Fucking the Mind

WHAT MINDFUCKING IS NOT

I shall easily start telling what mindfuck is NOT. Human mind is for the most part still a mystery, both in its physical and functional mechanisms. We don't know why we like things more then others, we don't know why people feel have similar emotions and others have quite different reactions to situations. but psychology and physiology have explained HOW the brain manages these processes and have enabled us to manage, change, even influence those reactions and emotions. has been deepened to be used for different purposes that are not always nice. It has been used to "treat" political dissidents in totalitarian states, like the Soviet Union and China. It has been used along with torture to extort information from prisoners by governments like Chile and Cambodia, techniques have been used by police forces and especially by the American FBI to force confessions by criminals; It have been used by secret services of all the world's nations to train their agents to specific tasks, to protect the information they have to know from enemy interrogations techniques or to successfully interrogate enemy agents when captured; it have been used for advertising, to push people to buy specific goods, as in the subliminal use of symbols and images; it have been used to indoctrinate people to join big or little cults and religions; it have been used to inflate feelings of love or hate for a political side or country, especially during the second world war, and all those uses have been refined in years and are still in use in some parts of the world, including the more democratic and advanced ones.

HOW MINDFUCKING WORKS

All of us have built up a perception of ourselves - and of the world around us. Those perceptions are made out of our evolutional experiences, of our relations, starting from parental ones into childhood then social-based experiences and growth of teenaging, and finally businesses and social perception of relations into adulthood. What may be scary is how fragile those perceptions are. And how easily they can be manipulated, even destroyed. As stated above, science studied specific techniques for such goal. Whether we know it or not, we all use these techniques or experience their consequences everyday. This is the reason we find horrible new car shapes pleasant after sometime goes by, why we feel raged when someone kicks a leather sphere in a port...does anyone ask themselves why they feel it is so important? This is also the reason why we automatically consider an act as adequate or inadequate in different contests. Now don't get me wrong: I do not see myself as Morpheus in the Matrix movie or Tyler Durden in fight club, and I'm not gonna give you any red pill to wake up. I am just going to explain how mindfucking may be an intense and wonderful BDSM experience, and such introduction was needed to put the scenery in place. Any other consideration about your everyday freedom and reality itself remain yours.

WHAT MINDFUCKING IS

Onto the BDSM explanation, the named techniques of influence and persuasion may be grouped under the term "mindfucking." There they assume a fundamentally different perspective of use. For example, when watching a BDSM scene (no matter what scene is) the immediate perception is abuse, or violence. Looking at BDSM from a closer look makes it easy to see how the first impression is wrong. BDSM is a matter of pleasure, trust, respect, evolution and exploration. This last term is the best description to introduce what Mindfucking definitely is: an exploration. During a Mindfucking session the Dominant guides the sub into their own fears, doubts, and weaknesses. The Dominant guides his subject to live their experience - the whole emotion of "losing" him/herself. In this process, the submissive will not just imagine or act but *really become* extremely opened and vulnerable. That is why it is *so* important to have a complete trust in the Dominant before accepting such experience, as well as having a Dominant that knows what he's doing.

MINDFUCKING AND THOUGHT REFORMING

Lots of researchers made studies on the forms of mind control. Among them, M. T. Singer, defines six conditions that are simultaneously present in a thought reform program:

1. obtaining substantial control over an individual's time and thought content, typically by gaining control over major elements of the person's social and physical environment,

2. systematically creating a sense of powerlessness in the person,

3. manipulating a system of rewards, punishment. and experiences in such a way as to promote new learning of an ideology or belief system advocated by management,

4. manipulating a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in such a way as to inhibit observable behavior that reflects the values and routines of life organization the individual displayed prior to contact with the group,

5. maintaining a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure in the organization and

6. maintaining a non-informed state existing in the subject.

We shall talk about Mindfucking as a voluntary eligible thought reform program, reduced in its extent, where the submissive involve himself in the process with full conscience of what it will mean, as a plain "exploration experience".

A little trick

Just to give a practical idea of what may be the effect of Mindfucking, I may introduce here an easy example. Let's say there is a male Dominant and his female submissive. The Dominant just says: "I want you to disobey me, now." It is immediately clear that the sub cannot obey this order without disobeying it, and vice versa she may disobey it only if he obey. It is the classical "impossible situation" lead by a paradoxical injunction - that is an order denying itself. The sub in the case cannot obey NOR she can disobey the order. She is just trapped in a condition disqualifying his every tentative - and therefore his own perception of himself. She should have only one way out this situation, that is to comment the order itself, and trying to explain the Dominant why it just cannot be obeyed. But this reaction may have room when the paradox comes out as a mistake. Here the Dominant is perfectly aware of the situation he is putting the sub in and will not easily let her escape it by commenting the order: he just may laugh or get harsh and note how pathetic is the sub in failing to comply such an easy task, ignoring or repressing any complaint. What is interesting is how such situation works on the mind of people: as Pavlov already demonstrated in the 30es, a being put and kept in an impossible situation will soon develop a neurotic reaction in response. It is just a problem of the mind: we cannot accept to remain exposed to such impossible situations, and being kept there causes both conscious and unconscious increasingly reactions.

MINDFUCKING AND D/S RELATIONS

So the mindfuck, not differently from a typical D/s relationship development, will differ from a thought reform program only in its 3rd and 6th point. About the "new learning of an ideology or belief system advocated by management", mindfucking process does not mean to sustain a political or religious management, nor leads to stably impose a change in self or outer perception: the mindfuck is then a temporary exploration of induct desperation state of mind. I shall add I find very questionable what is usually called a "D/s relationship" where the same process lead the submissive to a thought reform, remolding her beliefs to a point where the Consensuality loose any sense. Rather then driving the sub to believe something different, the mindfuck process drives the sub to believe in nothing and feel the intense feelings of desperation related to such state of mind. Even if it is not really a matter of plagiarism, once you can be sure the submissive is totally informed of those mechanisms and enter willingly this process, the matter is then how far it may bring the subject to identify in the "role" and hide there from his own life, opinions, hopes, fears and so on. In such perspective the submissive use the BDSM relation as a refugee from his own life - and it all comes to work as psychotherapy, something I don't think have to apply to BDSM as I will explain in one of the following paragraphs.

THE RISKS: REFUSAL BLOCK

Mindfucking processes may be very dangerous. Yes, we all know every human activity, even the simpler, involve some risks. Into BDSM we decide to explore a various range of painful or anyway intense testing experiences, and if some practices involve also intense physical stressing, mindfucking involve intense and even unbearable mental stressing. The damages from a mindfucking experience are not very common, but they may occur. One of the more easy problem is not provoked by any mistake, but simply by the fact that the submissive shall not accept the experience. Even if he started with full will, he shall find by the way he can't bear it, and when it comes up often is too late to stop the consequences. In one word, when it happens, the submissive simply cannot anymore play with the Dominant who mindfucked him. He just will refuse to submit to him again, and there is nothing to do about that. It is a sort of automatic defense of the mind. Remember that mindfucking means to rape the mind. Most times the sub will accept it and get through it with a very intense experience. Sometimes, even if rarely, he may refuse the idea of feeling *so* helpless and deeply hit, and the defense shall be to block any further play with that Dominant. In one word, a refusal experience during a mindfuck may lead a relationship to its end.

THE RISKS: PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

Other risks are possible if the Dominant have not enough sensitivity to sense how far things are going. Once again: when the mindfuck is properly done, the sub is *really* and *totally* vulnerable. Our mindset is based on some schemes. if you break those schemes, not always they are easy to put together again. I have no libraries about casualties in BDSM Mindfucking play, but i have lots of them about the other uses of mental pressure, thought reforming and brainwashing techniques. The more common bad consequence is the anxiety attack, with breathing problems, sometimes asma, iperventilation or others that may lead to critical conditions including sudden fainting. Other reactions have been reported as results of coercive persuasion techniques: Reactive schizoid affective-like psychoses may occur in individuals whose families have members with affective disorders. Sometimes mindfuck experiences may lead to Posttraumatic stress disorders. (see section 309.89 of the DSM-III-R), Atypical dissociative disorders. (see section 300.15 of the DSM-III-R) or Relaxation-induced anxiety. All those consequences are reported ONLY in relation to long term exposure to Thought Reform Programs. We have no clues about the effects of Mindfucking, being it very different as the subject here is volunteering for it and always conscious of what the process is doing to him. But we can surely use such casualty studies to warn anyone still wanting to explore such field: do it with extreme caution.

MINDFUCK AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

There are always different ways to describe the same thing. "This one must be mad to act like that" - "this one is so brave to act like that!" Same situation, different descriptions, different perceptions. Everyone of us found its life on two perceptions: himself - and the world around himself. Mindfucking is the process of guided modification of those two perceptions. Psychotherapy may be described in the very same way. But there are some, important, distinctions. Someone shall describe a Psychotherapist as a person with the head full of sharp instruments. What a therapist does is to use such tools to roam around the patient's mind, finding what the patient have trouble with, then pushing the patient to face it and accepting it - sometimes modifying it. The entire process is made with the sole purpose of helping the patient to get rid of disturbing perceptions of himself - or reality. The reason why the Therapist do all that is basically to have money in return, and probably also because he likes it. In a BDSM Mindfucking experience, the Dominant can be described at the same way: a person with the head full of sharp instruments. But the Dominant does not want any money, and is not gonna use its tolls to help the sub. He is indeed gonna dig in the submissive's mind to find out the more sensitive spots to caress or to whip, to kiss or to bite. But despite of those similarities, BDSM remains a relation chosen by equilibrated people, while Psychotherapy is a treatment for people having significant problems. This is NOT a light distinction. A lot of people tends to use BDSM as a stress-solving therapy. I consider this sue of BDSM dangerous and not sane at all. Approaching mindfuck as a way to heal stress levels is like getting in a whipping time to help blood circulation: problems have their rooms, BDSM is far more too delicate to be burdened with those kind of motives.

HYPNO ONES

I have seen around the web some so-called hypno Dominants of all genders advertising their skills in breaking any submissive will and mind totally. A serious person into Mindfucking would never boast such message. May sound very exciting the idea of being cut off of any will and personality, but once you're in you should find just too late how far it may bring. Most of those stern illusionists are just looking for easier ways to exploit submissive, but in the process they really can do some serious harming. Anyway, Hypnosis is just one of the various techniques (and actually one of the less effective) to take control of other peoples mind. Hypnotism and its claim to be a BDSM useful tool sounds much like a hard sell advertising way rather then a Sane, Safe and Consensual tool for mutual exploration.

CONCLUSION

One last voice must be added here about the aftercare aspects. Every harsh discipline game into BDSM requires its time to depressurize and most time care and affection are keys to get out the more intense experiences without scars. Mindfucking follow the same rule, and it is highly recommended to give good attention to aftercare and relaxation after a session - especially when the submissive is still in training or have been driven very far. The fact that mind cannot bleed does not mean it cannot bear scares - and since there are no so easy-to-spot signals of danger, and during the process the submissive cannot clearly understand the extent of the pressures he bear, a elevated sensitivity is the key to bring Mindfucking into a pleasurable and intense experience without harms. The matter is far more complicated and hides a lot of fascinating aspects I cannot treat here in an exhaustive way. I will add more articles on this essay in the future, for now what I hope to have given the reader is an idea of the depth and the delicacy of this approach to BDSM.