complements the Master’s view of his quarry as “inhuman”, or “subhuman”. The Master assumes the position of the sole authority, the exclusive fount of meaning and interpretation, the source of both evil and good.
Torture is about reprogramming the slave to succumb to an alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the Master. It is an act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination. Torture has no cut-off date. The sounds, the voices, the smells, the sensations reverberate long after the episode has ended – both in dreams and in waking moments. The slave’s ability to trust other people – i.e., to assume that their motives are at least rational, if not necessarily benign – has been irrevocably undermined. They feel anxious because the Master’s behavior is seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable – or mechanically and inhumanly regular.
“The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the slave by bringing a superior outside force to bear on her will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the slave regresses, her learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. She begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated frustrations.”
Inevitably, in the aftermath of torture, slaves feel helpless and powerless. This loss of control over one’s life and body is manifested physically. This is often exacerbated by the disbelief many slaves encounter, especially if they are unable to produce scars, or other “objective” proof of their ordeal. Language cannot communicate such an intensely private experience as pain.
“Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant to language … All our interior states of consciousness: emotional, perceptual, cognitive and somatic can be described as having an object in the external world … This affirms our capacity to move beyond the boundaries of our body into the external, sharable world. This is the space in which we interact and communicate with our environment. But when we explore the interior state of physical pain we find that there is no object ‘out there’ – no external, referential content. Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it draws us away from the space of interaction, the sharable world, inwards. It draws us into the boundaries of our body.”
Okay. So it’s shocking, scary, unbelievable. And makes me twitch and drool. That’s what I want. That’s what I almost had. That’s what I’ll have again.
Mark my words.
I’m a determined little cunt.
And to whoever left that last deleted snarky comment? Fuck off. I’m done playing with you people. Don’t like me? Hit the X. Don’t agree with me? Hit the X.
I’m done explaining things. I’m done coddling the lightweights. You want education, go to wikipedia. You want happy shit, go to Disney world.
This is what I do. This is what I write. Don’t want to read it? X on out of here, bitch.
kaya
Tags: brainwashing, pain, torture
Uncategorized | kaya | 
Thursday March 2nd, 2006 8:11pm
Hi Kaya
I’m shocked no comments yet. Well what can I say except I really don’t understand why anyone would want to regress to a pre-separation and individuation state. I guess if I were going to explore BDSM in a personal way I would be a dom although I really can’t imagine wanting yet another person to be responsible for. One of my frustrations in my work is that after years of training some people still need me to think for them, granted I like the idea of being irreplaceable I prefer not needing to micromanage unless it’s my idea. As for my towel in the closet comment on yesterdays post – I got the idea from one of your posts on being objectified and I totally get what you mean about the houseplant. I however wouldn’t consider a houseplant an object so I guess I just misunderstood your goal (his goal. So I have to ask; what is a snarky comment and why do you delete them? Best Wishes and many HUGGSSSSSSSS – Kathryn
You certainly are the most determined little cunt I’ve ever heard of ;)
I loved the ending of your post… enough is enough uh?
That’s my girl :-)
Personally – it makes me drip and drool as much as you. I tend to prefer mental and emotional torture over physical … but it’s not like I’ll get to choose. I’ll just get to … experience. Feel. Wallow.
Damn, and I missed snarky comment? Bet I can guess what it said – those assholes have no imagination …
Torture
Hello Kaya, my name is chance and i have been reading your blog with great interest the last month or so. You are a very nice writer. i don’t usually converse with people on the net too much but felt compelled to write. i keep my own blog but am still new to this world. An earlier post you made encouraged people to say hi, so i am. i was upset by your post the other day about your ‘disconnection’ with your Master. i can relate and i know a little of what you speak. Its a solid bond people like us seek, and it can be extremely fragile as well. Like the article on torture says, it has to involve both parties, interacting constantly to acheive an escalation of the Master and slave, or in my case the Mistress and slave relationship. i too seek what is portrayed in the excerpts from the torture article. i too have had that to a certain degree and know what sleep deprivation, brain washing through ritual, and constant torture can make me feel like. Sometimes i beleive i will never be that free again. i remember crying many times, not from the torture but from the idea in my head i was letting my Mistress down because i couldn’t take what was being given. i remember bawling about this after a particularlly grueling session, i told my Mistress i was sorry and she told me not to worry, that i did good, and that i lasted much longer than i thought i had. i remember instantly how good i felt, all i cared about was whether she was pleased and proud of me. She made me an unthinking, eager and compliant recipient of any torture, degradation, or mind control she could think of. i think here is the M’s job, to constantly reinforce, to take the thinking away, to take the individual away.
Anyway i just wanted to say hi and to say that in the strange way of modern times, i’m with you. For all the emails you probably get on the negative side i just wanted to be one that said, i understand, i want it to, i have had it and i will get it again because i am a determined little bitch.
chance
http://destinyandherpetchance.blogspot.com/
damn!
I loved the end of this post – sorry pretty much skipped through the essay bit – been reading official soundign stuff all day and this sounded a bit too like that for me to handle right now – but the end bit? Loved it!!
Now I’m pissed off at missing the sarky comment though. Serves me right. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – working gets in the way of so much internet time, its just not funny!
Glad you got that determination back in focus. My HR dept keep telling me its good to have a goal. (If they say it, it must be true, right?)
cuddlybum
Oh such beautiful stuff, darling. I wish I’d written half those things. Can we practice our Olympic Synchronized Twitching and Drooling Team routine together? I’ll ask my master if we can use the gym…
PS. Hope my last comment didn’t weird you out, if I did please forgive me? I was totally zoned and zonked from Mardi Gras, I should know better than to try to make complete sentences when I’m half gone. I admire you and your Master so much, I think you are both brave and bold and beautiful and I’m on your side. The only X’s I’ll be clicking for you are kisses and hugs:
XOXOXOXOXO ;-)
“Torture is about reprogramming the slave to succumb to an alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the Master. It is an act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination.”
I was training my slave to approach submission in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, my living arrangement with my wife did not allow enough hands-on time to fully indoctrinate the slave to choose to stay with me. I did punish her for no reason. I used pain as a learning tool. I used her without any thought of her discomfort or pleasure. I trained her to accept my use of her body as my right; to prove to her that she was my property and that I wanted her as my property. She loved being put to the test; she loved me. I loved her in a more paternal manner than she preferred. She wanted a more romantic version but I needed to reserve that for my wife. I promised that I would accept her permenently, collared and pierced with my rings. I offered her the position as family slave, but she left. I sometimes feel that I pushed too hard and too quickly over the year that we were together.