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Current Mood: 
sleepy
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Penitent Jezebel
03 January 2009 @ 07:29 am
21 December 2008 @ 07:14 am
My recent personality class has had me reading a lot of Freud. Being a psychology major, I suppose that's necessary, although I never cared much for the psychoanalytic approach. In fact, I rather despise the inherent sexism in his stage theory of development. But I digress. Freud has some very interesting, and I think, quite logical perspectives on taboo.
Beyond case studies with his clients, Freud spent a lot of time analyzing folklore and mythology. His particular interest in these stories lie in the way many broach tenuously moral subjects. He believed that these fictions were an acceptable mask for our inner dark desires.
Pretty much everyone is aware of the fate of Oedipus (the origin of the Oedipal complex). But I doubt many are aware of the significance of the story as a cover for our tender psyches. Yes, Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, which Freud claims is every boy's childhood fantasy (there is a somewhat divergent reciprocal for girls). But the importance of the story is that he didn't know he was killing his father and marrying his mother. Thus he is absolved of guilt. It created an acceptable excuse for the realization of his dark desires. And that is what Freud saw in folklore and mythology. They were an excuse. A way of creating a story or a world where the taboo becomes acceptable, and we can experience our unconscionable desires vicariously through these characters.
I like this concept because I feel it accurately portrays part of my submission. I appreciate being told to do all the dirty kinky things I really want to do, because it reconciles my desires with my should self-image. A harsher way of putting it: It places the blame on someone else's shoulders. I can still be the innocent and pure conventional girl some part of me thinks I should be, because I'm being made to those things that soil me.
This, I think, contributes to my interest in abusing ambien for play. It impairs me so much I have almost no control in normal movement (I have to crawl because I can't balance myself enough to walk), much less the ability to refuse an advance or reject a guided action. And thus it absolves me of guilt. I can do those things dirty things I so desperately want to do because I have no control in the matter.
I think this is also why I enjoy the idea of sexual black-mail so much. And reluctance play. I can at least pretend to be the good girl whose forced into "bad" acts by a depraved second party.
Beyond case studies with his clients, Freud spent a lot of time analyzing folklore and mythology. His particular interest in these stories lie in the way many broach tenuously moral subjects. He believed that these fictions were an acceptable mask for our inner dark desires.
Pretty much everyone is aware of the fate of Oedipus (the origin of the Oedipal complex). But I doubt many are aware of the significance of the story as a cover for our tender psyches. Yes, Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, which Freud claims is every boy's childhood fantasy (there is a somewhat divergent reciprocal for girls). But the importance of the story is that he didn't know he was killing his father and marrying his mother. Thus he is absolved of guilt. It created an acceptable excuse for the realization of his dark desires. And that is what Freud saw in folklore and mythology. They were an excuse. A way of creating a story or a world where the taboo becomes acceptable, and we can experience our unconscionable desires vicariously through these characters.
I like this concept because I feel it accurately portrays part of my submission. I appreciate being told to do all the dirty kinky things I really want to do, because it reconciles my desires with my should self-image. A harsher way of putting it: It places the blame on someone else's shoulders. I can still be the innocent and pure conventional girl some part of me thinks I should be, because I'm being made to those things that soil me.
This, I think, contributes to my interest in abusing ambien for play. It impairs me so much I have almost no control in normal movement (I have to crawl because I can't balance myself enough to walk), much less the ability to refuse an advance or reject a guided action. And thus it absolves me of guilt. I can do those things dirty things I so desperately want to do because I have no control in the matter.
I think this is also why I enjoy the idea of sexual black-mail so much. And reluctance play. I can at least pretend to be the good girl whose forced into "bad" acts by a depraved second party.
Current Mood: 
enthralled
enthralled21 December 2008 @ 07:10 am
I have terrible insomnia. A side effect, I think, of my hypo-mania. I bring this up because it has lead me to the most amazing discovery. In an effort to combat my sleeplessness, I was prescribed the sleep aid Ambien. It's been a dream come true, putting me out in less than 15 minutes. However, I have recently taken to checking my e-mail, playing a few video games and otherwise occupying myself rather than laying down immediately after popping the pill. Apparently you are not supposed to do this (which is probably why it's so fun). Within about a half hour my body gets heavy and the room starts to spin (mildly, not nauseatingly), so much so that I have trouble just crawling across the room, let alone walking. Everything looks different, almost delirious. It's absolutely delightful. It only makes me wish I had someone to take advantage of me in this state. Must file this new knowledge away for future reference.
Current Mood: 
hopeful
hopeful21 December 2008 @ 07:02 am
I've slowly digressed to just reciting psychological theory, but I'm going to share one of my favorite studies: the Milgram Study on Authority. I think it might do a good job of explaining the mentality of a submissive and the role of the Dominant. Well at least some aspects of it.
In this study, participants were recruited for a "teaching" experiment. Two participants were brought in at a time. Each was randomly assigned to the role of either "teacher" or "student". In actuality, the assignment was rigged and one of the participants was actually a confederate working for the lab. The true participant was always assigned to be the teacher and the confederate was always assigned to the student.
The student was taken into a back room and had electrodes attached to his body which would deliver an electrical shock. After seeing the student strapped in, the teacher was taken into another room and set up with a device which would administer shocks to the student. For each incorrect answer to a series of questions, the teacher was to administer a shock to the student. The voltage of the shocks would increase over time, starting with something like 10 volts and intensifying from there. The highest level was marked with XXX, and deemed near fatal.
In the beginning the student would answer questions with ease, but eventually started to make mistakes. In actuality these "mistakes" were pre-determined and the responses of the student were taped and thus identical between sessions. As the shocks rose in voltage, the "reactions" of the student became more and more intense. He started to scream in agony. He complained of chest palpitations. He refused to participate and eventually, at the last setting, the line went dead and he didn't respond.
If at any time the teacher objected to the study and wanted to quit, the researcher would state that "it is important for you continue". "The study requires that you continue".
It was assumed that very few individuals, only true sociopaths, would ever reach the highest level of shocks, the XXX voltage. However, the results astonished them. Nearly 80% of participants went all the way to the top. And although they were clearly and markedly distressed about the situation, at no time did any of these individuals leave or refuse to continue.
I think these findings are amazing! It's proof that almost everyone is susceptible to authoritarian direction. The important factor is how it's delivered. These experiments took place at either Harvard or Yale (I can't recall which at the moment), and the participants were directed by a supposed expert wearing a white lab coat who should, reasonably, know better than they. When the same experiment was replicated in an office outside of the prestigious university, the concordance rate dropped. When administered in an abandoned warehouse, it dropped further still. When administered by a seeming non-expert it dropped again. When the researcher was out of the room (and communicated only over intercom) it dropped again. There are so many variations done of this study that it is impossible to really remember them all.
But anyhow, in a sense, authority is all about appearance. It's all about presence. If properly led, people will follow. So this is another reason why I think domination and submission may be ingrained in the larger society as a whole.
In this study, participants were recruited for a "teaching" experiment. Two participants were brought in at a time. Each was randomly assigned to the role of either "teacher" or "student". In actuality, the assignment was rigged and one of the participants was actually a confederate working for the lab. The true participant was always assigned to be the teacher and the confederate was always assigned to the student.
The student was taken into a back room and had electrodes attached to his body which would deliver an electrical shock. After seeing the student strapped in, the teacher was taken into another room and set up with a device which would administer shocks to the student. For each incorrect answer to a series of questions, the teacher was to administer a shock to the student. The voltage of the shocks would increase over time, starting with something like 10 volts and intensifying from there. The highest level was marked with XXX, and deemed near fatal.
In the beginning the student would answer questions with ease, but eventually started to make mistakes. In actuality these "mistakes" were pre-determined and the responses of the student were taped and thus identical between sessions. As the shocks rose in voltage, the "reactions" of the student became more and more intense. He started to scream in agony. He complained of chest palpitations. He refused to participate and eventually, at the last setting, the line went dead and he didn't respond.
If at any time the teacher objected to the study and wanted to quit, the researcher would state that "it is important for you continue". "The study requires that you continue".
It was assumed that very few individuals, only true sociopaths, would ever reach the highest level of shocks, the XXX voltage. However, the results astonished them. Nearly 80% of participants went all the way to the top. And although they were clearly and markedly distressed about the situation, at no time did any of these individuals leave or refuse to continue.
I think these findings are amazing! It's proof that almost everyone is susceptible to authoritarian direction. The important factor is how it's delivered. These experiments took place at either Harvard or Yale (I can't recall which at the moment), and the participants were directed by a supposed expert wearing a white lab coat who should, reasonably, know better than they. When the same experiment was replicated in an office outside of the prestigious university, the concordance rate dropped. When administered in an abandoned warehouse, it dropped further still. When administered by a seeming non-expert it dropped again. When the researcher was out of the room (and communicated only over intercom) it dropped again. There are so many variations done of this study that it is impossible to really remember them all.
But anyhow, in a sense, authority is all about appearance. It's all about presence. If properly led, people will follow. So this is another reason why I think domination and submission may be ingrained in the larger society as a whole.
Current Mood: 
excited
excited21 December 2008 @ 06:57 am
In conversing with a fellow submissive, the topic shifted to the role of culture and group dynamics in determining what is and isn't acceptable: in other words the concept of Social Deviance. My field (Social Psychology) has spent a great deal of time researching group influence and the cultural impact on morality. I couldn't begin to explain (much less remember) them all. However, there were three main concepts I took away from my coursework which may bear some relevance to the culture-moral debate.
The first is that we (and by we, I mean the human race) look to others for answers. This is especially true when the subject is ambiguous or ambivalent. If you can't reach a decision yourself it seems only natural to look to others for a response. But this drive to fit in (or at least not go against the grain of society) happens even when we know or believe the decision to be wrong. So many studies have been done on this subject, but the most amazing are those where the subject in question wasn't something murky like morality and sexual deviance, but rather cold hard facts. Take the question 2 + 2. Everyone with half a brain knows this equals 4. But if we hear five or six people before us say its 8, well, we're very likely to, at least publicly, agree that it equals 8. Some of the studies that investigated this phenomenon are just amazing. Ask me if you want more details.
Another concept of interest is the Social Learning Theory. It basically says that we develop our beliefs and behaviors watching those around us. The most famous experiment examining this effect is the “Bobo Doll Experiment”. Children were asked to watch an experimenter interact with a bobo doll (for those that done know, a bobo doll is one of those fair filled tubes with sand at the bottom that bounces back up after you hit it). Half the children witnessed the experimenter treating the Bobo doll respectfully by patting it, talking to it and even hugging it. The remainder of the children, however, witnessed the experimenter abusing the bobo doll by beating it, yelling at it, throwing it around the room. When these children were given the opportunity to play with the bobo doll by themselves, they replicated the behavior they had witnessed, sometimes even expanding on the original scene. One girl took off her shoes and start smacking the bobo doll with them, even though the experiment had never done so.
This theory has several implications for BDSM. First it may explain some of the abuse that reportedly occurs (I've not encountered any myself, but I'm admittedly rather inexperienced) in BDSM relations. Since it is well documented that individuals who received domestic or sexual abuse in the past are more likely to commit it themselves (I think its called a reduced threshold), it is no surprise that this lifestyle may draw type of individual.
But the theory can also explain why a negative stigma is so common for BDSM. The very fact that there is a stigma in some sense proliferates the stigma. The negative impression of BDSM is something that's all around us. It's in the news, the movies, it's something our parents and teachers and friends and acquaintances have all said (at some time or another). In some cases there are even rules against BDSM such as the law against having BDSM paraphernalia on some military bases . Thus, if they are constantly surrounded with all this negative talk, is it really a surprise that many adopt it.
The first is that we (and by we, I mean the human race) look to others for answers. This is especially true when the subject is ambiguous or ambivalent. If you can't reach a decision yourself it seems only natural to look to others for a response. But this drive to fit in (or at least not go against the grain of society) happens even when we know or believe the decision to be wrong. So many studies have been done on this subject, but the most amazing are those where the subject in question wasn't something murky like morality and sexual deviance, but rather cold hard facts. Take the question 2 + 2. Everyone with half a brain knows this equals 4. But if we hear five or six people before us say its 8, well, we're very likely to, at least publicly, agree that it equals 8. Some of the studies that investigated this phenomenon are just amazing. Ask me if you want more details.
Another concept of interest is the Social Learning Theory. It basically says that we develop our beliefs and behaviors watching those around us. The most famous experiment examining this effect is the “Bobo Doll Experiment”. Children were asked to watch an experimenter interact with a bobo doll (for those that done know, a bobo doll is one of those fair filled tubes with sand at the bottom that bounces back up after you hit it). Half the children witnessed the experimenter treating the Bobo doll respectfully by patting it, talking to it and even hugging it. The remainder of the children, however, witnessed the experimenter abusing the bobo doll by beating it, yelling at it, throwing it around the room. When these children were given the opportunity to play with the bobo doll by themselves, they replicated the behavior they had witnessed, sometimes even expanding on the original scene. One girl took off her shoes and start smacking the bobo doll with them, even though the experiment had never done so.
This theory has several implications for BDSM. First it may explain some of the abuse that reportedly occurs (I've not encountered any myself, but I'm admittedly rather inexperienced) in BDSM relations. Since it is well documented that individuals who received domestic or sexual abuse in the past are more likely to commit it themselves (I think its called a reduced threshold), it is no surprise that this lifestyle may draw type of individual.
But the theory can also explain why a negative stigma is so common for BDSM. The very fact that there is a stigma in some sense proliferates the stigma. The negative impression of BDSM is something that's all around us. It's in the news, the movies, it's something our parents and teachers and friends and acquaintances have all said (at some time or another). In some cases there are even rules against BDSM such as the law against having BDSM paraphernalia on some military bases . Thus, if they are constantly surrounded with all this negative talk, is it really a surprise that many adopt it.
Current Mood: 
thoughtful
thoughtful21 December 2008 @ 06:53 am
Another area I'm fascinated by is the phenomena of punishment. What is it? Why do we do it? What's does it accomplish? What warrants it? I think the vast portion of the world would answer these questions very differently than the relatively small subset of kinky individuals I surround myself with. And why is that?
Most people (as in the mundane and vanilla) probably believe punishment to be intimately associated with a personal violation, especially of a moral nature. While I would assume no small majority of the people involved in BDSM find punishment associated, at least in part, with pleasure. This pleasure could be derived either by doing the punishing or receiving the punishment. But I wonder, of course, if this context of pleasure in punishing is something that really does translate to the general population. As a culture obsessed with punishing wrongs rather than solving the problems, that there must be some inherent satisfaction in it. Most people are just too judgmental or close-minded to acknowledge it.
Most people (as in the mundane and vanilla) probably believe punishment to be intimately associated with a personal violation, especially of a moral nature. While I would assume no small majority of the people involved in BDSM find punishment associated, at least in part, with pleasure. This pleasure could be derived either by doing the punishing or receiving the punishment. But I wonder, of course, if this context of pleasure in punishing is something that really does translate to the general population. As a culture obsessed with punishing wrongs rather than solving the problems, that there must be some inherent satisfaction in it. Most people are just too judgmental or close-minded to acknowledge it.
Current Mood: 
nerdy
nerdy21 December 2008 @ 06:41 am
I'm very interested the role of power exchange in all forms of social interaction (not just sexual). I think people assume, to a certain degree, a stereotypical role in every interaction. When speaking to your boss, you assume the role of the dedicated worker. When ordering dinner you're playing the customer. When explaining an idea you become the teacher. And every role carries with it some degree of domination and some degree of subservience. They are built into the structure of the interaction and likely influenced by cultural norms and associations. For instance, the role of the parent is inherently dominant, while the role of a child inherently submissive.
But the interesting part of power exchanges, at least to the casual observer, lies in the obvious and numerous clashes. That is when both parties vie for power or inexplicably give it up. I think there are two reason these come about. The first is role confusion. Stereotypically the doctor is dominant while the patient submissive. But in the service industry, the customer is typically dominant while the supplier subservient. A clash may occur when the doctor assumes he's talking to a patient while the patient really considers himself a consumer and the doctor a service provider. Hence both parties take the dominant role and thus clash when other doesn't submit.
This role confusion may even result from culture clashes, since some roles have distinctly different qualities in different cultures.
Another possible reason for power clashes is individual preferences (in psychology, this would be called “individual differences” but I never liked that. We're more the same than we are different). I imagine this concept is appealing to most people. It's basically rooted in personality theory. Some individuals have a preference for the dominant role and others have a preference for the submissive. It's part of who they are; an aspect of their personality.
But the interesting part of power exchanges, at least to the casual observer, lies in the obvious and numerous clashes. That is when both parties vie for power or inexplicably give it up. I think there are two reason these come about. The first is role confusion. Stereotypically the doctor is dominant while the patient submissive. But in the service industry, the customer is typically dominant while the supplier subservient. A clash may occur when the doctor assumes he's talking to a patient while the patient really considers himself a consumer and the doctor a service provider. Hence both parties take the dominant role and thus clash when other doesn't submit.
This role confusion may even result from culture clashes, since some roles have distinctly different qualities in different cultures.
Another possible reason for power clashes is individual preferences (in psychology, this would be called “individual differences” but I never liked that. We're more the same than we are different). I imagine this concept is appealing to most people. It's basically rooted in personality theory. Some individuals have a preference for the dominant role and others have a preference for the submissive. It's part of who they are; an aspect of their personality.
Current Mood: nerdy
nerdy21 December 2008 @ 12:00 am
I recently started this LJ account on recommendation of a friend. I used to keep a journal on another site, and the next few entries were among favorites. I've ported them over for your reading pleasure. Do enjoy.
Current Mood: 
blank
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