Therapists, Metronomes and School Uniforms Doth the Good-Girl Make (with a good dose of the cane, of course)

I am a bit short of time today as I have a lot I want to get done on INSTITUTIONALISED vol 2 before I have to leave for the weekend, I hope to get more story outline sketched out in rough while I’m away – I have a lot of fresh ideas brewing for volume 3 which I want to get down on paper as quick as possible, these things have a habit of evaporating as rapidly as they manifested, and I need closure to the ‘Police, Camera, Action’ (a provisional title) chapter of vol 2 that I have spoken about before. The point is that I won’t have access to a computer for the next couple of days or so which means that anything I do write will then have to be transcribed, so today I am going to be concentrating on putting the finishing touches to the chapter to which I have given the working title of ‘An Imposition of Uniform’ (a crude early fragment of which I have previously posted) - as much as possible at any rate, bearing in mind that I don’t really like writing direct to the computer.

I am cheered though, in that much of the ‘dogsbody’ work has been done - the basic descriptive stuff, the scene setting, the general day to day story framework and development and those parts that I like to think of as ‘linking prose’, by which I mean those stretches of text and dialog that glue together the various events occurring. What I am left with is the detailed description of the young lady’s ‘home uniform’ that that her aunt has put her in at that point in her life, basically a school uniform but very much of that woman’s own devising, both inappropriate and anachronistic in its styling.

As I have said before; the woman is a stickler for traditional values, an admirer of the styling of a bygone age and possessed of an agile mind, suffering no shortage of imaginative and innovative talent in the area of design and having an eye for detail that would be the envy of many a fashion designer. Stir all this together with a very thorough grasp of feminine psychology, the woman having been involved in psychiatric nursing in an earlier incarnation, and the prospect becomes an exceedingly exciting one – I for one am near shaking in anticipation…and I’m writing the thing. But, you see, I don’t think of myself as responsible; I like to let the character take on a life of her own, I have to bow to her decision and her agenda; and the uniform is very much part of a greater agenda – but exactly what that is we have to wait and see…one gets the impression that it is something lurking in the mind of the girl’s guardian as much as anything. I have already done a little towards this part, as I have said before, but I have denied myself the pleasure of its completion – today I have the lion’s share to write; its my little reward to myself for having trudged through all that hard to write, but very necessary, groundwork!

I also have to polish the scenes where the girl visits her therapist and also where her aunt begins to act as the therapist’s proxy at home and we first begin to examine not only her aunt’s agenda but also her therapist’s motives with a critical eye when we learn something of the content of those treatment sessions. Again it is partially written and again I have held back on its completion to relish the anticipation and to dangle as a carrot before my eyes whenever the work ethic began to lapse - a bit like a nice day’s drinking, and even better if I can combine the two of course (and I can be at my cruelest after a few pints of the finest real ale).

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Talking of which, you probably well understand the picture I've placed at the start of this post, up there on the left - it is just something that I find wonderfully evocative of that domination / submission chemistry that develops between an experienced and skilled governess and her charge, given the right conditions. I imagine, also, that you can see the rationale behind the next pic lower down, the girl at her desk - it came from a 1970s set published in a mainstream men's mag, Men Only I think it was, but i might be wrong - either way it went a long way to fixing my particular interests and thus guiding my writing (its as much in her eyes as in the archaic uniform she she has been put in). But you're probably at a bit of a loss as to why there is a metronome depicted over on the right. Well, when Lavinia was staying in her aunt's cottage, one very similar to this always took pride of place on her bedside table. You see, the girl always had seemed to be troubled with anxiety and this, with her aunt's cooperation, was her therapists solution. Any steady monotonous sound has a tendency to induce relaxation, whether the ticking of a watch, constantly falling drops of water or the sound of a softly beating heart. A simple pianist’s metronome fits the bill well enough and in addition it is one of the devices her doctor has been routinely using to teach her relaxation techniques to help overcome her ‘problems’ – and so its introduction into the home makes good sense. It has been shown that subjects can be put into a hypnotic trance by conditioned reflex alone, even in the absence of the therapist, by the sound or sight of a particular device if a patient has been repeatedly hypnotised by verbal suggestion in its presence or by its use.

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The above idea can be extended even to the setting of the room alone – and so the rationale behind the doctor’s home visits is revealed, particularly as the girl has been categorised by her therapist as being a somewhat refractory patient at this point in time. And this is something I shall have to address as I write - how this initial resistance is overcome is almost a tale in itself... But already it becomes clear why her aunt is keen to advocate rigidly prescribed bedtimes, why regular afternoon naps, always involve sending her up to bed at stroke of the clock and exactly at particular time, why always the same long soft cosy nightdress is waiting and why the household routine is so set in stone and ritualistic - at least as far as the girl is concerned… and of course there is a certain ritualistic and routine element to the adoption of a uniform for the girl too, if you think about it… one thing leads to another one which reinforces the first - that's how I like to think about it. So you can see; you can rest assured that this is not going to be a case of 'doctor swings a nice shiny pocket-watch and...her-presto...all is magically changed' (I hate that...and to me plausibility is everything - it is one of the reasons that I started writing my own stuff. These things take time and patience and so I shall have to lavish similar time and patience to make it work in the written world).

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By the way, if you are at all interested about the theory behind all of this was a very interesting book you I consider consulting called: Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis in Medicine, Dentistry, and Psychology (William S. Kroger and Michael D Yapko). It is available for viewing on Google books so go check it out and learn all about another little facet of Toyntanen's little world of discipline, submission, fetishism and punishment.

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As I said, I’m a bit short of time and so I wasn’t going to make a blog entry today (and I generally don’t over the weekend in any case) but the number of hits has been rising of late and yesterday the hit rate was up by near-on 60%. I have absolutely no idea why this should have been but in the light of all those extra eyeballs I figured had to make some effort. So I thought I’d direct you to a story I read recently and fell in love with (with a few provisos). Why? Because it is probably the only kidnap / bondage tale I have ever come across that has broached the subject of sleep deprivation and introduced the concept of psychological punishment – two aspects that I have written into the INSTITUTIONALISED series; there are a few examples of psychological punishment written into INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 - probably one of the best examples is the part that the ‘punishment-rhymes’ story snippet (just click title to read), that I have published elsewhere and previously on this blog, was taken from.
I also like the suggestion made quite early on by the girl's captor that, although a ransom has been demanded of her farther, even if he pays it, the girl he is going to get back is going to be very different to the one that was snatched (Yum, Yum, Yum!!!)…then he goes and ruins it a bit, for me anyway…but you can probably guess by now the sort of outcome I’d have liked to see. Anyway, it is well worth the read, it is called ‘The Mayor’s Daughter’ (just click to link) and comes from a nice little bondage story site I have discovered called 'utopia stories' (again, just click to read or check it out the sidebar resource list).

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On a slightly different tack; I have discovered a site absolutely loaded with rubber, plastic and spandex / Lycra fetish pics and all free. It is called allfetishes.net (as usual, just click to read or check it out the sidebar resource list).

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Bye,bye for now...Garth