Wednesday 3 December 2008

New Album Opened, Future Blog Plans and a Couple of Pics

Having run out of hand-written work to dictate into the computer, by far the most efficient way for me to work, volume 2 is very much on the backburner today. I don't have a lot of time today but what I do have is going to be dedicated to improving and updating the blog layout. I've made a start by creating an album dedicated to spanking magazine covers (see the sidebar).

A lot of these I've actually pinched from an online second-hand sales site where somebody is apparently selling off their entire 40 years worth of collecting, but quite a few I have in my collection and so it has saved me a hell of a lot of time scanning them myself. In terms of the covers shown so far I don't think I have anything in my collection that is not displayed. However I do have quite a few issues of Blushes, Whispers, New Uniform Girls, Strictly Uniforms and Uniforms International in my collection, as well as quite a few books, not yet shown but that I will be scanning and uploading at a later date.

This sort of thing I see as conserving for posterity as these old magazines and books are becoming rarer and rarer and so the more people that download and save them to their hard drives and other places the less chance there is of them disappearing forever - the seems little in the modern world that comes up to their standard, particularly when it comes to their often very imaginative and inspired letters pages. When ever I go to antiques fairs or boot fairs I am forever searching for old magazines and even newspaper articles pertaining to our interest.

It doesn't even stop there, my first working incarnation was as an electronics engineer and I have interests in amateur radio and vintage equipment so I have quite a few old radio and television magazines lined up ready to be scanned in. For example, I have some television and radio enthusiast magazines that amongst other things outline how to build your own equipment and that date back to the 1930s, almost to the dawn of television itself. Obviously these are destined for another blog and/or website.

Going back to this blog for a moment, I'm going to split up the resource list in the sidebar to provide for a separate list of interesting and relevant Yahoo! groups that I've come across in my travels - a good example is one that I found only yesterday and that deals with impositions and the writing of lines as a form of discipline. Unfortunately the latter requires certain profile information and a few lines about why one wishes to join the group (I really hate that sort of thing, why do they bother). I have a couple of profiles that I use and I inadvertently entered the wrong one, so I'm probably going to be rejected. But the groups out there are not restricted simply to spanking / caning; they can be quite imaginative and eclectic while still being relevant to the stuff I write and the general issue of discipline, with little thought anyway.

I intend to list them by name and / or content rather than the full URL as I think that is more informative and useful and one only has to click on the link to go straight to the YahooGroup concerned in any case.

The picture at the top left is a something that I picked up from the blog that I outlined yesterday; you will have seen it before from a different angle (from one on my magazine scans in fact) but what I love here is the little school desk and the suitably browbeaten expression that the young lady wears – as well she might given her age juxtaposed with the way she is dressed and obviously treated (that little desk says it all - clearly sweated over through many, many hours of tedious and repetitive line writing).

As regards to the designs of physical exercise school leotards that I was discussing a right about yesterday; some kind contributor (who wants to remain anonymous) has send me the picture on the right. One had to exercise a little imagination but I think you can understand the advantages of adapting this to the design of a leotard gusset - the problem lies in retaining the otherwise modest styling of the rest of the garment. I envisage the thing as being absolutely traditional, give or take the use of modern fibre types perhaps, other than that single feature (it is that juxtaposition between modesty and exposure that I think makes it so exciting – and humiliating to the wearer). Therein, of course, lies the problem; if the whole thing was devised as some sort of fetish wear and manufactured in perhaps PVC or latex in its entirety it will be self solving but as envisaged one has to deal with the problem of combining the qualities of these materials (or others with these same qualities) with more traditional fabrics - it comes down to the problem of bonding one material to another but I have at least one solution in mind I can't tell you much more without giving away too much of the plot.

Tomorrow I will be back to work in on completing volume 2 of INSTITUTIONALISED; hopefully the day will be as sunny as today is (we have clear blue skies in London at the moment) and I intend to visit several hostelries (pubs), pint, notebook and pen in hand - I'm hoping to fit in the Spaniards in,, in Hampstead at some point; it is wood panelled and historic and conducive to the imagination.

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Enforced Physical Education, School Leotards, Spanking Magazine Covers and a New Blog to Check Out

Today before starting writing I have been doing a little research, looking for material on traditional school leotards, enforced exercise regimes and the like. As usual I have gotten sidetracked from time to time and although I am being strict with myself today I feel can alocate a small amount of time to following up leads if they look promising. One such led to a new Blog find: called The Aproved school, Uniform Discipline, Spanking and Caning. The content all seems to have originated from a magazine called Strictly Uniforms or one of its sisters from the mid to late 1990s so I can't help wondering if there is perhaps some connection with the publishers (click title to go take a look or peruse the blog list in the sidebar) - top left is an example cover for any that have not come across this title. Talking of magazine covers; I shall shortly be adding an album of scans of the covers of magazines I have in my collection, or have had in the past, and some I have come across in my travels across the web.


As for today's bit of research; well, so far it is a spanking magazine cover that has proved the most inspiring - this nice little offering from Janus (see right)...very atmospheric...very evocative, one wonders what strict training awaits her in that room. Then there were the training pics I found on the above mentioned blog. Lovely PE kit (see left) but the outdoor setting smacks of too much freedom, I prefer to envisage a somewhat more secure setting - away from prying eyes and well-meaning intervention. What I am really after now right now are some examples of the more traditional PE kit, that from that lost golden age of strict private boarding schools and reformatories, to guide my descriptive work.




Victor Bruno describes a suitable leotard-based PE uniform in his novel; Madame Vorge's Finishing School. It works, for me at least, so much better than straight nudity - nude PE undoubtedly has its place but will tend to desensitise the young lady to exposure, when what we are after, what we want to play on, is shame. We need to build on her natural reluctance to expose herself, encourage shyness - we are not trying to create a blatant exhibitionist here, proud to show off her body, quite the opposite. She should feel shame - and in spades. I am thinking along the lines of the traditional school leotard, quite conservative in its way; the sheer fabric I would select would do little to ameliorate the sting of an encouraging cane stroke across the full swell of the buttocks and of course there is nothing like a riding crop applied across the back of the thighs to discourage slacking (I always think the riding crop equates better to enforced PE than the cane or the strap, don't you?).

.....

However, saying that, I am investigating the plausibility of a transparent or semi-transparent gusset panel - the question is whether a suitable fabric combination would be realistic. A polythene gusset in a pair of PVC or rubber knickers or bloomers is realisable (as in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1) but seems unlikely in the context of the type of fabric likely to be encountered in the traditional leotard...work goes on, I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, how about some thoughts and ideas?

A Nice Yahoo Group to Try and Some More of Hardcastle's Work Added to His Album

Having lost most of the weekend bogged down with attempting to book a Christmas holiday (it was going to be five nights in Rome now looks like being more like three nights in Windsor, albeit white opposite the castle) today has been completely dedicated to filling in the gaps in volume 2. I'm currently working on a series of flashbacks that illustrate something of Lavinia's life with the woman that she calls her aunt prior to her semi-voluntarily incarceration in the experimental research unit. It had been quite hard work because I have quite a lot of time to make up on, what with my recent computer problems etc, but it has not been without compensation in the form of some interesting discoveries made on the Internet while researching one or two details - the most fruitful, strangely enough, coming to light while researching some aspects of dress design and fabric handling (don't ask). Anyway, as a result of all this I come across a really quite excellent YahooGroup:

The Academy for Difficult Girls (just click to access and join) or click on link in the resource list in the sidebar. The best part is actually the files section of which I can particularly recommend the stories in Adventures at the Academy (I) and (I I) but is worth perusing all of the folders for stories: subjects covered include enforced diaper use, enforced age regression, orgasm denial (lots) supervised potty training for young adults and even what I would describe as de-education (i.e. young women learning to forget how to read and write for example). And, of course there are lots and lots humiliation ideas and possibilities - there was a lot to explore, and I've probably spent far too long this evening doing exactly that, I don't think I have ever spent so long on one group.

On another tack, I've just this minute added a whole bunch of Hardcastle illustrations, that I came across this afternoon on one of the Yahoo groups I was perusing, to the Hardcastle scans and downloads section of Spanking ArtWork Albums (see sidebar) - the most interesting of which to my mind is the story from Janus about the 22 year-old woman forced back to school and to take the role of a 17-year-old (see top left, click to enlarge - the rest is in the spanking artwork album for Hardcastle). While I was at it I just couldn't resist posting up another example of the great man's work; the deportment training he illustrates here always gets me going and one can easily imagine some suitable adaptation of it taking place as part of the regime imposed on one of the three small groups that constitute the institution's residential experimental psychology section - the Schoolroom Group regime would seem to be the most accommodating for this sort of training, I would think. One that I've added has had a particularly interesting caption added to it. (Click here) very much up my tree.

As for the photo I posted in my last entry; I had intended to begin to relate the real life story of a girl that my wife of the time and I had staying with us in the mid to late 1980s and the pic was to have been an attempt to illustrate something approximating to an early incarnation of what my came to call the girl's house uniform (sometimes, home uniform). I'm a bit too hard pressed to do it justice at the moment (although I have alluded to the relationship once or twice previously) and so when I get around to it I'll remove the pic and reuse it as and when (it's a 1960s Sainsbury's uniform by the way). As for the immediate future; I'll be tackling the stutter / stammer induction theme soon - I can think of little that would undermine a young woman's self esteem more thoroughly...so, so demoralising. Of course, having never been tried in an adult (and never likely to be in peer reviewed, ethics committee-monitored mainstream research) it is experimentally irresistible and a project perfectly suited to the more discreet (not to mention secure) environs of the institutions research unit. I have some nice ideas (one of which I am surreptitiously testing with my partner) but more are always welcome - how would you go about it?

Sunday 30 November 2008

A Rough, Non-Proofread Extract from Volume 2: An experiment in Education: Multiplication Tables

I just thought I'd put up a little snippet from a thing that I wrote some time ago intending it for INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 but that didn't make it in, having been later earmarked to make up part of volume 2 when it looked as if there was some danger of volume 1 growing too large and unwieldy. Inspired by all the talk of unethical psychology experimentation in my last post I thought now the time might be ripe for its inclusion. As for the pic, well that's another story, of which more later...
The principle of social compliance

An experiment in Education: Multiplication Tables

She was to copy out a multiplication table, totally spurious and of their own devising, bearing scant resemblance to any truth or logic. The detailed make up of each would be random, computer-generated, with virtually guaranteed mutual exclusivity from any of the previous sets they had been forced to learn or would learn; there was nothing that might constitute a pattern and that might allow the more astute to benefit from previous impositions by easing the take up and recall of the new.

Rote learning and recital were the key principles in force; the need to keep up, to concentrate, not only on recording the dictation but doing so without recourse to correction and while maintaining a near perfect copper-plate hand, denied even the brightest sufficient pause so as to press into employment any learning and recall strategies they might have picked up through their past academic endeavours.

Indeed, there was insufficient mental freedom allowed them so as to consider anything else; it kept them grounded within their physical surrounds, the escape of daydreams, of imagination, of wonder, was barred them at every turn.

“Ok, girls, fingertips on shoulders, elbows smartly out to the sides. Not like that, 16S, you stupid girl! That's better, elbows right back, nice and tight. Now, class, I'm glad to report that every one of you finally managed to get through your multiplication tables successfully in the last session. There were one or two stumbles and corrections, to be sure, but generally I'm satisfied that you finally have them drummed into those thick heads of yours.”

Six pairs of wide eyes stared fixedly ahead, locked on to the white board or more accurately, the long, thin, tapering cane that hung along side it; near-on one and one half metres of whippy white-plastic perfection, capable, under expert wielding, of a finely resolved and graduated chastisement, from the faintest, stingily-pink, lines, through raised and purpling wheals of throbbing agony to the actual splitting of velvet peach pink flesh, drawn drum-tight through hairpin-bent, ankle-grasping and straight-legged stance. The latter was to be feared the most, the final eight to ten centimetres, would be skilfully landed, the taper increasing markedly and aggressively over that distance, down to a mere two or three millimetres in diameter at its extremity. The immediate physical pain might well be lessened in comparison by the adoption of that technique, but the psychological pain would grow exponentially with each cut – as the understanding would dawn that such a flawlessly satin-white curvaceous expanse of flesh as would render breathless the most unaffected of bystanders was being systematically and quite deliberately marred.

It was the horror one might feel if forced to witness the irreparable defacing of an exquisite, irreplaceable artwork, but to the individual girl it was a horror brought closer to home, internalised and personalised. It was no less than the murder of self esteem, the destruction of dreams, aspirations and of prospects; her buttocks permanently marked, her body, to some, perhaps her best if not only asset, defiled, blemished, disfigured, her worth lessened, at least in her own eyes and such was the intent after all was said and done.

There was little reaction expressed in those eyes, little more than a nervous tick around the corners of a mouth or across a pale cheek, certainly none would risk a smile, even had she some sufficient lightness of heart, nevertheless the relief was somehow palpable: There would be no such punishment for the moment. Each and every young woman present was grateful for the effort of her nameless and unknowable compatriots; the failing of any one of them would have been cause enough for the punishment of them all. Such was the system here, such had been the result of the previous four tests; every last one of them could still feel the cost throbbing across their sweating, rubber-encased buttocks.

The woman standing at the head of the class, seemingly having barely paused long enough to draw breath, continued on in the same vein, warming to her subject with mock-enthusiasm;

“Today we are going to start work on learning a new set of tables. I understand the limitations with what I have to work with here; I realise that none of you are too bright, I accept that all of you have psychological impairments of one form or another, or you wouldn't have been sent here in the first place, and I realise that one or two of you are particularly slow learners...but I do not intend to put up with any more of the sort of nonsense we have just had over learning this last set.”

As she spoke she had begun to pace up and down, threading her way between the rows of desks, pausing on occasion to stroke the slender nape of a girls neck, gently tuck her fingers under a stiffly starched blouse collar or under a gymslip's taut shoulder-strap, pausing to trace its lie over the striped, puff-shouldered blouse, briefly trickling pianist-nimble fingertips down behind the front of the bib-like bodice and over thimble-stiffening nipples, the latter perkily-presented and thrusting hopefully from within their sheaving of sheer, fine-weave cotton.

“I have seen little children perform better than you at learning their 'times tables'. Look at yourselves, you're supposed to be grown women, all you have to do is learn a few multiplication tables but you are either too lazy, too stupid or both. We've had to dress you like children, treat you like children, just to get you to behave yourselves; you look ridiculous sitting there in those gymslips, blouses and ties, even children of ten would feel ridiculous in those outfits. and how many ten-year-olds do you think we would have to put in diapers and rubber pants? Hmmm?

Do you know what? I, for one, think you should look ridiculous...because you are ridiculous. Well, I can tell you this: you are going to be lazy no longer. From today I am going to drastically shorten the time allowed for you to achieve the learning outcomes required of you for each task set. This time there are going to be just four sessions before I set the first test.. and I'll expect each and every one of you to know all of your new tables from one to twelve verbatim by that time. Make no mistake, I mean all of you - one mistake from any one of you and you are all going to be out here over my desk, one at a time, with your nasty smelly little knickers down, your diapers piled around your ankles and your big fat buttocks bouncing and dancing under my cane.”

“Right, girls...listen, copy...begin.”

The woman's poise was of the most elegantly-authoritative confidence; assertive in the extreme. She was a walking anachronism; an aura of authority surrounded her as if a bubble of some substance, some remnant of an earlier era, having somehow intruded into our own, had engulfed her, bringing forth with it the very essence of that past time. Outdated attitudes, Victorian values and social moirés, long since forgotten, had been reinvigorated in that room by the power of will alone. Personified by her - and made manifest in her – these were mere abstractions yet somehow were made tangible, as much by her dress, her attitude and the authority in her voice as by the riding switch she habitually carried.

She strolled up and down slowly between the two columns of low-slung school desks, each a white-plastic facsimile of a Victorian schoolroom design with seat and top combined. Her stockings swished and whispered softly beneath her closely-fitted knee-length white leather skirt, her white satin mandarin-collared blouse slithered seductively beneath her calf-length white doctor’s coat, the latter worn open, the blouse’s pearl buttons catching the light on their spherical surfaces, lying nestling between the woman's aggressively thrusting breasts. Her right-hand was en-gloved in soft white kid, a white leather loop attaching a finely tapering white switch to her wrist ran between her fingers and she toyed with the cane seemingly absent-mindedly as she walked.

From speakers hidden and secreted around the room the sound of a school bell rang out and with that the pre-recorded lesson proceeded. In response her charges bent to their task, craning over carefully copperplate-recorded transcriptions of the robotically delivered dictation, each forced to learn and relearn endless, mindless, useless nonsense simply to test whether or not in time, she would become unable to recall that she had previously learnt elsewhere. This was not education - or anything like it - this was discipline for the sake of itself, but, moreover, this was the cruel and deliberate unravelling of years of education and social development.

“Two times three equals five... three times three equals six... four times three equals seven... five times three equals nine...” The voice authoritatively-feminine, cold, emotionless and virtually monotonal, insistent, without letup, and going on, and on, and on...

There would be seventeen hours of this, before bedtime, the girls using their bedpans at their desks at the allotted ‘toilet times’ and quietly filing out to take their meals at the circular table in the dormitory ward twice during the day. Different ‘teachers’ would take the class in shifts throughout the day, each of a similar stamp and each dressing virtually identically. There would be some small relief from the monotony of the regime, one welcomed, even yearned for, without exception - and despite the deleterious effect they all suspected, deep down, was the result. At some point or other throughout the day, individually, each and every one of them would be taken to the doctor's room for an hour's intensive interview, psychological testing and appraisal or behavior modification therapy – whatever the specifics, each would return sharing the same glassy-eyed detachment and requiring more than one rebuke from the 'teacher', or even a stroke or two of the cane on occasion, before satisfactory regaining her concentration on her work.

These few digressions and distractions notwithstanding, the day would progress without change or interruption, as had the previous and as would those subsequently to follow, stretching off without end seemingly indefinitely into the future, each identically structured and largely indiscernible from any other. Even through the swirling fog of distress, even through the befuddled mire of thought patterns retrained, manipulated, sculpted and restricted by the unrelenting and unforgiving discipline of the place, even to a personality picked apart strand by strand and trapped within a mind progressively enfeebled by sensory impoverishment and isolation, there could be no further pretense. To Lavinia Vitesse it was now all too clear: this treatment would continue until those faceless individuals who had sanction it, and to whom there was presumably some sort of nefarious satisfaction to be had in the imposition of a regime of such strict discipline and punishment on a group of attractive young ladies, lost interest in their game. But by then they would undoubtedly have quite thoroughly broken her will.

It might go on for years for all she knew...she would be left as hopelessly child-like as most of the others around her were already; she would be just one of six imbeciles, each left with little more ability to get by in society at large than a newborn babe. The tears came welling up - her hands flew instinctively to her face but only for an instant, only for as long as it took for instinct to brutally oppressed by discipline, to be overcome and denied. In fact her pen had barely left the paper, that was not the problem – it was the tears themselves that were the problem.

Already the first few splashes were causing the ink to run, smudging her work. Her weeping redoubled – smudged work was untidy work...and untidy work meant six strokes of the cane...and already it had been noted, already the teacher's cut-glass tones were berating her, already the woman was approaching, swishing her cane through the air with each stride...So soon...Her first schoolroom caning was coming; so soon, so soon - and in front of all those other poor cows.

She'd held some vague notion of holding out, of keeping some flicker of hope alive in herself by inspiring some sort of spirit of rebellion in one or two of the others. But what chance would she have of that once they had witnessed her howling under the cane and every bit as bitterly and broken-heartedly as they did themselves.

That chance was only ever an illusion in the first place. A girl such as Lavinia, despite the length of time she had already been detained, was still considered a 'new' girl. She would never have have placed into such a situation unless all those around her had already been satisfactory tamed – it ensured her social isolation, encouraged conformity. Nonetheless, a salutatory lesson was called for - and would soon be learnt...

Sweet Lavinia was waiting, now, refaced and viably shaking, bent tightly across her little school desk. The lock at their waistband having been released, she could feel her latex-lined school bloomers being slowly peeled away from her sweat-tacky flesh. She could hear that all too familiar sequence of sounds: the first like sucking sticky Sellotape being peeled from a Christmas balloon; the second, like rain-soggy autumn leaves, being the rustling of the thin, rubber, knicker liner; the third, the even softer sighing of the acetate knickers themselves. Then the cool air washing around her buttocks announced their nearing readiness...

She would scream from the first cut, she knew she would...she just knew...that woman would ensure that she would. Switch in hand, an arm swept back, hesitating in readiness, tension building in taut muscles as the plump fleshy target was squared up...In that brief moment teacher and pupil both were united in understanding; this was to be as much a lesson for the other girls, for the class as a whole, as for the miscreant presently quivering so prettily over that desk. The girl had done nothing wrong, not in reality, not in the real world - but she would be punished nonetheless and punished severely. It would be punishment despite innocence, perhaps because of that innocence if truth be told. It would be punishment without rhyme or reason, punishment meted out on a whim – but it was that very sense of unfairness that made make it so effective, that broke the spirit. Tension released, its aim assured, the arm swung down, the switch arcing back through the air, whistling, singing...

Thursday 27 November 2008

A New Link, More Therapists (A Unique Humiliation: The Deliberate Induction of Stuttering) and a Little Mouth Soaping

As some of you may have guessed from the piecemeal and disjointed nature of my last posting (which I've now sorted out and reorganised), plus the fact that as of this morning it had remained unfinished since Sunday, I have again been plagued by computer problems. I like to be able to report that I have now fixed the problem but as it would take me time to get hold of a new power supply - and probably the best part of a day to pull out the computer, disconnect everything and change it over - having got the thing working I'm getting as much writing done as I can. It's a trade-off between the speed at which I can get volume 2 polished-off and the reliability of my machine. What with one thing or another the blog was beginning to come apart at the seams so I have put aside quite a large chunk of today to smooth things out, edit out bits that are no longer relevant and insert pictures and illustrations where I have neglected to do so but where I have stated that a suitable illustration would be posted at a future date. One such relates to a posting I made a while back wherein I posted a link to a story that featured mouth soaping - if that subject is your thing then a quick glance at the resource list on the task-bar will reveal a link to a mouth soaping site I've come across (or just click on the picture to the top left). Talking of the trade-off between my completing volume 2 and other chores; I have decided to drop the subject of discipline-by-correspondence and much pertaining to that subject has now been removed from the blog. Partly this is because my correspondence with the woman concerned was taking up too much of my time relative to any inspiration and new ideas that were likely to be developed through it. There was precious little in the way of imaginative and useful feedback returning to show for the perspiration shed on my part - what it came down to in the end was one big waste of time.

Returning to mouth soaping: this was of course a traditional punishment for using ‘bad’ language or even just ‘back chatting’ it is of course likely to be experienced as something rather unpleasant and therefore ‘punishing’ in itself but I for one find it hard to envisage imposed in isolation. Rather I think of it as a secondary element, enforced within an outer-framework of discipline, itself enforced by other expedients and penalties of sufficient severity that it becomes accepted in preference, however unpleasant. Thus the holding of a bar of soap in the mouth for a given time can be considered on a par with having to retain an enema and one step above the tedious writing of lines or corner standing as having a relatively mild element of physical discomfort added to the primarily psychological aspect of the latter. In the domestic scenario (wherein I would envisage mouth soaping to most fit) and applied by a strict governess, say, the ultimate sanction is likely to be the strap or the cane or the birch-rod - primarily physical methods, then.

Yet for this to work, particularly the case were the subject is in her late teens and early twenties, a constraining sphere of pressure is required to exist even outside that of the fear of corporal punishment. Wielding the correct psychological techniques - and under favourable circumstances, shall we say - a suitably qualified governess can apply sufficient psychological pressure to overcome any amount of dissidence in submitting to corporal punishment (as we will undoubtedly see in institutionalised volume 3). However, in the clinical environment of a secure psychiatric unit such as our young ladies have voluntarily entered, we can up-the-ante so to speak: forms of actual psychological punishment can be brought to bear that will, given time, ensure that when a nurse orders her charge to bend for the cane or the strap she is always contritely obeyed. As we have seen in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1; in expert hands even a favourite childhood nursery rhyme can be turned into a rod with which to beat her - so feared that an 18 or 19 year-old woman will beg for the cane, let alone bend, tug down her knickers and grasp her ankles or bend over her school desk when instructed.

But once in expert hands of the not better ways of dealing with bad language, backchat and a defiant attitude?

Put yourself in the shoes of the guardian or stepmother of one of our two heroines; you have control over the family business, the majority of the income and collateral, but only until your young charge reaches the age of majority - a definition you are currently battling over.

Before you an argumentative and defiant young woman stands, brimming with self-confidence and a generous allowance filling her purse - gifted with a probing, inquisitive mind and able to wrap the family solicitor around her little finger, she is a dangerous thing, is she not?

Now imagine she stands there timorous, submissive, shrinking back from you with shoulders hunched defensively and continually fighting the urge to suck her thumb, self-conscious in the extreme and practically devoid of confidence. She is highly reluctant to speak, even when prompted, let alone to loudly voice accusations of embezzlement - and when she does the teeny voice and stilted, incomplete sentences tell the story. The near totally debilitating stutter that afflicts her, that renders her near incoherent and that has for so long isolated her from friends and acquaintances quickly reduces her to tears of frustration under your questioning. She doesn't seem so dangerous now, somehow, does she?

But how can one become the other, the adult become the thumb sucking dependent? The clue is in that newly-developed stutter, clearly the cause of this new childish self-conscious shyness. Psychologically crippling if left untreated, imagine her humiliation to learn that she has, in actual fact, been under treatment and that you, or rather the expert you have hired, are the cause of that debility.

Sheer fantasy and clearly impossible? Obviously so... or is it? You will remember that both Lavinia and Susan in volume 1 were notably gradually developing nervous stuttering and stammering as the story progressed and that both appeared to have something of an impediment upon their arrival - in fact on several occasions both girls have their speech patterns commented upon by staff members, a rather telling fact if one understands the psychology. As you know, to me the story line has to be plausible (or at least possible at a push) so to what degree is this aspect plausible?

Well much in the way that the institution has as part of it remit the aim of understanding the propagation progression of phobias in multi-phobic individuals by the deliberate induction of the same, in the 1930s experiments were carried out to deliberately induce stuttering in unaffected individuals. The leading light behind the study in fact put together a veritable cookbook of methodology for inducing stuttering. In the most basic terms it involved in one way or another making the subject familiar with stuttering (one way might be to engineer the subject to come face-to-face with a sufferer, for example). Then, in a therapy session in conversation the subject might be stopped at some point in her speech, where perhaps she may have stumbled slightly or there had been a minor repetition. The subject would then be warned that not only what were there signs that she was beginning to stutter but that if she didn’t work hard to improve it, she would stutter as badly as… (here the image of the sufferer used as an example would be conjured up). Advice would then be given to help avoid stuttering but that was in fact calculated to make the girl more conscious than ever of her speech. Suggestions would be made such as to take a breath before saying word if she thought she was going to stutter over it, to stop and start over again if she did start to stutter, to be aware of her speech all the time and to do anything to keep from stuttering. In addition she would be urged not to speak unless she was absolutely sure she was going to be able to speak clearly and without stuttering and to put the tongue to the roof of her mouth while thinking about what to say and considering which words she might stumble over...There is no real reason for the nurse pic, incidentally, other than that for some reason I can imagine her as the therapist working with one of our girls incarcerated in the unit - friendly smile and nicely tailored uniform - what else could you want?

One teenage girl, despite being lively, full of confidence and a clear speaker at the beginning of the study had by the therapist’s second visit become quiet and very self-conscious (doesn't that sound the perfect state of mind to have her in if one is to introduce a young lady to strict discipline). Within four months the same girl had “developed mannerisms characteristic of some stutterers, such as snapping her fingers to get a word out, had become shy quiet and withdrawn and was even writing the same word two or three times over in her schoolwork. It has to be noted that in-between the therapist’s visits the teachers, having been told how to behave and under the false belief that they were helping along a system of therapy, would pull up the girl if she stumbled over word or repeated it and make her say it again, thus reinforcing her indoctrination. In a similar vein, the teachers and staff would continually refer to her as being a “stutterer” again reinforcing the indoctrination

What interests me here is that the girl mentioned above was fifteen years old. While, as far as I can tell, a similar study has never been carried out on adults it is difficult to believe that much in terms of developmental change and psychological development will have taken place in the intervening years between the age of fifteen and the age of our heroines - late teens to early twenties - that would render the treatment any less efficacious.

Another thing that interests me here, in terms of both the Milgram Experiment and the Stamford Experiment (look them up on Google - together, they're the basis of much of what takes place in the clinical psychologist study that our girls become enrolled in) is the way in which the woman actually carrying out the study, herself having been described as somewhat timorous, having voiced her concern over the damage she was inflicting on her test subjects nevertheless continued with the study right up to the end when ordered to by her supervisor.

As for our girls; well, you will have to wait until publication volume 2 I’m afraid (not long now - I hope) to find out what has been going on there. PS: now I come to think about it, it's tantamount to psychological gagging - vary nice, very subtle (I like subtle).

Sunday 23 November 2008

Tattoos for Punishment and Humiliation

I am still working away from home at the moment and so the rest of this post may have to be postponed until later this evening or some time tomorrow (Tuesday), Suffice it to say that yet again I have had to waste time and effort correcting my e-mail supplicant. The collection of pics here are some that I found on my laptop and will distribute around the relevant posts later - the mouth soaping pic has proved the hardest to find incidentally. Talking of hard to find illustrations: I am considering discussing tattoos, not as decoration but rather as tools of humiliation and as a form of punishment. This is something I broached in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1, if you remember, wherein the schoolroom unit's girls had to sign documentation not just giving permission but requesting that their patient number along with the hospital's name and those damming words - psychiatric unit - be tattooed on one of their buttocks. Remember we are talking ugly dense black block lettering here and applied at a 45 degree angle making the most of the area available - remember; it is the psychological impact on the girls that interests me here as much as anything. I have had the devil of a job finding suitable illustrations. However I did come across one or two suitable illustrations (see above right for example) by an artist going by the name of Dubigeon Loic (I posted a link to some of his work in a previous article). In all probability the artist intends the characters appearing on the young lady's backside to be the result of branding. While that imagery is fine in the context of fantasy sexual slavery, I think that in an institutional environment, especially one purporting to be a legitimate psychological research unit, albeit one privately run and funded, tattooing is far more likely to have evolved as a method of control. It is easy to standardise through the use of a stencil template and might seem relatively innocuous to the subject, if one is rather economical with the truth - untill she sees the result. The thing, is; in volumes 2 and 3 there is further exploration made into this area - as always I am not without my ideas, but you can never have too many so if any of you out there would care to comment or contribute - be my guest. Maybe you hate the idea, maybe you love it - please let me know.

Friday 21 November 2008

More E-Discipline: Let's Call Her My Little Supplicant. Also New Thorn Art Added

I am just putting together a new post and doing some general work on the blog. I have been writing today, working on a section that is destined to eventually become part of INSTITUTIONALISED volume 3 and that I have provisionally entitled 'drip, drip, drip'. Not to give too much away it involves a pretty, late teenage, girl (whom you may or may not have already met in volume 1, I'm not saying, but will learn more about in volume 2 in the company of her governess) a pitch black hospital room, medical restraints and a 'malfunctioning', leaking intravenous drip-feed. I know I should get volume 2 finished first but when these ideas come to me I like to get them down as soon as possible before I lose them (I would have liked to have supplied a suitable pic, something teasing, but couldn't find anything that really worked in the time I have available today).
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Talking of chastisement: I can't help thinking that Little Supplicant seems a good a title as any to apply to my little discipline disciple corespondent, to whom I have referred before in previous postings. Actually, come to think about it It is a name that seems as naturally suited to her, reading between the lines, as does the school uniform here– it is easily my favourite of those in my collection from the period and one that I would have no compunction whatsoever to putting her in, despite her maturity - the combination of the striped blazer and striped hat-ribbon should make it suitably conspicuous in public, and the girl (for that is how I perceive her, despite her years) suitably self-conscious in it. And if it didn't fit… well, I'd make it fit! That little problem would simply have to be addressed by appropriately restrictive foundation wear…or she would have to be dieted into it at the encouragement of the cane. It is an image that I would suggest we all hold in our collective imaginations when we read of her correspondence and of her completion of her various impositions - a middle aged woman squeezed into a pleated skirted gymslip and squirming to ease the sting of a throbbing freshly-caned behind. Perhaps she can let us know how it feels, after her husband canes her this weekend.