Pain Healer

Some exchanges I've had on another site have made me think more carefully about behaviour modification - what it is, how it works, and it's place in my two main themes - therapy and D/s. Behaviour modification uses the scientific theory of operant conditioning which was developed by E.L. Thorndike and B.F. Skinner. It describes how a desired behavioural response can be reinforced either by giving a pleasant, rewarding stimulus or by removing an unpleasant, aversive stimulus. An unwanted behaviour can be reduced by punishment (an aversive stimulus) or by withdrawal of a pleasant stimulus (frustration). Thus there are four ways of changing behaviour through operant conditioning. Behaviour modification has a wide range of applications - for a fuller description there is an online book at http://uwf.edu/wmikulas/Webpage/behavior/intro.htm . There is nothing particularly esoteric about behaviour modification- we all do it and experience it all the time, as we try ...

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Guilt as an emotion seems to be able to cause a lot of trouble. I tend to divide it into two kinds - "neurotic" and "real". Neurotic guilt doesn't come from doing anything seriously wrong, it is more like having a bad conscience over something, or perhaps not doing something (such as going to church) which you might feel you "ought" to do but don't really want to. The bigger problem is "real" guilt, which springs from actually having done real harm (usually to a living being). This is the guilt that eats away at you, drives away sleep, makes you turn to drink. One simple test I use to distinguish the two is to ask "would you willingly be punished for this?". If the guilt is genuine, the answer is unequivocally "yes" - in other words, punishment is seen as an antidote to genuine guilt. I'm not saying that going to a Dominant and getting a thrashing will magically dissolve all guilt - it's just not that eas...

From time to time I find it helpful to illustrate a point with a vignette or case study from one of my clients. At the same time I owe my clients total confidentiality, and to tell their stories would be breaking that trust. I get round this by inventing "typical" clients, who are as close to real life as I can make them. I do this by combining little bits from many clients, rather like a collage. Therefore I never write about an actual individual, but I hope the composite figures I create are accurate enough to be realistic. If you think you might be a client of mine, and you think you recognise yourself, then this is pure coincidence - as authors say, all my characters are fictitious.

I am curious about what the experience of therapy/counselling is like for clients who have a BDSM orientation, or wish to talk about problems related to sadism, masochism, domination or submissiveness. Is it a positive experience, with their orientation and problems accepted and understood, or are they pathologized? Is BDSM treated as a symptom to be cured, or a lifestyle to be welcomed? As a therapist myself I would hope that the experience is a positive one, but my own experiences and other pieces of evidence make me less than optimistic. My first serious experience of therapy did not inspire confidence. It was a "training analysis" - therapy I was doing as part of training to be a therapist. I felt it was important to be as honest as possible, so talked about my interest in sadomasochism to my middle-aged female therapist. She was clearly uncomfortable about it, and never referred to it again. When I left my therapy with her 18 months later she seemed rath...

I detect a pattern in psychotherapy that sees abuse as the be-all and end-all of diagnosis. Find a good bit of abuse in your client's past and you've "solved the case" and found the cause of all their problems. Help them work through the memories using your favourite technique and all will be well - healing is assured. Except when it isn't. I'm not denying that for many people, healing the wounds of past traumas can be beneficial. I have helped many a troubled client in this way. But it doesn't always work. Sometimes, even after draining the barrel of traumatic memories to the dregs, the longed for resolution doesn't occur, and the unwanted problems remain. And I have a theory about that. For abuse to take place in the family, there often has to be neglect too. Someone isn't noticing the child's distress, anger or behavioural changes. And neglect is so much harder to pin down. There are no clear cut memories of trauma. It is more like ...

Daily journal … detailed record of food and calorie intake … diary of negative thoughts and feelings … evening review … sleep record Are these tools of domination or the tools of psychological research? Part of the discipline imposed on a submissive by her master, or the "homework" agreed between therapist and client? Well, both actually. Now isn't that interesting? As I extend the range of so-called "disorders" I treat, I accumulate an ever increasing portfolio of monitoring forms and questionnaires. There's the Beck Depression Inventory, the Work and Social Adjustment Scale, the Fear of Negative Evaluations Scale, the Worry Diary and the Automatic Thoughts Diary, to name only a few. They are all designed to be filled in by the client, so that I can more precisely target my interventions as a therapist. That's the theory, anyway… And as I read the writings of doms and subs on their web pages and blogs, I find exactly the same techniques being used...