I feel your pain.

I don't mind giving up center stage to an exquisite collection of words that I couldn't have bitchslapped together better myself. Once again, from Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism; this quote comes from Dr. Darren Langdridge's discussion on the disintigration of consciousness (p. 92):

Through control of power—consensually agreed in S/M—the top can control the slow and steady destruction of language, turning speech and non-linguistic verbalizations on and off at will.

The subject of these acts ‘gains’ the loss of agency, complexly experienced by both inside and outside and the consequent dissolution of the boundaries of the private and public, finding intense and thrilling public exposure.

With this comes one possibility of the total but temporary destruction of consciousness as the pain obliterates complex thought and emotion, even destroying one’s ability to see.

Pain takes over one’s body, annihilating all else that it was, occupying both inside and outside as it becomes the single omnipresent fact of existence.

The world of torture is thus closed down—disintegrated—such that all limits of peace and solitude can be found and/or the thrill of exposure and merging of the self and world.

The world of the torturer inhabits this space between their still bounded self and the other, feeling the full force of the power and control that this entails, holding the other’s consciousness—their world—in their hands.

This is likely to be part of the appeal for the torturer, who may come to enjoy the sense of power (and responsibility) that results from living out the world of two people as one.


I've got your operationalization right here.