Conversational Sadism

Conversational Sadism by sleepingirl

Sadomasochism is one of the core elements of BDSM -- while it’s not necessary to engage in to play, nevertheless it is iconically “kinky.” We often think of whips and slapping and other physical methods of hurting someone, but one of the most intriguing aspects of sadism is engaging psychologically. Emotional sadism can be seen as fairly edgy, and used with hypnosis often has the connotation of hypnotically manifesting negative emotions within the bounds of play. But what can we learn from conversational hypnosis to make psychological sadism more reachable for us as players?

“Conversational”?

Especially when we are first learning about hypnosis, we tend to think of it in terms of something that is inherently linked with some kind of idea of an altered state. It’s in the name, after all, and it’s where the concept came from: that someone experiences psychological changes based on them going into some space where their perceptions and experiences change. However, as we get more into practicing hypnosis, ironically it becomes clear that “trance” is one of its least important aspects or goals. When explaining some of the foundational skills for hypnosis, we could consider more nuanced ideas, like being able to understand someone and how they process different concepts. The actual practice of hypnosis is less the process of putting someone into a suggestible state, and more about information gathering, twisting, and linking.

An effective suggestion is one that has suitable connections to its surroundings: the subject’s thoughts and experiences, and the context and frame of the suggestions or patter around it. For example, a suggestion about someone getting turned on will be most effective when it simply makes sense; we are able to “sell” it based on, perhaps, the idea that the subject is in an arousing situation, the idea that we are an attractive presence to them, the idea that getting turned on is automatic or easy, the idea that we were just talking about something that is sexual to them, etc.

In this way (and many others), hypnosis is not unlike any other conversation. When we are talking normally, we follow certain unspoken rules about how to make sense to the other person, be engaging, flow from one topic to another. Paul Grice, a well-known linguistics philosopher in the 1900s, theorized much about pragmatics and semantics, including some specific maxims about conversation -- ideas about what these rules might be.

• Maxim of quantity: the idea that the speaker should aim to provide just as much information as is needed
• Maxim of quality: the idea that the speaker should aim to be truthful and not rely on statements which are not supported
• Maxim of relation: the idea that the speaker should aim to have their utterances be relevant to the discussion
• Maxim of manner: the idea that the speaker should aim to be “polite” in being brief, sensical, and unambiguous

These are not universal and in hypnosis, we often intentionally break some of these rules (we may not be so concerned with truth when giving suggestions, and especially we aim to be ambiguous sometimes). However, “relation” or relevance is very important to us as hypnotists. Grice’s work inspired much discussion over this and a theoretical framework called “relevance theory” which aimed to discuss how the information we exchange is often found in places behind the literal words we use.

For our purposes, we can consider the following example: say for instance that we are having an exchange about food.

• Speaker A: “What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?”
• Speaker B: “I love Emilia.”

This exchange makes no sense; Speaker B is not saying anything relevant to the conversation. Let’s look at this if both speakers were aiming to be relevant:

• Speaker A: “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”
• Speaker B: “Hmm, I like chocolate, or strawberry; classic stuff.”
• Speaker A: “But not vanilla?”
• Speaker B: “I’m not much of a vanilla person.”
• Speaker A: “Oh yeah? Tell me more about how you’re not very vanilla. ;)”

In this example, not only are both speakers relevant, but there is also a topic change; a logical progression of the conversation. We can apply this idea to a hypnotic example:

• The subject’s shoulders slump.
• Hypnotist: “I can see your body is starting to let go. You’re really starting to feel it.”
• The subject breathes in more sharply.
• Hypnotist: “And that’s exciting, right? That you’re losing control.”

Here we are acknowledging the nonverbal responses of the subject as utterances within the “conversation,” and we see again how there was relevance in each utterance (between partners and progression of one speaker) and a “change of topic” that made sense.

What Does This Have To Do With Sadism?

In the previous examples we saw that the first was a conversation on equal footing, where both participants were verbally responding, freely. In the second, one of the participants was not responding verbally, since a subject going quiet is often (but not necessarily) an understood part of a hypnosis scene. What we’re interested in this topic, however, is something in the middle, where the conversation becomes something that is restrictive and uncomfortable in and of itself for one of the speakers. Someone being essentially “talked into a corner.”

We can conceptualize the idea of power exchange in general as one party having greater access to resources than another (Georg Barkas). In this case, we’re talking about one person purposefully removing the other person’s access to those resources. With conversational sadism, the primary resource we’re interested in is “comfort.” Let’s look at an example:

• Speaker A: “How are you feeling about us playing?”
• Speaker B: “Pretty good.”
• A: “Yeah? Feeling comfortable?”
• B: “Yep!”
• A: “What’s making you feel comfortable?”
• B: “Well, I trust you.”
• A: “How do you know to trust me?”
• B: “Well… We’ve played together before, and you’ve never hurt me. We’re pretty close, I feel like I know you pretty well at this point.”
• A: “Have you ever thought that you might be too trusting? We’ve only known each other for a year or so. I mean, I do know you pretty well; I could really do some damage if I wanted to.”
• B: “...I don’t think you would want to…”
• A: “Do you think you know me well enough to make that judgment?”
• B: “I thought so…”
• A: “What if I did want to? Do you think you’d really be able to protect yourself?”
• B: “I mean, I think so...”
• A: “You think so, but you were just telling me confidently how much you trust me. You were really selling it to me. So clearly there’s a part of you that would let me do certain things. Do you trust yourself enough to recognize it and then stop me if I started crossing a line?”
• B: “Um…”
• A: “Now you have doubt about two things: Whether or not you should trust me, and whether or not you should trust yourself.”

In this example, Speaker A is utilizing the information they know and gathered from the conversation to remove Speaker B’s access to comfort; the comfort that they had about trusting that the interaction would be safe and enjoyable. Notice that the exchange happened in line with our idea of a conversation -- both speakers were staying relevant by building on what was already said, and “topic changes” were introduced in a way that made logical sense. We can think about the process that happened here in several steps:

• Gathering information
• Identifying the elements of status quo/comfort
• Taking the person through the process of “what if” they didn’t have those elements
• Introducing elements of discomfort in line with the new scenario

To explore this format, we should delve deeper into the idea of what this “discomfort” is.

Discomfort and Cognitive Dissonance

The term “emotional sadism” brings to mind the idea of creating negative emotions, and on some level, that’s accurate. But we know intuitively that there’s something that differentiates feeling those emotions in a specifically sadistic context. For this reason, we’re not really going the route of thinking about how to hypnotically induce negative emotions directly (that is, hypnotizing someone and then suggesting that they feel negative emotions); while this is something you can do, it’s much easier to keep this feeling as “real” as possible when sticking to our idea of conversational relevance.

Emotions are complex and nuanced, not as easily put into distinct categories as we’d like, especially when we consider how they organically arise. Considering the previous example, there are many different things that the subject could have been feeling; perhaps a touch of fear about what could happen, shame/humiliation/degradation from their trust being pointed out as a flaw, even disappointment. Other negative emotions might be jealousy, sadness, anger, disgust, annoyance, or others. They are fully subjective; there could be overlap and they can be quite dynamic over the course of an interaction.

In conversational sadism, we’re interested in a more broad “discomfort” umbrella. This allows us to focus on a feeling that we may not necessarily think of when we consider emotional sadism: the idea of “limbo” or ambivalence. Getting someone to a point where they are unsure, confused, or trapped between feelings is very much in line with what we want to achieve. We can consider this to be taking advantage of cognitive dissonance: when a person is confronting information or actions that are contradictory to their beliefs and values.

Creating Cognitive Dissonance: Threats

This confrontation, on some level, specifically needs to be believable for discomfort to occur -- for example, if you tell someone that they should be scared of playing with you because you might cut their arm off, this will fall flat in most cases, because that’s an outrageous claim. This brings us to discussing one of the primary ways that we can be sadistic with our language -- making threats.

A threat, at its core, is when you make someone face the possibility of something happening. Sometimes, we focus on the idea of a threat as something that could definitely be followed through on -- we might rightly say that the best kind of threat is one that seems like it could actually happen. The example above illustrates this -- something that is completely unrealistic won’t carry the kind of “oomph” we’re looking for. However, that doesn’t mean that a threat has to be completely achievable, either. Especially in the context of conversational sadism, a threat is essentially offering someone a “what if” scenario: “What if” this were to be the case?

Take for example this statement: “Wouldn’t it be terrible if you had to admit to your friends that you liked being humiliated?” The actual feasibility of this may differ between people and situations, however, even if this was something that was truly off the table, the listener still has to entertain the possibility of it happening as well as imagine the scenario. Simply by going through the process of trying to discern whether or not it’s realistic, they have to think, “What if it is? What would happen?” and process the emotional responses of that.

Of course, positing something that you could very realistically follow through on is one of the best ways that you can give your threats bite. But that requires a lot of understanding of the person’s expectations in the relationship, and benefits from a partnership that already has existing acts of emotional or physical sadism -- a basis in reality. However, you can easily “cheat” by using one of our favorite linguistic tricks as hypnotists: ambiguous and indirect language. Let’s look at a few examples:

• “I’m going to put you in trance in public, where anyone walking by could see how helpless you are.”

This is a direct, unambiguous threat. Similar to our understanding of language with hypnosis, we know that this kind of statement tends to make the listener evaluate its realism: does it pass or fail the reality check? It implies that it is definitely going to happen, which is perfectly fine in some cases, and can add an authoritativeness to the interaction, but loses some of its punch if it is seen as outlandish.

• “Maybe I’ll do something to you in public, so you have to really control your responses -- do you think you’ll be able to?”

This example is more indirect (hedging language) as well as ambiguous (not specifying what will happen). A threat like this follows more of that “what if” nature of this style. Notice also that the focal point is shifted from the behavior of the bystanders to the perspective of the subject -- how will they feel about it, what will their behavior and emotions feel like? This is a similar shift that we might do in hypnosis when we want someone to focus internally so they are paying attention to their own process -- very useful in emotional sadism.

Different Kinds of Threats: Denial

We could say that there are essentially two different kinds of threats: telling someone that something bad might happen, or telling someone that something good might not happen. The former is more of what we’ve been talking about, but the latter is just as useful in terms of bringing discomfort to someone. Threats of denial are a powerful tool both to motivate as well as cause someone to go through different kinds of emotional changes.

Emotional sadism doesn’t have to be limited to feelings that we perceive as wholly negative -- desire in and of itself can be somewhat torturous, especially in the context of longing or yearning for something, or wanting not to lose something. This is of course most obvious in sexual denial, where the bottom is seeking sexual pleasure. However, it’s equally useful in terms of making threats when used outside of this context. Let’s look at some examples:

• “I bet you really want to escape into trance right now, but what if you can’t?”
• “It’d be terrible if you wanted to express something, but couldn’t…”
• “Where’s your sense of pride? Having trouble feeling that right now?”

Frames and Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance, as we’ve discussed, is a feeling of mental stress about conflict -- conflict between the beliefs and values that someone holds, and something that they are presented with that they are forced to process. We can understand the above examples of threats in terms of this model by considering what those beliefs and values are, and how the threat challenges it. Going back to one of these:

• “Maybe I’ll do something to you in public, so you have to really control your responses -- do you think you’ll be able to?”

We can understand that the beliefs at play here could be things like “it’s not proper to do kink in public”, “I enjoy playing with this person / letting them do what they want to me”, “I don’t usually have to control my responses.” These are concepts that the person holds as true, in some form. The threat causes them to process the idea that they might have to do things which go against these values: playing in public, doing something with the top that they may not wholly enjoy, and exerting a level of control over their outward reactions. Thus, this causes them discomfort. This threat is really only effective when those initial beliefs are in place; if the person feels like playing in public is totally fine, then the statement won’t make them have to wrestle with that.

Beliefs and values are not static, nor are they immutable. They depend heavily on frame of reference. Being aware of the frame that someone is viewing the world through in a given situation gives you information about what kinds of threats you can use. This also means that even if you want to make a threat about something that doesn’t usually make someone uncomfortable, if we change their perspective on that initial belief, you are able to do so with ease (and a little bit of language).

For example, say that your partner doesn’t really feel like it’s that big of a deal to do certain kinds of kink play in public. Their frame of reference about this might include pieces like “I can hide my responses well”, “I wouldn’t know anyone around, so it doesn’t matter”, “from my perspective, it’s a good thing to be comfortable with public play”, or “I’ve done public play before and it was never a problem”. As the top in the scene, you can specifically address those ideas and change their perspective on them: “I could get you so riled up you couldn’t hide what I was doing to you,” “What if I took you to your hometown and did it,” “Doesn’t it make you pretty bad to be OK with the possibility of bystanders seeing you like that,” or “You never know if something would be different next time I messed with you in public.”

Escalation versus Relief

Let’s look again at our idea of this model:

• Gathering information
• Identifying the elements of status quo/comfort
• Taking the person through the process of “what if” they didn’t have those elements
• Introducing elements of discomfort in line with the new scenario

We understand that gathering information is a part of all of our interactions with a partner, and learning how to make an effective threat constitutes the parts of the process of creating a “what if” scenario where the person has less access to comfort. The last part of this structure speaks more to the idea of a flow of conversation, or flow of the scene itself.

When we think about an effective kink scene, we know that the actions we take and the emotions that both parties’ experience aren’t static. There are quiet moments, moments of escalation, climactic moments that we aim for; a good kink scene is like a good scene in a piece of media. With conversational sadism, we’re interested in facilitating this type of flow to create intensity. Let’s look at an example:

• Speaker A: “I’m gonna mess you up.”
• Speaker B: “I want that really badly.”
• A: “Do you? Feeling needy?”
• B: “Yeah…”
• A: “Desperate, even?”
• B: “That’s awful…”
• A: “Yeah, it is. I wonder what you’d do for me to get what you want.”
• B: (cringing)
• A: “Are you nervous about what I might make you do?”
• B: “Maybe…”
• A: “Or maybe you’re nervous about what you would actually let me do.”
• B: (turning away in discomfort)
• A: “I bet you have all sorts of ideas of how far you’d go. But could you even really tell until it came down to it? You’d have to weigh your desire against yourself, and wanting something so bad can really cloud your judgment…”
• B: “Fuck…”
• A: “But maybe I’ll just decide to hypnotize you, fuck waiting for it.”
• B: (visibly more open body language)
• A: “I know how helpless you are to me, anyways. We’ve already proved that. Remember when you went into the bathroom at work just to chant a mantra? Maybe that seems pretty tame now, but what would any reasonable person have thought about that behavior?”
• B: (stiffening shoulders)
• A: “They’d say that that’s just how the brainwashed victim acts in a movie.”
• B: (squeezing eyes shut)
• A: “Isn’t it funny how you almost want to argue with me on that, tell me that it wasn’t that extreme, but deep down, we both know that that’s what you want to be. If I made you say something right now, which one would win out? The part that wants to protest, or the part that wants to be a brainwashed slut?”
• B: “I don’t know…”

There’s a lot to look at in this example. Firstly, we can see how the intensity of the scene flows and changes over time. There is a sense of escalation until a point in the middle where the initial threat is dispelled. But after that moment of relief, things are ramped up again. These peaks and lulls of intensity are what serve to make the scene engaging. At a certain point in an uncomfortable experience or conversation, the person who is experiencing discomfort may “check out” and experience some element of dissociation so they no longer have to face the difficult emotions. Providing periodic respite serves to keep them present.

Further Ideas: Temporality and Confusion

Additionally, notice that some of the conversational sadism took less of the future-based “what if” scenario threats, and called back on moments in the past: “Do you remember when…” Thinking about this element of temporality can help give you ideas of how you can be verbally mean to someone. Is there something about their behavior in the past that you can make them feel uncomfortable about? What about something that is happening right now, in the moment? How can you frame those things to them so that they feel discomfort about it?

Lastly, this example ends with the bottom answering “I don’t know” when presented with a question about how they would behave in a certain scenario. One of the most useful feelings of discomfort for us is this sense of being indecisive, confused, or in limbo about something. This is especially apparent when it comes to the bottom being presented with some situation where they have to make a choice -- oftentimes, this is a question of “Am I going to do the right thing?”

This kind of unsureness can be inherently related to our desire for cognitive dissonance -- the mental exertion that someone has to go through when deciding what to do. Many times, this results in the person changing their beliefs and values (usually through their frame of reference) to fit the action that they have to take. In the example above, if the top pushed on making the bottom answer them one way or another, the bottom would likely have to accept that their answer was telling about their beliefs about themselves, or adopt a perspective that allowed them to view that as true in some form. This is of course very useful for changing someone’s views on something, for example in a brainwashing context.

Article Summary

• Emotional sadism, like hypnosis, can be looked at from a conversational frame: we want to follow the unspoken rules about how conversations flow, especially in terms of staying relevant
• When we think about sadism in this form, we’re largely thinking about the discomfort umbrella of emotions, and how we can restrict someone’s ability to feel emotional comfort and stability
• We’re particularly interested in cognitive dissonance -- when someone is forced to confront a potential situation or actions that go against their beliefs and values
• Threats are essentially a “what if” scenario -- they should be relevant, but they don’t have to be perfectly achievable because a person still has to process “what if”
• You can threaten that something bad might happen, or that something good might not happen
• We know that beliefs and values are dependent on frame, so you can change the way that someone is viewing a situation to cause them discomfort
• It’s important to remember the flow of a scene to make it more engaging and keep someone immersed
• You can also think about verbal sadism that is relevant to the past and present as opposed to just future-based threats
• Limbo is sadistic because people want to do the right thing

Bibliography

Furcissy. (2018, December 25). 504. Discussion Topic Write-Up: Emotional Masochism and Sadism. Femdom Ramblings from a submissive male. https://fcsyblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/23/504-discussion-topic-write-up-emotional-masochism-and-sadism/.

Shatz, I. (n.d.). Grice’s Maxims of Conversation: The Principles of Effective Communication. Effectiviology. https://effectiviology.com/principles-of-effective-communication/.